Democracy is not salvation. It's just another form of governing a country, a Kingdom, a ruling elite, an elected elite, all can produce good rules for society, but they can just as easily make total crap rules for part of, or their whole, country.
The Saudi Kingdom is a valid way of ruling by popular support.. So is the government system of Japan, and for most European countries the 'ruling elite' vary.
So i've chosen (a number of years ago actually)
to not look at rank or name of who says what, but to only listen to, and process, what is said. On some topics, your local garbage cleanup service people will know more than a prime minister, the national chief of intelligence *and* your King / Queen combined.
that local knowledge that your local garbage cleanup crew, usually filters to the right
bureaucrat and the local city council will organise the cleanup of such a local issue.
what's the point here? well, wether you're under the rule of a true Kingdom (like Saudi Arabia), or a mix of democracy and Kingdom (like *perhaps* Pakistan is at the moment), or whether you're in a 'true democracy with seperation of state and church', good government policies can only be made if there's NOT a struggle for "what form of government we use" or "who gets to be King / Prime Minister / President-of-a-country"..
You need the central leadership stay the central leadership, IN MOST CASES.
I can (idealogically) back the new Egyptian government, and praise their old President for keeping political-power-hungry "wolves" at bay with strict enforcement of strict laws.
Syria's Assad clan thought they could bomb their own citizens with their own airforce, to stop demonstrations to receive more of the country's wealth (apparently non-Assad-clan/tribe peoples got so little of the Syrian income/wealth, they found it reason to go onto the street and excercise their right to demonstrate peacefully)...
I don't know exactly how Syria turned into the total warzone that it is now. But i do know i despise Assad and his clan for not even handing over a little bit of the nation's wealth to Syrians who are not part of the Assad clans. (clans = peoples, tribes)
I also supported the Ayatollah of Iran and his leaderships, over the "Iranian green movement".
'Regime-change' is the phrase used to indicate you're going from one set of families and tribes as your government, to an entirely different set of families and clans (in most cases ok),
and even with lots and lots of outside help (all that happened and is happening in Iraq), a regime-change is gonna cost tens of thousands of lives, possibly even a percentage of the population.. 1 percent 'collateral damage' among/of 10 million humans is 100 000 (one-hundred-thousand) horrible deaths, ok..
THAT's why you wont hear people like me offer 'regime change' as an opening line or something like that. regime-change should always be the very last option to use. and it can't be bluffed with either..
What the green movement in Iran should do is stay out of the current leadership (the Ayatollah's leaderships) and focus on having a life, either in Iran or outside Iran.