no, it really isn't. It makes a difference on hwo and when and why.
To who? And when you have decided why some things are worthy and not worthy of your deeper thought does it change the effort at all? Will it change the natural course of what is to come? You may as well find a way to see through the fog and see the MENA picture. Each one of these Arab governments are going to have it's own remedy, but they are all about the same thing.
1) Iraq - Iraqis had no hope without us. With us ignoring their uprisings as Hussein went on to slaughhter the Shia and the Kurds in the 1990s, we had an obligation to get rid of the thorn that we were stuck to (and what Osama Bin Laden used to excuse 9/11).
2) Egypt - With our military's relationships with the Egyptian military, we did not need to "intervene." That uprising was controlled and they are at the beginning of a new future.
3) Libya - Since we have no relationships with their military, our option was to bomb military targets so as to give the rebelling people their opportunity to achieve a new future.
Like I stated, every nation is going to have its own remedy, but it is all about the same thing. Ridding ourselves of these Cold War relics is good for our long term security. It is good for the people who know nothing but oppression and blame us for it. It is tactically smart and it is morally right.
We have entered an age where we can finally be what we preach. Do you even realize what our history has been for this world? Thousands of years of empirical tradition via dictators, empires, and monarchies came down to the Soviet Union and the U.S. The Cold War boiled down to the free capitalist world versus the oppressed Communist world. Because of the way Europeans manufactured this world and created these Frankentstein's Monster nations, both superpowers took the easy way out and used the dictators to maintain order and stability. When America turned out to be the last man standing in 1991, it broke from historical tradition. The free democratic world finally one. Global authority, for the first time, didn't belong to a King, Kaiser, Czar, Emporer, etc. It belonged to the people. Along the way, we globalized the world. The consequences of this victory was that all those Frankenstein's Monster nations in the MENA were still stuck with the dictators. Without the ability to politically voice their opinions and design their own destinies, they began to go rogue. They formed terrorist organizations with religion as the theme (without answers and through great desparation all men turn to God). This is why so many terrorist attacks throughout the region and abroad are from organizations that no nation claims responsibility for. But we do know where they come from and why. And this is what the poorly named "War on Terror" has always been about.
You may default to the fact that we can never vanquish terrorism. Well, that was never the goal. Where once we used dictators to oppress the tribes into good behavior we can no longer do this. This is the price of a globalized world. Where people have a choice, vote, decision, whatever, they do not easily throw their lives away. Where they have options andopportunities toprosper for their families, they do not join terrorist organizations. Outside of the dictator, only democracies have shown agility to deal with such problems. Therefore, the goal has always been to reduce this region's terrorism to a manageable level. You think it's a coincidence that all Arab governments are voicing for democracy today? You don't think that in a globalized internet induced twitter world full of information over flow that these people can't see what the rest of us have discovered as the means to prosperity and success? You think Iraq's success at the polls last year wasn't watched carefully by Al-Jazeera and so many individual citizens as their dictators bit their nails?
You may also default to the fear that in a democracy they will merely vote in the terrorists. This is a poor outlook. These dictators, religious theocracies, and terrorist monsters know that their kind can not survive where people are educated and have a choice. Why do you think they wanted Iraq to fail so badly? Why do you think the Taliban shut down schools in Afghanistan? Why do you think Al-Queda targetted schools and voters in Iraq? This doesn't mean that as Palestinians proved, some garbage will not rise. But this is temporary and minor. Even the mighty French managed to vote in an Emperor on their path to democracy. Have they failed? Perhaps we can give a region full of religious people, who have been oppressed over the last few centuries, more than a few years to prove that they can do it too. The alternative is 9/11 repeated and repeated and repeated.
What people have failed to recognize that we are at a historic crossroad once again. Failure to effectively counter the catalyzing effects of Radical Islam will prove people like Samuel Huntington correct about his Clash of Civilizations. The dictators and their religious tools of oppression were leading to decreased stability, decreased economic growth, and increased conflict. And as our own history shows, our security has always relied upon the health of foreign regions. Conversely, effectively countering this threat now will have worldwide, beneficial effects for generations to come. And if you don't think that these MENA events are world changing events, perhaps you should read up on China. Even they shut the Internet down for a spell so that their people wouldn't get any crazy ideas from these uprisings.