It was not a rhetorical question, and thanks for answering.
I came across an article called
Christianity, Islam, and Science today. Together with Wikipedia's article on the
Islamic Golden Age it paints a picture of a Muslim world that could have entered into it's own Renaissance centuries before Europe, had circumstances been a little different. Muslims are demonstrably capable of practicing national-scale democracy, but it's only been in the last century that they've had the opportunity to try. Your doubts that military action will make them more liberal are reasonable, but your doubts that they are simply incapable of self governance probably aren't.