Watch the videos of 1950s Iraq on YouTube and you glimpse something close to an idyll. It’s true that Pathé News was not big on gritty realism, but history relates that here it was not using a heavily rose-tinted lens; Hugh Trevor-Roper even went so far as to describe Iraq at the time as a Levantine Switzerland. Or you can go to Google Images, tap in ‘1960s Afghan women’ and be offered photographs of a mixed university biology class, and others of young women with short skirts, long hair and smiling faces.

This was life under the kings, and knowing what followed is enough to make a grown man weep. But let’s be hard-headed and forward-looking: the creation of new constitutional monarchies is a sensible solution to such clear and present dangers as Isis. Life without them has been a disaster in the Middle East. Why can’t we bring back the monarchs?

Because those same monarchs never really implemented the necessary developments that people needed. That's why people revolted. Same with the gulf countries once they don't like the conditions they live in the future (but I doubt it)

Honestly, I only read these two parts and skimmed the ones where he said Scandinavians kings are the most equal society and British sponsored monarchies then I closed it. That shit pisses me off. What's with this obsession that girls wore skirts and showed their hair? I mean, obviously it would be better to wear what they like but pointing at it like it's the most important thing ever is kind of weird.

We need a strong, civil-society that will help improve our conditions. Magically declaring someone a king will never solve them since most Arab countries are shit anyway.