You are thinking too narrowly in terms of scope. Yes it was stable for a few decades. It was stable and declining. All hell was going to break loose regardless. Saddam toppling was just the precipitator. Do you really posit that all these Arab Spring participants would have just stood around twiddling thumbs had he still been there? Even setting aside he fact that the agitators were already in motion for decades, it's still not a tenable position.
I agree about democracy, what the US tried in Iraq was absurd. But there are endless other modes. Your own country translated monarchism into representative democracy in a very effective way, much more so than say the French. This would have been a far more favorable outcome in the Middle East. But then this goes back to the populace yada, yada...
It's certainly correct that what the US tried to do in Iraq was absurd. It was an utter calamity and - as I've said before - George W. Bush's administration, including Bush himself, should be blamed very harshly for it. It has a huge number of flow-on effects, including a massive, massive blow-out in US debt, increased oil prices, increased terrorism and unrest (ironically, precisely what the US was ostensibly trying to avoid), and a diversion of much-needed resources from Afghanistan to Iraq, which resulted in chaos in Afghanistan. An extremely unfortunate and regrettable affair.
However, as
doghouse
said, Hussein's rule would have come to an end one way or another and, when it ended, it's more than likely that it would not have been an easy transition.
Authoritarian rule in the Middle East has been an aid to the US in the short- to medium-term, but it will be a long-term bane to the US and to the Middle East itself. The US cosied up to authoritarian regimes - not only in the ME but around the world - because they offered stability and predictability. In a fantastic demonstration of realpolitik, successive US administrations of both stripes were prepared to hypocritically sacrifice their domestic democratic ideals for some temporary stability.
In places like SE Asia and South America, the US was worried about keeping a lid on "communism". In the ME, the US was worried about keeping a lid on Islamic extremism. However, in the case of the ME, all that supporting authoritarian regimes did was delay the day of reckoning. In fact, at the risk of stretching the metaphor, keeping on lid on Islamic extremism resulted in a pressure-cooker environment, guaranteeing that the end result would be all the more explosive when the lid came off.
Of course, this isn't all the US's fault - it's mostly the fault of the authoritarian regimes themselves, as they mostly subjugated the populace, did little to assist in the development of their countries, and in the case of the oil-rich countries, mainly pissed away the black gold without reinvesting the money into infrastructure to benefit the population. However, the support that the US gave to these regimes gave them at least the veneer of legitimacy within the international community and, unfortunately for the US, it also gave the unhappy, downtrodden people within those countries something to aim their anger at. Not only were they angry at their despotic dictators - they were angry at the country that supported the dictator and provided the regime with the weapons to control them.
That sort of behaviour was always going to end badly.
Grand Potentate
does it all the time), but in real life that is laughable. Has the Presidential scope expanded? Most certainly, and you are spot on the FDR drove a big part of it, but that has nothing to do with fascism. 
