Actually, as a cis woman who is a fujoshi,

I feel like the ideological domination achieved first by Arab nationalists and then later by conservative Islamists in the politics of the Arab world, as opposed to leftists, who have always had strong bases of support but only ever got to create one communist state in the entire region, can't simply be attributed to the relative popularity of the ideologies among the populace due to like, supposedly inherent cultural conservatism or w.e. It's clearly more than that, its just that, much like with military dictatorships in South America, the Americans were willing to tolerate some deviance from pure pro-American ideological subservience in its colonial sphere in order to keep a firm grasp on power in the sense that they prevented first the soviets, and later the general "anti-American" coalition of states and figures, from establishing any sort of permanent influence that could result in actual social or economic or foreign policy changing. Like at the end of the day Saddam Hussein was not killed because Ba'athism was too "leftist" or whatever, they were open allies for a decade despite previous US suspicions towards Iraq, he launched a US-backed war against revolutionary Iran 1 year after taking power. Saddam Hussein and Ba'athism were destroyed in Iraq as a part of a larger US scheme to solidify their control over Gulf oil in the late/post-cold war era. Iraq was used as an attack dog and then it got too powerful so it had to be cut down to size. Not only did this allow US backed countries to secure regional power, it also gave the US the justification to vastly expand their military presence in the region. A strong Iraq is kinda like a strong Ethiopia, they can't be allowed to exist unless they are serving American interests in the region, otherwise they are destabilized into Permanent Conflict Zones because if they are powerful and ruled by ambitious people they are likely to become powerful independent regional states similar to modern iran who could exert significant influence over geopolitics in their "sphere".