Crowbat

While I agree with some of your ideas about pluralism, better alternatives, etc., those ideas are not ideas that "we" can put into practice for others. It is sort of like the super model who looks good on the cover of a magazine after considerable air brushing, but when you see in person she is not much more than a plain Jane. There is a gap between the ideas you're proposing we pursue and the means to do so.

Where I principally disagree with you is that you seem to assume that if we do X then Y will happen. The real world doesn't work that way, there are many factors influencing the outcome of situation beyond what we do. All to often we have to relearn that lesson. Our actions are not necessarily going to be deterministic, they'll just be part of a larger whole. Providing support to various so called moderate insurgent groups could work in our favor, may not have any effect, and could backfire on us. To assume we have perfect control of the outcomes is hubris. We have to make educated assumptions on probable outcomes, and consider if the worst case happens is the risk worth the potential gain?

If we knew how Iraq was going to turn out, do you think Congress would have supported it if we could all go back in time? Some predicted what would happen in Iraq quite accurately, but that doesn't mean they knew. They made an educated assumption. Others assumed we could easily defeat Saddam's military (we did), and then the people would embrace as liberators and they would welcome democracy (they didn't). We learned that there was considerable tension between the ethnic groups, we learned Iran gained considerable sway with the Shia community, we learned that removing all the Ba'athists resulted basically in removing any semblance of governance, opening up control of the state/or sub-regions to a wide range of actors competing for control. Most importantly I hoped we learned the world will do things we don't anticipate, and there are no easy wars where the outcome is certain.

Indeed: 'state-building before it provides growing ground for extremism'.
That is the theory, but it is important to note that others are competing with us to build their version of a state. Unless we completely bring an adversary to their knees, which we haven't done since WWII it is unlikely we'll be able to build a state. We can help the locals build their state, but if there isn't a common vision for what that state should look like between the warring parties then state building will continue to be a distant dream outside the realm of reality.

Let's consider the latest (known to me) example of an 'intervention' (of sort) in one of countries in question: removal of famous Prince Bandar from his post as Chief of Saudi Intel.

Frustrated by Obama's indecision on Syria, Bandar became a vocal propagator of the idea 'Saudis are going to do all it on their own'. I'm too lazy to search for all the possible links, but '5 minutes of googling' should be enough to find out that as of autumn 2012 and through early 2013, certain papers were full of statements by various Saudi ambassadors essentially stating the same, plus reports about massive Saudi purchases of specific arms for insurgents (usually such that could be obtained only from one source, which was motivated with the idea that should any end in 'wrong hands', these wrong hands couldn't get spares and ammo for them).
First off I have no idea if we facilitated the removal of Bandar, but even if we did that doesn't mean we can facilitate good governance. We probably just paid someone off to get rid of someone we didn't like. That doesn't change the culture of a government.

It is certainly worth surfacing all ideas for consideration, but we should also be critical and realistic about each idea. If we decide to pursue it, fine but we have to watch for signs it isn't working and have back up plans and adjust as needed. Although we preach this, I have seldom seen it done.