The Romans had a simple method of romanizing new provinces:

The conquered them in battle, bribed local elites and lured their youth with the comforts of Roman civilization and career opportunities, then after 20-30 years they destroyed the last hope for freedom by crushing a general uprising in force.


In Parthia they failed with the conquering part, in Germany they failed with the 'crush the general insurrection' part.

They weren't exactly good at pacifying within a decade.


Hmm, maybe every village should have been asked send one or two bright youth to a U.S. University and be handed a cheap laptop with webcam and mobile phone connection?
What the Romans did is quite similar to what the Brits did - they ruled through the local emirs, maharajah etc., and made sure their children went to Oxford or Cambridge. They also crushed a few uprisings though.

The problem was that they also needed an army of clerks, soldiers, teachers and low-level administrators and these people got to know just enough to understand that colonialism wasn't right. By working closely with the British, they got to understand the Brits weren't all they were hyped to be. (Some of the most ardent anti-colonial figures were members of the West African Frontier Force who fought against the Japanese on behalf of the Brits in Burma. One recalls that at certain point, the Brits fell like a pack of cards and a lot of the fighting was done by Indians).

The age of European empires is over and so is the age of conquest via assimilation (although American televangelists seem to be very successful on that front in Africa - that's a topic for another day) is over. In that regard, Iraq and Afghanistan was a $1 trillion dollar social science experiment that went terribly wrong. (A more realistic people, less blinded by their own hubris would have seen it coming, though).

Would another Iraqi / Afghanistan type adventure in a non-Arab/Muslim nation work? We don't know, but the US can spend another $1 trillion to find out .

You mentioned "sending bright young things to American Universities and giving them laptops". Well, those bright young things were at Tahrir Square being interviewed by Anderson Cooper (the spoke excellent, unaccented English). In the background the Salafists and the MB who speak the language of the streets were doing their thing - the rest is history.

You cannot change a people by merely sending a few to Harvard!