What frustrates me most about Islam's creeping subjugation of the (classically) liberal West is our failure to recognize and confront the ongoing demographic war. We're used to winning demographic wars by default, and the shooting wars have pretty much followed suit. The West's falling birthrate and apathy towards cultural evangelism has ceded momentum to Islam, which is now in ascension despite desperate poverty, rampant nihilism, and general depravity.
Unlike shooting wars, demographic wars don't depend on maneuvering armies, vast wealth, or superior technology, which are America's strengths. After 9/11 we realized that our declared enemies were serious about destroying us, but it's taken a while to fully appreciate how crippled our culture is due to our malignant Left. We're basically incapable of waging a demographic war: we don't have many children, we aren't interested in changing other cultures to conform to ours, and we're very reluctant to even defend ourselves in the face of Islam's cultural onslaught.
For example, Saudi Arabia has built and is funding hundreds of mosques and madrasahs across America, but owning a Bible in Saudi Arabia is punishable by death. The Left preaches tolerance, but tolerance can only work when it's reciprocated -- otherwise it's a suicide pact. Our government certainly doesn't need to pay to build churches in Saudi Arabia, but it should be working furiously to get our citizens the same freedoms there that their imams have here.
America had to fight shooting battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that's only half the war. The other half will be fought demographically, and no matter how many shots we fire we won't win the war unless we have children and are willing to proudly spread our civilization. This is an important discussion to have, because I really want our culture to win and I feel like our leaders and elite won't even admit that we're in a fight.
Government-sponsored nation-building is a poor instrument for the spread of our civilization generally, and especially bad for this specific situation: Islamic theocracies.
Compelling alternatives are the only true way to break radical Islam. The rub, though, is that this is a very nuanced and footnoted approach. It requires a complex combination of diplomacy (backed up with military might), economic development and incentives, determination and support of the Islamic population, and exporting of American values and culture. Military invasions followed by occupation can only work if the citizens of the invaded country are prepared to take over and work together in a way we see fit. That's the central failure of Iraq.. and will be the failure of any other similarly executed attempt elsewhere in the Middle East.
Mark: I agree! War and "nation building" aren't the best ways to fight a demographic war. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan I think they were necessary steps, but I don't think we need to militarily conquer all the Muslims in the world. Unfortunately, our Left has completely undermined our confidence and pride in our own culture and turned us into a society of self-loathers and victims. Until we believe that our culture and society are better than the alternatives and worth fighting for, what tools do we have other than military power?
Perhaps the culturally passive expansion of our economic interests will have the needed result, but I'm not sure it's likely.