Gunner, I agree to a point. We do have to win this war on more then one level (the rest is garbage, Vietnam, which I do recall was lost due to the same thing your asking for…politics in war. Politicians don’t win wars, soldiers with guns do. Remove or limit the fight and we loose the war.)
The problem with some of this watered down Christianity and not offending them with our “ways” has also backfired. Muslim Fundamentalist will never support us, regardless of what we do to try and pacify them. As long as we exist, we will be targets because of who we are.
Now, having said that, I will tell you that after the first Gulf war, many Muslims mocked us for our beliefs and then more importantly lost respect for us when we lowered our personal beliefs as to not offend them (that is their opinion when we hid our religion, as viewed from soldier to soldier). Think about it this way, they do everything under the flag of religion. They respect the enemy (us) when we are strong. They challenge us when we our weak, and hiding our religion is actually viewed more callously then if we just left the damn S/N on our weapon alone
Finally, there will be no “win” in this war. They view us and always will, as outsiders. They’ve tolerated us for their benefit, but rest assured, we will never win a war there. The good news is if we can put a puppet gov’t in place, we might be able to leave for another decade or two.