[Gunner]

It's not any matter of not offending them, it's a matter of keeping our religious ideology out of the fight. We don't fight for religious reasons and we are there because we object, on a national level, to them imposing their religious wills on each of those nations. If we're to support that stance, we can't drag our own religious position into the fray. "Offending" them has nothing to do with it.

Neither does any notion of winning them over or converting them or "getting them to like us" - this isn't kindergarten and we don't all have to like each other. It's about giving the moderate masses something to turn to and lead them besides the firebrand radicals who promise a better world when the Great Satan is destroyed. It doesn't mean they'll become our buddies, but it would mean peace between nations and some rational input into getting them to uphold a world-class level of human rights instead of a late Iron Age mythology. (Note the two-edged sword there...)