My condescension and insult are an unfortunate by-product of my less than stellar efforts to resist getting bogged down with answering your "spin" on damn near every point that confutes your assertions.
Sorry 'bout that.
For the answer to what other choice we have I think we can look to history. The Soviet Union was able to keep radical islam in check, and that without killing all of them. Mustafa Kamal Ataturk of Turkey also managed to drag his country, kicking and screaming, into the modern era.
How this was accomplished I'd leave as an exercise for the student. Suffice to say, it was NOT through radical egalitarianism, nor gentle persuasion.
I'm not suggesting radical egalitarianism, OR gentle persuasion. That you got that idea most certainly rises from my flame-war with the previous denizens of this thread. I think Turkey may be a better example than the Soviet Union, since Russia certainly has her problems now. I fully support a muscular use of American force in the ME, and of our intelligence capabilities in rooting out the extremists at home and abroad. But I would much rather see Iraq end up as a Turkey than a Chechnya.