Here, they have decided that the people rioting in the streets are the "good" side and the answer is "democracy".
They ignore inconvenient facts, like "democracies" which adhere to sharia law don't offer freedom of speech or religion. They persecute females, mutilating them as young girls, murdering them as adults. This destruction of male-female relations leads to young men with rearings so perverse that the prospect of suicide-murder missions seems desirable. They enshrine a culture of death.
How do we deter a culture that values death more than life? We need a Crusade of Ideas to recapture the Middle East. We need to convince people that their lives are better in civilized nations rather than the barbarism of the Caliphate. To win the battle, we need to identify, understand and articulate the values that make up civilized society. Tough to do when many of us take them for granted, having lived in them all our lives.
In Marc Theisen's book, he lamented that this war of ideas was identified shortly after 9/11 but never prosecuted. We've put it off long enough. With the governments in the Middle East being swept away, now is the time.
No, I don't know how we do it. Perhaps we need to split out the many Muslims who can reconcile their religion with living in a modern, secular society. Could some Inmams living in the U.S. explain how it's done? Are the Muslim women who live in modern societies with their faces uncovered "valid" Muslims? If so, how can the Sharia regimes insist they're not? If it's all interpretation, then we need to clear and hold countries, or even parts of countries, one at a time. Kind of like the Kurdish section of Iraq, a sanctuary within a nightmare. People would vote with their feet for freedom.
If we lose, if the Middle East dominoes all topple to sharia, then we get to practice asymetrical warfare on them. It's much easier to destroy and disrupt then to build and maintain. Well, the shoe will be on the other foot. The sharia freaks will have to maintain their rule. Tough to do without funding, aid, trade, electricity, etc.
The only honest and ultimately useful “Crusade of Ideas” is to spread the truth about Islam.
That can’t be done in the ME, of course. Not practical. Can’t even be done in Europe or Canada. At least not now.
But it can, and should be done here. Has to start somewhere.