This is a very good question and one to which, I confess, I have no easy answer. Let's start by defining our parameters. We were attacked on 9/11 by 19 fanatics wielding box cutters who managed to kill about 3000 people, caused billions in losses and expenditures, utterly distorted American political landscape, precipitated two wars, resulting in the isolation of America from many of its allies in Europe and elsewhere.
It seems to me that 19 men with box cutters is an entirely different proposition than a regime, like Iran (and what we falsely believed Iraq to be about) on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and effective delivery systems. Incidentally, on the same day that we learn that Iran has received intercontinental ballistic missiles (presumably from Russia) we learn that Shiite coup in Yemen was successful and now the Saudis (who are Sunnis) are in the position of Germany in 1914 bracketed by Shiite enemies. All this in the wake of the announcement of a Russian/Iranian treaty. Obviously, the landscape and very likely the balance of power in the Gulf is in the process of radical change, and it is very unlikely to be a change favorable to the national security interests of the United States.
When we are dealing with the nuclear issue on the cusp of spinning out of control as is the situation today in Iran, I'm afraid we have no choice but to resort to war if necessary to interdict their getting the bomb. But this only reintroduces your question, what would be our war aim? In the case of Iran we could choose to delay their acquiring the bomb or we could choose to wage war to change the regime. Obviously, we should choose to topple the regime and that raises the next question, which you also pose, with what should it be replaced?
At this point I think we could take a look at the history of the British in India and seek to play off one tribe against another, one sect of Islam against another, secularists against traditional religionists, etc. This menu of candidates for support suggests that we become very Machiavellian. The same menu of choices, most of them bad however, presented itself in Syria. Our presence on the ground should be limited and our exposure should be equally limited. That means no wholesale occupation, no nationbuilding, no grandiloquent pronouncements. It does mean a subterranean but sinister presence.
The overall goal of this Machiavellian approach is to make clear to those in power that they should be far more afraid of the United States that they are those who advocate either terror or Islamicist jihad. In other words, we make it clear that we will support insurgents against the new regime if it trespasses against our interests and we will make clear further that we have an array of options ranging from boots on the ground through air power, sanctions, coups, arming insurgents, cyber warfare, intelligence, and the list goes on. A carrot and stick approach so long as our counterparty respects us.
I've no way of knowing if this would work and I actually find it terribly difficult to believe that any American administration would attempt it for domestic political considerations. We need only look at how the left undermined the Iraq war with its relentless drumbeat about Abu Ghraib to understand how such a policy would be attacked.
We have all the handicaps of the democracy and, even worse, a democracy invariably confounded by a leftist elite in academia and media dedicated to frustrating any such policy that I have described. Moreover, the policy I described can only hope to succeed if it is credible and credibility (to steal from chairman Mao) comes from the barrel of a gun. We must be willing to inflict casualties without regard to fastidiousness over collateral damage. We must take the attitude that we took in World War II that Germans and Japanese dying in their tens of thousands in bombing raids were paying the price for their folly in putting those regimes in place. We had the equivalent of Pearl Harbor on 9/11 but we have seen how the left has succeeded in preventing a national consensus similar the to that which existed after Pearl Harbor which would allow for credibility to come from the barrel of a gun. Unfortunately, today political correctness triumphs and the elites do not disparage Mohammedism but extol it.
I think it is probable that we require a very grievous mass casualty terrorist attack on the homeland in order to align domestic opinion to wage serious war against militant Islam. Meanwhile, I think we will see whatever war we wage to be done as covertly as possible with drones and intelligence in the hope that we are not exposed in a manner which gives The New York Times another Abu Ghraib cause celeb with which to undermine America.
If we elect a true conservative in the White House with all the best intentions who is possessed of a true understanding of the threat, he will nevertheless find himself hobbled by domestic realities. Perhaps the best we can hope for is a president who conserves our resources, gets our budget and our debt under control, restores our military and prudently predicts the future of warfare, not with aircraft carriers, but with computers, drones, robots, lasers, and satellites. He will have to fight domestically to put money where it should go and keep it away from Congress critters, Republicans as well as Democrats I am ashamed to say, who will sacrifice American security for pork. Our conservative president must revivify the American economy by making trade fair and by fostering manufacturing at least in the technology space and he will, of course, find it necessary to utterly reform our tax system is the economy is to prosper.
In other words, before we can pursue a coherent policy which might actually lead to "victory" we must get our own house in order.
