Probably. The sad thing is that in order to render Moslems harmless we must "corrupt" them with Yankee materialism.
I have rather limited knowledge of the region, but it seems to me that the model to consult for this might by Kemal Attaturk, who succeeded in modernising (and SECULARISING) Turkey.
One way or the other (as I have suggested on other threads), the real enemy in all of this is Sharia -- the strict collaboration of Koran ethics with the power of state enforcement. It is theocracy in a very literal sense, and it creates the atmosphere in which people like Osama and his followers were indoctrinated. Regardless of whether the Saudis are our "friends", this system must GO, the same way Japanese Emperor-worship, German National Socialism, and Russian Communism had to go. The human community cannot afford to tolerate any more incubators of terrorism. Islamic radicalism must be stamped out just as the Thuggee cult was eradicated in India. And its clerics must be branded as international war criminals and denied aid and asylum throughout the world.
So the first step is to eliminate the radical clergy. The second step is to introduce the Madison Avenue marketing experts, and inundate local society with pervasive exposure to the American idea of the good life. Subvert the strict interpretations of the Koran by a steady dosage of "higher criticism" in the colleges, so that the seminaries will produce lax, latitudinarian clerics. Expose the children to the temptations of moral laxity through incessant MTV. Tempt them to prefer comfort and gratification to discipline and virtue. In other words, turn them into the worst sort of Americans.
Perhaps it would be more merciful, after all, if we just nuked them.
I tend to agree, but then again it isn't really about mercy, is it? It's about conquest--in this case conquest of the spirit.
There are other weapons in our arsenal besides Western materialism. Sufism, for one. It's the antinomian mode in Islamic society, and it exists (however tenuously) outside of Sharia.
Then there is the greatest weapon of all: the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Evangelical Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world today, and it is taking the majority of its growth in Africa and in the Catholic heartland of Latin America. Perhaps they can turn their attentions to the more fertile and less damaging (to the West) ground of the Islamic Middle East.