It works short term. Being the ruthless bastard will secure you obedience for awhile until someone leads a revolution against you anyway. Heck Stalin killed millions of disobedient folks, and held power via fear but how long did the empie last? Less than 80 years.
The Roman empire he cites is no longer with us and the language spoken by it has been banished from all places on Earth except the courtroom.
Holding power short term is easy. Holding land is even easier if one is willing to wipe out local resistance. We have the technology to wipe out human habitation from all the troublespots on Earth that resist freedom and practice tyranny. But who is then the worse tyrant?
Might has never made right, it merely buys you some time. Where is Saddam now? Brutal beginnings lead to brutal ends. Where is Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire which spanned a third of the world? Such tactics ensure eventually your nation and government will vanish someday with hardly a trace left that it was ever there.
A ruthless US will lead to the demise of the US in an equally ruthless way. Maybe not next year or in the next twenty years, but perhaps a century later when nuclear proliferation is nearly universal.
Rome, the longest lasting empire that used force, was destroyed not in the field of battle, but rather by internal decay and corruption. They no longer believed in the ideals that Rome had been built upon. If the founding fathers were asked, what do you think their answers would be?
Thomas Jefferson: "Kill 100 civilians every hour until resistance ceases!"
George Washington: "Get them to reveal the terrorists by mass executions in the region you suspect the terrorist cell is hiding. Women and children first."
Benjamin Franklin: "Use the neutron bomb and move troops in after it is safe to claim the land."
When we become the butchers to scare compliance into existence we cease to be Americans and become the folks our forefathers detested. We then become like the latter-day Romans who are only despised, not admired and our culture is systematically dismantled.
The reason democracy has not yet taken root in these regions and tyrants rise to power is obvious. Islam, as it currently exists, is fundamentally opposed to a democratic existence.
The BEST, LONGTERM solution for the entire middle east is to reform Islam, by embracing it and embracing Muslims, changing Islam from within to become more compatible with the ideals of western democracy - from capitalism to universal suffrage.
That's the way the Mongols were conquered by Yeliu Chutsai and the way we are slowly defeating the Chinese communists by turning them into prosperous 'happy meal' toymakers who are realizing capitalism isn't a bad deal and who wish to live with both the internet and McDonalds. In another fifty years Mao's reforms will be banished.
Israel is in the same boat, the most successful 'Israelites' are not in Israel, but have assimilated into their adopted lands all over the world and helped to shape the lands they adopted by integration. Where land was cleared for them by decree, they must constantly fight to hold onto it and constantly risk losing what they believe in to hold onto it.
America, the ideal, does much the same thing. Our ideology is a de facto colonizer of evolving lands. If we corrupt our ideology we lose that edge - and justifiably so.
So shout Allah Ackbar loudly. And remind all good Muslims that Allah wants you to vote, compete and live in peaceful harmony.
;-)