You mention yourself that reform movements can be started by outside criticism.

I would suggest that the greater attention drawn to social injustice, the more it is put under the microscope, the sooner reforms in those societies will take place. To ignore them only protects the status quo. There is evidence of this already as many muslims societies have moved to ban child marriages. Mohammad had his child bride and thus this sick cultural practice was acceptable for centuries. The scorn of the outside world is what has caused the internal muslim debate on this. The same can be said for FGM. And the same can be said about women’s rights in general. Saudi is feeling the outside pressure about how their society treats women.

But this is not what's going to happen if we just say "those people are barbarians and they must be exterminated". Nothing is more likely to make them circle up the wagons and resist us, even violently. One silly American teen comedy film about suburban life or some hip-hop boy band video can do more to proselytize our culture than a thousand lectures, stern warnings and tough talk from us.

That's why the Wahabis and ISIS try to keep out our culture, our movies, music and TV. They know nothing more effective exists to point out the contradictions in their own culture than to just let them see ours. That's why their people are all trying to come HERE. They, the average middle class educated Muslims, know for a fact that with all our faults, we are better; that their system has been hijacked by fanatics. And BTW, FGM isn't a Muslim practice. A few Muslim tribal ethnic groups practice it, and probably have even since long before Mohammed's time. It was widely abhorred in the Muslim world long before we even heard about it.

You don't have to make a choice between "nuking them till they glow" and rolling over and let them fly airliners into our office buildings while we making sniveling excuses for them. There is a middle way. And if you look carefully, that is exactly what we're doing.

But for those whose own agenda is furthered by conflict, on both sides, this is not a popular message. It sounds too much like surrender and capitulation, and betraying one's religion. Nobody wants to be called a coward, or a weakling. Its easy to get people angry by bringing it up, and you can count on demagogues doing it to further their own agenda.

The West is a loosely allied coalition of separate governments (and corporations) with different agendas and levels of commitment. We are slow, and we make mistakes, but regardless of what the GOP says, we are winning the war against ISIS.

We are already at war with radical Islam. We are routinely taking out their leadership, crippling their finances, cutting their supply and communications lines, forming alliances against them, enlisting and supporting moderate Muslim allies and bombing and droning the crap out of them day and night. And we get better at it every day. Its not like we're cowards and weaklings. Its not like we're ignoring them. And now the EU is finally wising up that this is their fight, too. Sure, we could invade the middle east and crush our enemies, taking out thousands or even millions of non-combatants with us, but that doesn't work. We already tried it in Iraq, remember? It just made things worse.

So don't let a few hand-wringing liberals get you down, and resist the temptation to blindly follow the Monday Morning quarterbacks and Neocon doom and gloom cowboys on the Right. Believe it or not, Obama knows what he's doing, and things will work out for the best for everyone concerned.