I think it's important to distinguish between mainstream Muslims and Islamists. The Islamists, whether violent or not, are a real problem because they want to make everything in society subservient to Islam. This is clearly at odds with the US constitution. On the other hand there are plenty of Muslims who are not Islamists. I think it should be possible to work with these people to some extent. The difficulty is that the Islamists seem to be getting more powerful and there seems to be more acceptance of this view within Islam.
The Islamists must be discredited and marginalized, and the violent ones defeated militarily, or we are in for a long bitter struggle. The mainstream Muslims need to fight in this battle but so far they don't seem to have much stomach for it, likely because they would face violent reprisals from the Islamists. There's no easy solution, but if we want to defeat the Islamists we will need help from the mainstream Muslims. Otherwise you are talking about a battle with 1.6 billion people.
I used to believe that about there being a difference between the two but it ain't so. A "main stream muslim" is just a left handed islamist. He will support an islamist in a heart beat for no other reason than the islamist will kill him if he doesn't. Bottom line is they read from the same rule book...
Good luck fighting 1.6 billion people. If we can't get some help from the more moderate elements, who are also threatened by the radicals, then it's going to be a tough row to hoe.
