Islam is a civilization, a total expression of life - religious, social, political, artistic, psychological, existential. The idea of conducting COIN Ops "around" the mosque instead of aiming center-of-mass at the three Ms - mullahs, mosques, madrassas - is a fool's errand, and in the final analysis gets people killed.

Westerners are interlopers - outsiders in an intense argument between Islamic believers of various degrees and distinctions. The only way to proceed with any expectation of lasting results is to back a faction and stay with them til the end. The idea of building neutral governance is impracticable. This is not the West. In fact, the idea of building neutral government in the West is a myth that is becoming more exposed each day as secular humanism continues to advance as a philosophy with religious tenets.

It is quite possible to have Islamic allies and partners. It is not possible to stand outside the polemics being vollied to and fro as a detached, impartial observer. This frustrates our allies and emboldens our enemies. The dirty little secret is that our defacto state religion - secular humanism - is our achilles heel over here (I am in Afghanistan). Secularism brings more ominous cultural baggae with it than anything a Christian civilization could bring. And for those fighting in this theater, it is instructive to recall that the USSR - an atheist empire - inflamed the zeal of the Mujahidin here and eventually succumbed to a defeat widely credited to jihadic forces and divine favor. Whether you believe in it or not is irrelevant. If the people are the center of gravity in a COIN fight, then what matters is what they believe.

Engaging the mosque is also no longer simply a problem of figuring out heroes and villians on the COIN battlefield. As the Europeans found out, when a society rejects its own religion for a secular ethic that results in rapidly declining birthrates, immigrants enter the vacuum. If we fail to understand mosque engagement in Kandahar and Najaf, we will not have the luxury of figuring out from a distance in Peoria or Poughkeepsie.