How to Handle a Barbaric Religion/Political Entity

I'm reading Evidence Not Seen: A Woman's Miraculous Faith..., which was recommended to me by Z at Geezblog.

This book is the autobiography of a Christian missionary.
In it she relates about being surrounded by a people that worshipped a false god.
That cruelly executed Christians and westerners by the sword.
That raped, tortured and enslaved westerners.
That took explosive laden vehicles and blew themselves up to destroy westerners.

Sound familiar?

And the thing that stopped these people was the dropping of nuclear weapons on them, including "innocent" civilians.

The shock visited upon these people caused them to totally rethink their position, and today, they are allies of the United States and defenders of democracy in their part of the world.
And they gave up their belief in that false god, the emperor.

Granted, we had to nation build for a while.
But the nation we rebuilt was from scratch, not a patch job.

I once attended a seminar in a plant I worked at, and it was to motivate he union employees to reconsider their attitudes towards the workplace.
A major theme was that change often only comes with great trauma.
Illness, loss of income, loss of a loved one, loss of employment.

I think some of the Arab World deserves a little trauma about now.