The notion that America is a secular nation is widely promoted, with gravitas nods to the Ancients and the Enlightlenment.
This is a falsehood.
America is a protestant nation, and the American separation of church and state owes more to Martin Luther than to Plato or Aristotle.
America is the first great experiment in Protestant social formation. Protestantism in Europe always assumed and depended on the cultural habits that had been created by Catholic Christianity. America is the first place Protestantism did not have to define itself over against a previous Catholic culture. So America is the exemplification of constructive Protestant social thought.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer thus got it right when he characterized American Protestantism as "Protestantism without Reformation."
That is why it has been possible for Americans to synthesize three seemingly antithetical traditions: evangelical Protestantism, republican political ideology and commonsense moral reasoning. For Americans, faith in God is indistinguishable from loyalty to their country.
The Tea Parties are not a secular phenomenom-- if anything their demographic is MORE intensely christian than generic republicans. They largely selfdefine as a codeword for modern American protestantism-- judeochristianity. This avocation is claimed by Sarah Palin, Andrew Brietbart and Eric Cantor, to name a few notables.
The secular judiciary in America is the thin shield that protects citizens from the tyranny of the christian mob.
And this convolution of religion and state is what has caused the failure of American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Both the Bush Doctrine and COIN attempt to "stand-up" western-style democracy-- the BD on a nation-state scale, and COIN on a local, village scale. But since America is actually a protestant nation, the BD and COIN represent attempts to proselytize judeochristian democracy, which is the only kind we have.
Now we arrive at the unmoveable object....Islam is EGT (evolutionary theory of games) immune to proselytization in situ.
In Evolution and the Theory of Games John Maynard-Smith defines an ESS (evolutionarily stable strategy) as follows--
An ESS is a strategy such that, if all the members of a population adopt it, no mutant strategy can invade.
Sir Richard Dawkins refined the concept to a CSS, a culturally stable strategy.
The idea behind a CSS is simply that the connect between generations may be cultural rather than genetic: children learn what to do from their parents, or other members of a previous generation, instead of inheriting genes that determine their behavior.
Now a little history.
In the Tigris-Euphrates river valley, first there were the Jews. The CSS of judaism had membership built on birthright and bridecapture. Then came christianity, which relaxed CSS membership requirement to be 'accepting the christ'. In order to counter jewish birthright membership, christians evolved proselytizing and preaching as strategies which increased reps. Then the CSS of Islam evolved from both Judaism and Christianity. Islam absorbed the congregants of the older religions with the Doctrine of the People of the Book, incorporated the sacred texts (Bible and Torah) and all the prophets of the older religions, Adam to Issa. Islam also evolved specific defenses against christian proselytization....like parts of shariah law. Radical punishment for apostasy, outlawing out-marriage for muslimahs, and forbidding proselytization. The Caliphate had freedom of religion-- just not freedom of speech. Jews and Christians could be citizens-- but they could not proselytize or preach.
So this is why the Bush Doctrine and COIN failed badly in muslim populated areas (Iraq is 99% muslim, Afghanistan is 99.7% muslims)-- muslims are EGT immune to proselytization.
American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq are not armed social workers-- they are missionaries with guns in nations immune to proselytization.
As George Bush discovered in Iraq, when muslims are democratically empowered to vote-- they vote for Islam.