Good question and shame on anyone trying to delete it! However, you dwell on the current American involvement and your own concern at how many Americans are religious. That is too narrow a focus because the current war is but the latest installment of decades of fighting in that part of the world and we can learn a lot from previous unsuccessful attempts there. Indeed, the reason why America is failing now is because they have not learned the lessons from the failure of others!
Go back to May 1919 when fighting broke out between Britain and Afghanistan. Bet you'd never heard of that. In April 1978 Government leaders in Afghanistan were killed in a bloody coup. The insurgents took power as the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council and the new pro-Communist regime was recognised by the Soviet Union and by Britain. Meanwhile, Ayatollah Khomeini, in exile in Paris, was planning to return to Iran as the exit of the Shah of Persia was about to happen (in January 1979).
In 1979 Muslim guerrilla rebels caused havoc in Afghanistan. Half the population were living in areas under rebel control or in disputed regions, ruled by the Army during the day and by the insurgents at night. Many Muslim groups based in Pakistan mounted attacks on Soviet citizens, and the government increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for military equipment and supplies. In December a new Soviet-backed government was installed in Kabul and some 5,000 Soviet combat troops entered the country. And revolutionary Islamic government in Iran began. The American Embassy in Tehran was occupied, staff being taken hostage and threats of killing them unless the Shah was extradited (from a New York hospital).
The 1980s saw Soviet and Afghan troops trying to consolidate their power over the country beyond Kabul. It was the beginning of a long, bitter war against the Moslem mujahedin guerrilla rebels. In 1988 Gorbachev signed a Geneva peace accord on Afghanistan but in July a US warship shot down an Iranian airliner. The USSR offered $600 million reparations to Afghanistan (in October) and the last Soviet troops left in 1989 (greatly reducing East-West tensions). In August 1988 Iran and Iraq agreed a ceasefire, ending their hostilities against each other!
Alas for Afghanistan, in the wake of the Soviet departure, tens of thousands of Afghan rebels amassed outside Kabul and Jalalabad. Virtual martial law was imposed in the capital as the first mujahadin rockets fell on the city. Back to Iran - relations with Britain plummeted after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death threat against British novelist Salman Rushdie, urging all Moslems to kill him and his publishers, Viking Penguin.
Now, that is a brief summary of conflict on 'the war on terror' in the Middle East during the last century. Only against that background - that history - can the present situation be evaluated. None of the fighting with Britain and the Soviet Union was religiously motivated by them. The only religious motivation came from the Moslems, who cannot separate politics from their religion! Britain can, and the Soviets have NO religion in the first place (with politics), so you must see that it wasn't a religious conflict in the 20th century. But the Moslems have always been motivated religiously in their political conflicts. They will even kill fellow Moslems who are of a different group (Shias and Sunnis are constantly at each others' throats - Iran and Iraq hate each other!)
It was never "Jesus versus Muhammed" during the wars on terror in the 20th century. You might get fanatical Moslems claiming that, of course, but they only speak for themselves. They are the ones who get fired up religiously and who think they are fighting for their religion. But that is not the case with Britain and Russia. If you think America is very different and that most American soldiers are out there to "fight for Jesus", I suggest you are taking a short-sighted and blinkered view that does not incorporate a whole century of conflict of which the fighting in the 2000s is but a mere continuation.
Yes, it is very important to have a conversation about it, just make sure it includes last century! And I provide links below for an excellent American contribution to this conversation. AiH