It’s new lingo with new smiley faces on it, but it is not hugely different from what George W. Bush had been doing in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been largely about trying to create West-friendly coalitions in a mostly Islamic people so as to keep a lid on terrorism and violence. There might not be any “moderate Islam” but there are “moderate Muslims” (you can easily tell them because they complain bitterly when the Taliban takes over).
Lee Harris, The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the Enlightenment explains this suicidal folly quite clearly, well worth everyone's time to read it.
From Harris: "The West can only think of fanaticism as a social pathology, a failure to modernize, rather than as what it is: a variety of social order that is not only fully viable in the modern world but also willing to use weapons to which the West is uniquely vulnerable. A governing philosophy based on reason, tolerance, and consensus cannot defend itself against a strategy of ruthless violence without being radically transformed--or destroyed."