Some thoughts on the insurgency

I received a CNN Alert yesterday about car bombing in Iraq and a thought occurred to me.

Think of the current insurgency in Iraq as an argument. One side would like to see some sort of federalist, republican government, while the other would like to see Islam and sharia as the basis for organizing and governing society.

One side is organizing into political parties so that they can persuade the rest of their countrymen to govern Iraq and spend Iraq's limited resources (remember your basic civics - every country has limited resources and politics is the non-violent method by which people decide to allocate those resources) the way their party would like. This is representative government.

The other side is sneaking about, planting bombs on roads and in public places and blowing up their countrymen so that they will be cowed into accepting Islam and sharia as the basis for organizing society.

Hasn't one side implicitly given up on persuasion and resorted to coercion? In other words, haven't the insurgents already lost this argument?