It's time for a crackdown in Fallujah

Stop playing around with these guys. There have to be consequences for this: Four US contractors killed in Fallujah.

I suppose John Kerry will want to run away, or try to hand things off to the corrupt and thoroughly incompetent United Nations, just like Al Qaeda would want.

It is useful to remember Winston Churchill, speaking in 1934:

"Many people think that the best way to escape war is to dwell upon its horror. They flaunt the grisly photographs before their eyes. They fill their ears with tales of carnage. They dilate upon the ineptitude of generals and admirals."

But dictators always find a reason to make trouble, Churchill said:

"They will say: you are rich; we are poor. You seem well-fed; we are hungry. You have the past; let us have the future." And soon the day comes when they say: "You are weak; we are strong."

Like Churchill, we are at the beginning of a long and costly global war.

His war was against Hitler, and ours is against Arab tryanny.

Ours - which may soon involve nuclear weapons - is - in some ways - more frightening.

But it's also important to remember that we are winning:
Survey finds hope in occupied Iraq

An opinion poll suggests most Iraqis feel their lives have improved since the war in Iraq began about a year ago.

Steven Den Beste:

We have to respond, and we have to respond massively. But that response must be targeted only at those truly involved in this attack. Sunnis collectively must not feel themselves victimized by it. And that's why this is exactly the right response:

U.S. troops on Thursday vowed to use overwhelming force to enter the volatile Iraqi town of Falluja and hunt down those who killed and mutilated four American contractors.

Marines took up positions on the outskirts of the restive town west of Baghdad where insurgents ambushed the contractors on Wednesday, but the U.S. army's deputy director of operations Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said they would return.

"Coalition forces will respond," Kimmitt told a news conference. "They are coming back and they are going to hunt down the people responsible for this bestial act.

"It will be at a time and a place of our choosing. It will be methodical, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming."

What is needed is a response which simultaneously punishes al Qaeda and reassures the Sunnis. But to do that, there has to be preparation. Our intelligence people now are busting their butts trying to learn everything they can about this attack and those responsible for it. Until they begin to make headway in that process, we must wait...

...And if we succeed (in democratizing Iraq), and if it actually does inspire liberalization elsewhere, it will be a catastrophe for the Islamists, and they know it. The insurgency in Iraq now is attempting to make that fail, by trying to prevent any reconciliation with the Sunnis.

I agree.



- posted by total @ 3/31/2004 07:25:00 AM .