Good stuff from Robert Tracinski in TIA Daily on dealing with Fallujah:
In the second century BC, the Roman Senator Cato championed a simple policy toward Rome’s regional rival, Carthage: “delenda est Carthago”–“Carthage must be destroyed.” Those were brutal times, and overpowering a rival city, back then, meant razing it to the ground, sowing the soil with salt, killing all of the men, and selling all of the women and children into slavery. I am not recommending that as contemporary military policy. But something like the absolutism of the ancient outlook is what is needed as an antidote to the dithering modern pragmatism that is undermining the war in Iraq. It is becoming clear that if the US is to achieve victory in Iraq, it must crush the current insurgency–and if it is to crush the insurgency, it must ruthlessly subdue the city of Fallujah.
He then goes on to explain how contradictory goals by America’s politicians stifles America’s miltary in Iraq.