I enjoyed reading you post. I believe this should have been done long ago, it would have saved countless lives on both sides. As for the current operation, I would have named it "Operation Flatlujah".

I, too, agree with you 100%. Enough kid gloves, let's get the bastards wherever they are.

Don't apologize. You are right.

Corky Boyd
Sanibel FL

If I'm willing to sacrifice my son, the Marine, for the War on Terror, I'm certainly willing to sacrifice a few of theirs, too.

(To make sure no one misunderstands the above statement, my son won't deploy to Iraq until next year. He's not in Fallujah — yet.)

Reports say that over 100,000 people have left Falluja already. It's not like they didn't know what was coming.

I would suspect that most of the civilians left behind were physically forced to stay; or they were families of the combatants, mandated to stay by the head of the family.

If the combatants were even a smidge decent, they would have sent their families on to another town.

I don't want any innocent person killed either. There was a way for the townsfolk to avoid it.

Boyd,

While I understand your sentiment, your son's life is not your's to sacrifice. It is his. He is an adult and can and has made his decision.

Semper Fidelis

Let's not forget that the Iraqi soldiers are fighting side by side or probably in front of (at least who we send into buildings and tunnels first) the US forces (and coalition forces if they are part of this operation). So it wouldn't surprise me if they are the ones shooting the terrorists and those that protect the terrorists.

And let's not forget babykiller Kerry, and other soldiers that are faced with terrorists that aren't adults, and those that defend and protect terrorists who aren't adults need to be dealt with. Including those who carry or resupply arms and ammo.

It was Danny Boy & the Canadian who reported and showed pictures night after night, of the highway of death, and the reporters hammering away at the press conferences that forced the hand of Bush Sr. who told Schwartzkopf (whatever) to sign the peace agreement (who screwed it up by giving Saddam air control for "civil control" which cost the kurds many lives). Danny Boy, the Canadian, AP, Reuters, UPI, BrokenBrain, and others kept hammering away about the highway of death, how it was shooting fish in a barrel, the international outrage, and all the other rather (oops, I meant blather).

Bring back carpet bombing. Start at all sides and work your way to the middle.

Le tht bulldozers clean up the mess.

Your comments are soooo true - war is hell but if you dont want to win done get into this conflict.

Semper Fi

We gave the people of Fallujah plenty of notice that we were coming. The Iraqi government has said that if you are male and old enough to carry a gun, you better not show your face in public.

I think you are absolutely right, Jay. We should give no greater level of deference to civilians, hospitals and mosques than the enemy.

Don't apologize for your thoughts....you've nailed it here, and it's about damn time someone did. War is war, and people die....the sooner we understand the truth of kill or be killed, the sooner our boys can be successful with less casualties. We should let them turn Fallujah into a parking lot and kill all the cockroaches.

War is hell. We're all sorry for the innocent people that get killed during wars. But I am more sorry for the 3,000 who died on 9/11 than for any Iraqi child. We did not start this war; but we've got to finish it.

JT:

You can bet some moonbat is going to get a hold of this post and offer it is "proof" of the right's bloodlust.

While I agree with the thrust of your post, I'm afraid we're being a little shortsighted. The point is that the terrorists DON'T CARE what any of us think...they're playing to a broader audience through al Jazeera and the rest of the arab media and trying to reach Abdul in the street. The arab media will dutifully carry out the terrorists wishes and we'll be stuck looking like blood-crazed crusaders, blowing up arab children to satisfy our need to kill arabs.

I honestly don't know whether you are right or wrong in positing this..I do know it took some courage. For that, you have my thanks.

Bonnie, your comment will be jumped on by somebody, I'm sure. "We did not start this war..." You are right, and when the comments come in making the point that the USA invaded Iraq, you won't need to apologize to anybody. The failure to grasp the full ethical and geopolitical implications of the current conflict in Fallujah is a prime indicator of the of the malice of the West-hating "progressives." Even Kerry, the most liberal Senator, did not go as far as accusing the USA of being the aggressor in Iraq. It's the nutcases who spout the "imperialist neo-colonialist unilateralist hegemony" rubbish.

As for civilian casualties. others have already said it here. I hope for a decisive and quick conclusion with a stunningly low casualty rate....for our warriors. I'm so proud of them I could burst....

Amen!

You are either for terrorism or against it. The "civilians' of Fallujah who tolerate terrorists in their midst certainly are not showing that they are against terrorism--therefore, they must be for it--and are not innocent "civilians."

J, what can I say, other than that you haven't got a fucking clue about this war. I don't know what small one horse town that you come from, but if it's filled with non personalities such as yourself then I hope to never set foot in it. I am not a bleeding heart liberal, or leftie, terms bandied about on this blog like new catch phrases. Your views are those of an ignorant NAZI pig. Get a paasport, see the world and you will realise that there is more to this world than planet America. What, too scared to venture further than Mexico?. Scared of the reception you might receive in Europe, Australia. With views espoused such as yours, no wonder the American people are the subject of ridicule. You are a sad inadequate little man who adds only fuel to the fires of hatred.

"If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting."
Gen. Curtis LeMay

The death of anyone not directly involved in the battle is a tragic consequence of the enemy's decision to engage. All the sob's have to do is surrender and no one gets hurt. It is a fact that the most humane choice, once a battle has begun, is to end it as quickly as possible. End it with a decisive destruction of the enemy.

Dan Patterson
Winston-Salem, NC

Your views are those of an ignorant NAZI pig.

Feel the love.

In the end, we're going to cut bait with the Sunnis and Shiites and instead focus on a stable Kurdistan.

The Syrians and Iranians will seethe, and we'll see how weak an ally the Turks really were.

You are a sad inadequate little man who adds only fuel to the fires of hatred.

Talking to yourself is one of the signs of insanity, James.

Every criminal, nutjob, crackpot, and will-eyed terrorist flocked to Fallujah since April. Those are the baddest of all the Bad Guys filtered from the rest of Iraq. Plus the city has been a magnet to Al Qaida types from Syria and Iran.

They have raped and pillaged the city. They have executed thousands since April. As a consequence, the citizens fed our troops a constant flow of intelligence. This intelligence was entered our computers and now is a great help to us in taking the city.

Our liberation of Fallujah will save ten's of thousands of innocent lives. The faster we get it done, the more lives we will save.

I posted about this late last night. Go to Michael Moore's site for some disgusting lopsidedness.
Scott

Another thought...

Perhaps your post should have been entitled "In Defense of Civilian Casualties." Less inflammatory and more to the point, I think.

Mcgehee......I'm sure you would know all about insanity. Clearly you have access to the internet, I just wonder if the doctors in your institution are aware this fact. Now run along and take your medication like a good little patient.

The only thing they fear is fear. Any signs of weakness they grasp onto and use to their advantage. We fire bombed and nuked civilian centers in Japan, mainly to destroy moral. The Brits Carpet bombed Dresden to destroy the enemys will to fight. Anyone who cries about civilian losses in this war should never again bitch about the 1,100 dead Americans. If we treated this like a war and not some PC police action, we would save alot of American lives and in the long run, Iraqi lives. We could not have won WWll if we had the MSM we have now.

War is grim. There's a certain calculation that has to be done, and it sucks, but it's necessary. The fire bombing of Dresden, for instance- lots of moral ambiguity, yet we were determined to destroy the enemies' will to fight. By the time the shooting starts, normal, humane, civilized means of conflict resolution have failed. Having regrets about the human toll is not the same as deciding that the goal should not be met.

What irony, that the left, the side that chants "By any means neccessary", generator of Stalinist purges and Cambodian killing fields, presumes to lecture anyone about hate.

As others (not in this thread) have commented, we are on a crusade right now, one to save the Arab world. We are smacking down Fallujah right now so that we don't have to carpet bomb the place later. And we are putting our soldiers' and Marine's lives at great risk so that we don't have to turn the Middle East into a glass parking lot.

If the terrorists get a nuke or chem/bio of sufficient proportions through to one of our cities, there will be little choice but to retaliate with overwhelming force. I suspect that the American people would care even less about civilian casualties after 3 million death toll here then they are now. In fact, I think we would be screaming "Nuke Them All!" and our government would not have much of a choice.

So if certain people don't like it, it's because they aren't fully aware of the actual alternative.

Also, James says that J should get a passport. Maybe James should get a history book.

A character in a book I once read said: "It's better to do something small and violent right away then to have to do something evel!î’re violent later." Good advice when you are at war.

I fought in a war that we were not allowed to prosecute (VietNam). I have always said if you have to go to war, then you must fight to win. There is no second place in armed conflict-there is no "consolation" prize. When we bombed Germany in WWII and leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki we killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Today our technology allows us to "pinpoint" armaments to a specific destination. Collateral damage will be minimized due to this technology. Those civilians who are remaining not only do so at their peril, they share some culpability for the entrenched terrorists. The have had an opportunity to deliver "real time" intelligence to the Coalition and have not done so. If they were so concerned about their own safety, they would have cooperated to rermove the threat.

Our boys and the brave Iraqi soldiers MUST stop at nothing short of total victory-second place is six feet under.

You are correct. Don't apologize...It needs to be done.

Your sentiment is correct; it's absolutely essential to clean out that rat's nest, and there will unavoidably be civilian casualties. The latter is a horrible, but necessary, cost of the former.

You say two contrary things in this post, though, and it looks to me like you're setting yourself up.

You DO give a damn how many civilian casualties there are, but you open the piece by saying exactly the opposite. If I read far enough down, you say you'd prefer there to be NO civilian casualties if the goal of killing the bad guys could be achieved without it.

That sentiment is a long way away from your "I don't give a damn" statement. If I'm a leftie, I'd stop reading after, "I don't give a damn how many civilians get killed in Fallujah, as long as we get the bastards." You come off looking like Screw'em Kos.

And if I'm MSM, the only part I'll quote is, "I don't give a damn how many civilians get killed in Fallujah."
They will certainly leave off "I don't want there to be a single innocent death" from five paragraphs down. Hell, they can make this post look like Kos-type hate on steroids.

Bottom line: I agree with what you're saying here: civilian deaths are an unavoidable cost because of how the terrorists have conducted themselves, using civilians as shields. I think the way you've said it here is unnecessarily provocative, though.

JT-

You're right on track; no need to apologize.

America's enemies learned a valuable lesson in Viet Nam; kill enough Americans while keeping tangible objectives just out of their grasp, and we will give up and quit fighting. And if you want the Americans to quit even sooner, ensure that plenty of civilians are killed as well.

The central theme of Osama Bin Laden's messages of encouragement to his Al Qaeda and Taliban allies was that the American soldier is a paper tiger who runs away at the sight of casualties.

(Though his latest message made no mention of the cowardice of Americans ... could it be that wiping out terrorists in Iraq with a 100:1 kill ratio is having a negative effect on terrorist morale?)

Whenever we hesitate on the battlefield, we give our enemies yet another tool to use as they try to defeat us.

Though it does not give us the rigtht to do likewise, we should remember that the terrorists we are fighting in Fallujah have no concept of human rights and do not give any value to the lives of civilians. After the smoke and dust clears, it will be the terrorists who have caused the vast majority of civilian deaths.

misterhung:

Methinks you're splitting hairs there. Of course it's my son's choice to serve in the Marines and risk his life for his country. I'm just saying that I support him in his position. He and I both believe that there are things that are bigger than ourselves, worth fighting and dying for.

Of course, I'm also a firm believer in the words of General George S. Patton, Jr. (as channeled by George C. Scott): "I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

I'm a liberal, but I'd be willing to give up my First Amendment rights if it meant that people like you would not be allowed to speak.

One word: Moron.

Keep up the hatred - hopefully it will get you killed someday.

Sorry guys, but I think your government has grossly overplayed the war on terrorism. They have made a great number of otherwise good people paranoid. 9/11 was a shocking event but it did not give Bush carte blanche to start a war in Iraq. Going after Bin Laden was perfectly legitimate, but little has been said about the effort involved in his eventual capture or death since the build up to the war in Iraq.

Do you honestly feel safer now Saddam has been deposed? Sure you can install a puppet for several months, years perhaps. But in case you are not aware even moderate Muslim opinion is hardening to America's stance. The coalition is but a joke. it is comprised of countries which to be honest, most Americans have never even heard of, never mind point out on a map. Even the UK's contribution is token compared to the size of the total operation.

Wake up guys, you have been duped into this war. You are so gullible that if Bush told you shit was custard, the queues would be 100 miles long with people with their begging bowls. As they say "Only in America".

Keep up the hatred - hopefully it will get you killed someday.

Ooooh, yeah. Feel the love from the peace-lovin' left!