You Can Have Asphault Parking Lots -- Or Glass Ones ... Most Likely Some Of Them With U.S. Zip Codes

"To put this plainly: the “strategy” in Fallujah should have been to make it into a parking lot, and build a Wal-Mart at one end. There would have been great loss of life, but the message to our enemies and their supporters everywhere would have been, “We will not be toyed with.” Civilians whose sympathies are with the enemy cannot be won over, and have not been, by the “candy to children” approach. They must be taught that sheltering the enemy -- even involuntarily -- means sharing the enemy’s fate. (The distinction between what is voluntary and involuntary soon changes under those conditions.) And this, in the longer run, is what saves millions of lives.

The strategy against the insinuation of foreign jihadis and supplies, into Iraq across international frontiers, should have been -- should now be -- extremely hot pursuit. And the chief reason to build the allied force structure in the region is to prepare, and be seen to be preparing, for a much wider conflict. For the war in Iraq cannot be isolated.

As important as military might, is the consensus behind its use. What can I say?

That this is why wars must be fought quickly. We could never afford to have Iraq drawn out for longer than the U.S. stayed in WWII. Nor did we defeat Nazi Germany by “winning their hearts and minds”. It was done by insuperable violence and intimidation: the way wars have invariably been won in the modern world. And “bombing Dresden” was (for more reasons than I have space to expound) a necessary part of that mix.

What worked on the Nazis, would be not less but more immediately effective on an enemy conditioned to methods of war in which he feeds exclusively on weakness of will, exploitating our fear, hesitation, and cowardice; who reads every pulled punch not as decency but as a confession of allied weakness." [ Glass parking lots ho! says Mr. Ahmedinejad... Your counterarguments are that he is really just a bluffer or too incompetent to build a nuke or both. And like Chamberlain, you're willing to bet my children's lives on it... -ed. ]