The Americans who were murdered were, according to the wires, working for a security company, a North Carolina-based subcontractor hired by the U.S. government, among other things, to guard convoys.
The convoys carried food. They carried it to Fallujah.
It is not as if we lack the power. If the appropriate person gave such an order, the task would be complete within hours. A few planes would appear on the horizon and then the city would be gone. Our troops would never again be bothered by anything Fallujah had to offer...man, animal or the lice they once carried.
They, on the other hand, have little power. They can launch an occasional mortar at a hotel. Hide a bomb in the road. Burn a captured SUV. Kill the civilians within. Drag their bodies through the streets.
Some, even Americans, say that it is bad that we have power. That it is unfortunate that our enemies do not. The interesting thing about that position is that holding it changes nothing in the minds of our enemies. They still hate you. They would still kill you, if they could.
Some of the Iraqi people have been won over by our generosity. We liberated them from the tyranny of Saddam. We have rebuilt infrastructure. We have provided food and water.
It is not possible to win over the hearts of those who still hate us. Every act of kindness is rejected. Their view of us is concrete; permenant. We cannot quell their hate, so our only option is to remove their ability to act upon it. This recent act of terrorism in Fallujah must be countered.
The terrible pictures of the charred bodies on the bridge cannot be erased, and no one who saw them is going to forget them. But they can in time come to be accompanied by other pictures--of determined U.S. Marines, for instance, rounding up the men who massed on the bridge under the bodies, and brandished their weapons, and laughed.
