No. I agree with the concept that "we're the good guys so its OK." This isn't a game. We are not going to "play" by the Marquess of Queensbury Rules. We could be letting the Shiite Badr Brigade have that wife and daughter. So holding them because they might be helping is no problem. We were a lot tougher with the Nazis in post-war Germany. Meanwhile, what is Saddam's wife going to do in Yemen? Help Al Qaida? Give me a break. We ought to have them in custody as well.

You're right; this isn't a game. We have to decide what we stand for. If what we stand for is the principle that might makes right and the ends justify the means, than please count me out.

I'd like to believe we are the good guys. But if we're going to resort to criminal actions, I see no way I can possibly call us good guys without completely perverting the meaning of the term.

What do we stand for, if taking hostages and threatening the lives of our enemies families is considered fair game? Maybe that's all America means to you, but I hold her to a far higher standard.

We're actually being quite restrained. The New York Times even agrees that we should redo the Phoenix Program...where not only were suspected Viet Cong murdered by paramilitaries, but anyone sleeping in their bed or in their house. It worked. South Vietnam was made VC free. We only "lost" that war because Congress later denied all military aid to Saigon when the Soviets were sending massive supplies in 1974.

Things aren't so bad now, so the restraint is justified. But Shiite paramilitaries or Sunni paramilitaries could easily start murdering the families of Saddam sympathisers if we were to "pull out of the Sunni Triangle" and temporarily opt for (or threaten to opt for) a three state solution.

One thing we do not want to do is be nice like the Israelis. The Israelis have earned only hatred for their acceptance of violence over a long period of time. By not responding in massive force with outrage, the Israelis have legitimized Palestinian violence against them.

The trick is to be outraged by every attack against our troops and hunt the perpetrators down like dogs. Sunnis have to understand that they will never be allowed to claim in a bar in Europe or the Middle East that they were once guerilla fighters in Iraq post May 1st, 2003. They have to understand that people will be calling the police if anyone dares to brag about having fought the Americans in the summer and fall of 2003.

I do understand that you are talking about our PR image. But a covert Phoenix Program, operated by Iraqis, would only hurt our image with the kind of lefties who already think the worst of us anyway. Its worse for our reputation in the long run if we legitimize the guerilla war by allowing it to continue...by laying down Geneva style rules as if it is a game. The Vietnam War was caused by Johnson's 1964 campaign promise NOT to use nukes on Hanoi if a war were to start. Goldwater was defeated by this promise. Its been documented that the commies decided that they were free to go to war with such generous rules laid down beforehand...thanks to a stupid American public that simply did not understand the implications of their laying down "civilized" ground rules and thus legitimizing the concept that people would dare to go to war against us.

There is a difference between being aggressive and being barbaric. We should be focusing our attention on killing those Iraqis and foreign nationals who are looking to disrupt our efforts in Iraq. We can beat the enemy without stooping to his level.

While I think our public image is of some importance, it's not what really matters. What you're proposing is that we simply abandon our principles and do whatever it takes to win, regardless of the consequences or what it may cost us to win. If you really think America would be better off as a country devoted to the principle that we can murder whoever we want, whenever we want, than we have nothing further to discuss. I believe America stands for something greater than that. We fall short quite often, but at least we're still trying to hold onto our principles. Your method would be to simply throw those principles away in favor of expedience. I cannot and will not support that.

Researching the occupation of Germany might be a good thing for all of us to do now.

The basic premise is that we cannot be more left wing and naive now than we were in Germany and Japan. If Al Douri's wife and daughter are friendly toward democracy in Iraq, then by all means be very nice to them...as long as they are perceived as being innocent and above the fray. But we cannot have a situation like in the West Bank where family and relatives are openly hostile to the good guys and they are treated like royalty by the terrorists...with leftie journalists hanging out (for instance at funeral parties) eating hors d'ouvres. Its all in the attitude. Nobody with a bad attitude should be allowed to thrive in the Sunni Triangle. There will be no funerals allowed where guys in masks are the pallbearers. The Israeli example is the worst possible example imaginable for dealing with an occupation. The worst.

If al Douri's wife and daughter are breaking the law, then by all means arrest them. But if we hope to install some sort of functional democracy in Iraq, then we're going to have to give them the opportunity to disagree with us. Freedom of speech is an important component of democracy. If we've got to repress people that thoroughly to succeed in Iraq, then it's not worth it.

Wrong. Nazis are simply not allowed in Germany. Well...Himmler's daughter is allowed to live quietly in the suburbs of Munich but watched very closely and with her mouth basically shut. There shall be no masked pallbearers at Iraqi funerals.

Yes, and we've seen how well that maneuver prevented any resurgence of anti-semitism or Nazism. You can ban symbols and costumes, but the only way to fight ideas is in the open. Banning them just pushes them underground and makes them that much more difficult to root out.

The bottom line is that I don't disagree with your basic concept...as long as you don't adhere to left wing ideas like "our enemies are legit". I sense leftism in what you write. Rumsfeld seems to be conducting this war like a gentleman on the outside, but remember that we have killed or captured more than 3000 enemies in the past month. I am not sure if we haven't been fairly brutal in doing this. In principle anti-Americanism must be allowed in Iraq, but in practice it will realistically cost key people their fortunes, their futures and (quietly) their lives. Meanwhile American companies will probably not hire and promote too many people in the future who were outspoken against this war.

We won the Revolutionary War partly because of an incident where a female American was scalped by an indian marching with the British. We played the "they are not gentlemen" card at the British expense and the entire Albany area turned from being British loyalists to being patriots. We will want to be sure in this war that we don't come across as ungentlemenly toward women. It is a delicate thing.

There is no serious Nazi problem in Germany today, and an even smaller anti-American Nazi problem. There are a bunch of racists in Plauen who love America and the cowboy culture (a harmless embarrassment to true Republican ideals). Its bizarre to suggest that we did the occupation of Germany wrong, unless to say that we allowed the society to go too far to the left, especially *after* the reunification. But then the reunification was more than 45 years into an old occupation that wasn't necessary anymore. The key elements of the occupation of Germany is that we let the left wing pro-Soviets flourish, but we kept the right wing close to our chests. The best way to win in Iraq is to get the leading Sunnis to be completely on our side so we can defend them against the Shiites. Meanwhile we will be best friends with the Shiites as well. You play them against each other in a good way. Nothing evil or wrong in that. Everybody would know what is going on.

When I say we kept the right wing Germans close to our chests during the 58 year occupation, I am implying that we murdered the anti-American kind of influential right wingers. Heidegger we left alone because he joined the left wing internationalists. This discussion gets complicated because the Nazis were socialists. So they were actually left wing as well. But the conservatives allied with them in the 30s because the whole world had gone leftie and at least the Nazis were not internationalists beholden to Moscow. For the Germans in 1933, it seemed like a choice between Stalin and Hitler and they chose Hitler. It was a terrible tragedy...like the tragedy of Saddam being allowed to survive for so long. Thank God Saddam has been removed from power by brave Republicans.

Personally, I don't give a damn what you sense in my writing. My philosophy is very simple: I believe we should fight this war very hard with an eye to rooting out our enemies, but that we should fight in accordance with our principles and the laws of war. Anything else is a betrayal of what we stand for as a country.

Which is why 90% of the war has been kept secret. :-)

Given that I have a number of friends over there, have spoken with quite a few people who've been there, and get regular reports from the field, you'll forgive me if I take that claim with a rather large grain of salt.

I once took a course at UC San Diego taught by Samuel Popkin who was a Rand researcher in Vietnam. We read a book called "The Village" by Bing West and Prof. Popkin also discussed the nature of pacification programs as being nitty gritty on the detail side of counter-insurgency. I think making these "arrests" is probably the wrong way about it.

1. watch the family instead
2. suggest they enter "protective custody"
3. suggest that they might inadvertantely be targeted 'by accident'...and suggest they urge their family member to surrender.
4. Once we have the new units set up from Iraqi militias, you can advise the family that they might be lucky to get a Sunni unit guarding them if they cooperate once in a while...otherwise it's Sadr City or Peshmerga.

Prof. Popkin also mentioned that when the USA first came in 'Nam, the Communists said we were coming to take the peasant's water buffalo...I guess that story back-fired once the peasants realized the Americans were so rich. I suggest the oil issue must be squeaky clean and clear to the people of Iraq. I would suggest an oil trust for each Iraqi as per Alaska.

This arresting (and apparent hostage-taking) of al-Douri's wife and daughter not only raises ethical hackles; it's also not a smart tactical move. This is why guerrilla wars are so difficult for an occupier to win, and why a weaker opponent so often prevails-- in a guerrilla war, such strong-arm and hardball tactics have a way of backfiring; this is a big reason that the USA was defeated in Vietnam. You can't win a guerrilla war by being stronger or tougher; you actually have to ingratiate yourself with the population to a substantial degree, and seizing family members as hostages is an almost surefire way to piss off the populace at large. The same goes for the raids and house-razings; they may temporarily buy some relief from the insurgency, but long-term they just create more guerrillas and make the resistance even more dangerous. AFAIK al-Douri's wife and daughter have not been charged as insurgents themselves, so this is blatant, coercive abduction of innocent family members.

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