One of Ours

...this attack is designed to test American resolve. Insurgents and terrorists around the world have incorporated the lessons of Mogadishu into their doctrine. Indeed, they have an almost religious belief that they can win if they inflict grievous and gory casualties on American soldiers. Such a strategy is designed to undermine our national will; it assumes that we don't really have the stomach for this fight or its cost, and that we will pull out at the first sign of adversity. Unfortunately, the U.S. did that once. And like it or not, our enemies learned from Mogadishu that they could prevail using similar tactics in the future. But I don't think we will do it here. We have invested far too much in Iraq in terms of spirit, blood and treasure -- we will not cede victory to these bandits and reward them for their atrocities.

At the tactical level, this attack may have destroyed one American convoy. But news of this attack, and the Iraqi mob's behavior, has likely reached every American and coalition soldier now serving in Iraq. Just as the news of the Malmedy massacre during WWII enraged U.S. troops and gave them a reason to fight harder, so too will this event. I don't want to suggest for one minute that American troops will commit an atrocity to respond in kind. This isn't Vietnam, and our junior officers and NCOs are too professional to let that happen. But you can bet that every American fighting man and woman in Iraq feels the rage from this incident, and their leaders will now seek to focus and apply that rage constructively to dismantle and destroy every remaining part of the Iraqi insurgency. Payback will be swift, severe and certain.

The hardest part of any counter-insurgency operation, as Army LTC Gian Gentile and MAJ John Nagl have observed, is properly calibrating force to destroy the insurgency without losing the hearts and minds of the civilian population. The challenge for American commanders in Iraq will be to devise an appropriate response for this incident that effectively targets and kills the Iraqi insurgents without causing too much collateral damage. For what it's worth, there is enough anti-American sentiment in Fallujah that we don't have that much to lose there, and thus a heavy-handed approach will not risk much. However, I am confident that American planners are working on this problem right now.