One of Ours

...My sense is that we're offering humanitarian aid to the civilians in Fallujah and safe passage for them in exchange for the handoff of the actual people responsible for last week's ambush and mutiliation of the contractors, and we probably also want some agreement to let Iraqi police/military units patrol Fallujah without being attacked. Prediction: the insurgents will tell us to go pound sand. In a week, they have inflicted significant losses on an elite American unit and held their ground, and their situational understanding probably tells them they are winning right now. At most, they will allow humanitarian convoys to enter the city, but they won't let Iraqi civilians leave en masse, because that would deprive them of a significant source of protection against American firepower...

...we must wait until things simmer down until we can restore peace and order in Iraq. Of course, we cannot (and should not) wait passively. American forces ought to hunt down and capture or kill as many insurgents as possible, because these people will come back to fight another day if we don't. But we should recognize the broad nature of this uprising and the extent to which disaffection and dissent permeate Iraqi society. And in the long term, we must figure out a way to allow this kind of dissent ..