And Allah will know his own

Brad DeLong posted yesterday about a letter that Andrew "Lying Liar" Sullivan put on his own weblog. The letter purports to be from a US Marine serving in Iraq, and here's the main part of the text:

Things have been busy here. You know I can't say much about it. However, I do know two things. One, POTUS has given us the green light to do whatever we needed to do to win this thing so we have that going for us. Two, and my opinion only, this battle is going to have far reaching effects on not only the war here in Iraq but in the overall war on terrorism. We have to be very precise in our application of combat power. We cannot kill a lot of innocent folks (though they are few and far between in Fallujah). There will be no shock and awe. There will be plenty of bloodshed at the lowest levels. This battle is the Marine Corps' Belleau Wood for this war. 2/1 and 1/5 will be leading the way. We have to find a way to kill the bad guys only. The Fallujahans are fired up and ready for a fight (or so they think). A lot of terrorists and foreign fighters are holed up in Fallujah. It has been a sanctuary for them. If they have not left town they are going to die. I'm hoping they stay and fight.

This way we won't have to track them down one by one.

I read someone else's analysis last night which pointed out that as far as this front-line soldier thought, "innocent folks... are few and far between in Fallujah", but at the same time, the US is preventing all fighting-age men from leaving. So I guess it's just presumed that all fighting-age men who happened to be in Fallujah when the US encircled it are, by definition, not innocent; hence the title of this post.

Read on in Brad's post for a UK military view of the US military:

It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later. They are very concerned about taking casualties and have even trained their guns on British troops, which has led to some confrontations between soldiers. The British response in Iraq has been much softer. During and after the war the British set about trying to win the confidence of the local population. There have been problems, it hasn't been easy but on the whole it was succeeding.

I can't remember if I've posted this before, but the words of noted anti-war writer David Drake are haunting me: "When you start a war, you're letting eighteen-year-olds with guns set your foreign policy."