[NJ_gent]

"I must admit that I sometimes feel like the coalition should take a page out of the Thai playbook and clean up the mess once and for all. Make a parking lot out of the "holy" shrines in Najaf. Drop a MOAB on top of the bastards in Fallujah. But, then again how well has similar strategies worked for the Russians so far?

What do you think?"

I think the Russians carpet-bombed town after town, city after city in Afghanistan, and still were driven from that country. I think they shelled and bombed the hell out of Grozny in ~'95 and again in '99, but were driven out in '96 and may yet be driven out again. I don't think you win these sorts of battles without men on the ground systematically eliminating weapons supplies and hostiles. The military is a broadsword, not a sledgehammer and not a scalpel - the more we try to use it like something it's not, the more we taste what the Russians have been feasting on in about half a dozen countries for the past 50 years.

[Eurotwit]

I agree with you that a leveling the town or anything of that nature is not conducive to achieving the overall objective.

My uneducated (and uninformed) opinion is that the Iraqifization track is the right one to pursue.