[rmmcdaniell]

I'm only going to tell you what I hear from my Lt. Col. MARINE cousin, whose son is in Iraq: the Marines learned from the model of the Russians in Grozny how NOT to defeat the enemy in an entrenched place like this. Utterly destroying the city would have created an entire city's worth of "martyrs," and the Marines had no intention of doing that.

Its strange that nobody worried about creating Nazi martyrs in WWII. The only time you have to worry about creating martyrs is when you know that your enemy has more willpower to see the war to its end.

[LS]

Well, there is a reason no one worried about creating Nazi martyrs: we were not in Germany to liberate it from Hitler---whom most of the Germans liked and supported, unlike Saddam. We were there to destroy Germany (unlike Iraq) and had already killed all the would-be martyrs. BUT . . .

a much better example would have been needless or unnecessary destruction of, say, NORWAY or BELGIUM on the grounds that a handful of Nazis were there. We kill 20 Nazis, and in the process turn nations who welcomed us as liberators against us.

[Tallguy]

Its strange that nobody worried about creating Nazi martyrs in WWII. The only time you have to worry about creating martyrs is when you know that your enemy has more willpower to see the war to its end.

There is a difference: The Nazis controlled Germany right up until the Armistice (yes there was an Armistice on V-E Day, signed by Karl Doenitz after Hitler's death). For your WW2 analogy to hold, Saddam's Baathists would have be in functional control of the Iraqi State & it's armed forces. Nobody -- not even the Iraqi insurgents -- are making that claim. A better analogy would be Somalia. Every few city blocks is controlled by another 'Gang'. Some are based on Baathist/Regime ties, other are Clan based, some have foreign loyalties -- you name it. A one-size-fits-all strategy just won't work.