“Stop being politicaly correct and say we will start leveling 1 town in 12 hours. No return? Town 2 and town 3, etc. This is 1 of the reasons I NO longer give to the RNC. They don’t realize we are at war with a religion, not a country.”
Al qaeda doesn’t care how many Iraqi villages we might level since they are mainly non-Iraqi mercenaries. The more Iraqi civilians we kill, the better the recruiting from all over the Muslim world is for the terrorists.
You cannot win an insurgency without winning the hearts and minds of the civilian population and you can’t win over the civilian population by killing them.
But if you get 'em by the short and curlies, their hearts and minds will follow.
Kill the insurgents, especially the foreign ones or those supported directly by foreign powers (Al Qaeda and al Sadar's militia in the second). The average Iraqi doesn't like them anyway. They might be afraid to cross them, but they don't like them.
And that is pretty much what we are doing, but with too few troops and not enough force along the borders away from the population centers.