I think the difference here is that no survivors would be a very good outcome.
That is the problem in human shield confrontations. Barbarians don’t care who they kill whereas as civilized people we don’t want the innocent to die along with the death cult types. This is why some in law enforcement are hard at work on non-lethal methods to disable crazed militants like these at this Red Mosque. From your arm chair half way around the world it’s easy to say KILL THEM ALL, but a young boy captured there may have a wonderful, productive life ahead of him. He’s worth saving.
For me then, I would try to just bring the situation under CONTROL with non-lethal technical means than to just slaughter everyone there. Sheriff’s deputies quite often face this kind of hostage situation and tear gas is often the correct approach.
In a wider context though, this typifies the whole WOT. They have fanatics and crude weapons on their side, a mentality straight out of medieval barbarism; whereas we have the most technically advanced weaponry on the planet. We’ve learned the hard way that there is no reasoning with these fanatics anymore than you “reason” with a cockroach.
Thus the only way we are going to defeat this enemy is by playing to our strength : technology. Just as medicine has made great strides in defeating diseases of various kinds with TECHNOLOGY, so will we eliminate this terrorist disease from the planet with TECHNOLOGY. Makes sense doesn’t it?