Let me get this right, if you commit to an armed incursion into an ill-equipped country, just brute force and unrelenting violence is all that's required to ensure success.

Seems to me the Russians did that with their attack on Afghanistan. They took on a country without an organized military, lacking in sophisticated weaponry, and totally disorganized. They had at their disposal a huge army, the most modern of weaponry and a brutishness we could never imagine having.

Obviously the results were not exactly what the Russians had in mind. They were brought to their knees by ragtag mujahdeen fighters crawling through mountains and riding off on horseback.

Now, I'll acknowlege that compared to our military, the Russians had a great deal of ineptness but, from all accounts, they more than made up for that with their savagery as the right seems to indicate would serve us well in our current fight. Obviously the Afghans were also aided a great deal in their struggle by our contribution of weapons and training (although we seem to regret that move today).

My contention here is that, as much as the redneck side of me wants to see Sadr and his minions blown into oblivion by some American mother-of-all-bombs, my rational side tells me that only will only prolong our struggle there in the end.

Seems we keep thinking with our own cultural bias here. We've had instances when unbalanced individuals such as David Koresh took on the big boys and martyred themselves and their followers for some violent and idiotic cause. There were certainly some enraged citizens that took up arms against American in response (Timothy McVeigh for one). However, those few wackos made up just a tiny percentage of us. Most of us, in spite of our horror or the loss of human life at that compound, probably breathed a collective sigh of relief that the man and his idiots were gone and that natural selection was working as intended.

Our society doesn't tend to produce martyrs when their messages stray far from standard middle class culture. That cannot be said for the culture in the Mideast. Mark my words, if the US Army blows up that stupid shrine Sadr and his bozos are hiding out in, nearly the entire Shiite community in all nations in that area will be screaming for our heads and Sadr posters will be popping up as far away as Sri Lanka. It's absolutely absurd but in many ways we'd have more chance at success turning Iraq into an ocean of glass with a few nukes than to blow up some stupid mosque.

I truly wish the impulsive ideal of going into a battle full force worked as it did in the movies.