I wasn't thinking of marching people out and shooting them. I was thinking of doing what we did in the second battle of Fallujah the first time around, i.e. actually clearing the city of the insurgent element. Maybe a different president might have just bombed it to rubble from the air.

The entire tactical book of the insurgency and al Qaeda is dependent on the civilized behavior of the United States.

They can hide among civilians because we will not engage in wholesale killing of civilians. They can store weapons in mosques, hospitals and schools because the U.S. is reluctant to damage these. They can put bombs in family cars and ambulances.

Have you noticed that the peacenik "human shield" approach only works on Western armies? Seen any "human shields" in Iraq to protect civilians against our enemies?

Personally, I don't really want our methods to change. I just want people to recognize that this way of doing things is a lot harder than the Patton/Sherman approach, takes a lot longer, and unfortunately often trades U.S. military lives for civilian ones. You said so yourself in another post. Didn't seem to sink in, even though you wrote it yourself.