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MOUT:

The Marine Corps Times describes the MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) training that the 11th MEU is using in Najaf. It has certainly been impressive, even to old hands like Wretchard at the Belmont Club.

In today's mainstream press, everyone is repeating the commonly understood pieties. Al-Reuters has a piece citing a fellow from the Royal Institute of International Affairs who says, "The problem is the foe they are trying to defeat is in many ways indestructible." Since we cannot win, the only hope is to try not to make these people mad at us. By that standard, fighting in Najaf -- indeed, in Iraq, in the Middle East at all -- is madness. This seems to be the position of the whole Fouth Estate, as well as the non-military NGOs.

It is interesting to read the reflections of those who have some knowledge of military science. They begin from the point of view that regardless of strength, all enemies can be defeated, as can we ourselves. The question is sorting out how, so that you may pursue the course most likely to result in the enemy's defeat, and least likely to result in your own.

Wretchard's writings on the topic are interesting, not only because his is one of the finest minds operating in the blogosphere, but also in that he has apparently had a change of opinion since Fallujah. Both he and I were initially on the side of restraint where sacred ground was concerned. At the time of the Fallujah incursion, I had revised my opinion, but Wretchard remained on the other side. I see today that he has come to a new conclusion:

Yet something has changed for the Iraqi government to authorize a near-fatal assault on Sadr and countenance the Marines approach to within rock-throwing distance of the Imam Ali Shrine. Whether it has changed enough is the question.

It now seems clear that Sadr overestimated the degree of protection which the necropolis and its proximity to the shrine afforded him. Yet the shrine itself cannot be so lightly trespassed. It is protected by a boundary civilized men hesitate to cross. In an irony that Sam Harris would appreciate, sanctity, though it be of the Christian Church of the Nativity, has become an object that can always be pressed into service to shield Islamic fundamentalists though it provides none for those they would slay. That becomes the danger itself; for the shameless abuses of Sadr and similar thugs inevitably cheapen and corrode the very restraints upon which civilization depends; that distinguish the civilian from the combatant; the church from the battlefield. When like the Najaf necropolis, sacred objects finally lose their power to restrain, it more than brick that is destroyed. The real metaphor for the terrorist war on civilization is not wide-bodied aircraft crashing into the twin towers. It is mortars firing from the courtyard of the Imam Ali Shrine by men who don't even sandbag their positions, secure in the knowledge that they can slay men too decent to fire back.

In the end, Sadr's walk-away position is to dare Rubaie to assault the Shrine: dare him to be a barbarian. In the face of that challenge, Rubaie must convince Sadr that he is prepared to cross that line, to pull down his temple if it means saving his soul.

To this I have nothing to add, having said my piece before. I agree.