"Attention to detail" was a phrase I heard every day in my Marine Corps career, and today, the 229th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, there is one detail I'd like to address.
Whatever is going on in Fallujah, the obscenity of allowing the enemy to find safety in mosques must be dropped. Such a policy never should have been observed in the first place.
It's not just that I regard Islam as an ideology of evil. I do, but many would disagree with me, and I am not an advocate of genocide or of compelling Muslims to abandon their religious beliefs, however absurd those beliefs are. But the policy of excepting mosques, and only mosques, from the results of military actions, just because they are mosques, is evil, and is indicative of what our leaders find important in life and in philosophy.
Buildings are being damaged and destroyed, in this war as in any other, and I'm in no way arguing that there is anything positive in that. But allowing the destruction of homes and businesses while deliberately sparing mosques is, simply, disgusting.
Businesses represent effort and trade and all that is right and good about relations among men. Homes are refuges, places of rest for adults and play for children -- but there is no policy for deliberately sparing either homes or places of business from destruction. Only mosques.
Marines, I hope your leaders take better care of you this time in Fallujah than they did last year. So happy 229th birthday to you all -- and please, bring each other back.