Finish It or Forget It - Victor Davis Hanson on the war in Iraq, our military power, and thugs in Clerics' robes. Here is a sample:

We should simply ignore most supposed Islamic restrictions on war-making since they are entirely one-sided, asymmetrical, and self-serving. All during the Afghanistan campaign we worried about Ramadan, and were warned by the impotent Arab Street about the repercussions to follow if we shot back at Taliban thugs who hid in mosques and sniped at us during their holy days. Did we remember that when Egypt invaded Israel during its sacred Yom Kippur holidays it bragged of the sneak attack as the "Ramadan War"—and in pride, not shame? Did we hold back from attacking Nazi Germany on Hitler's Birthday? And was it really wise to impose what turned out to be a one-sided truce at the Tet holiday in Vietnam?

Putting non-explosives in GPS bombs at the end of the war to avoid collateral damage beyond targeted artillery pieces and tanks parked in Iraqi mosques, or not wishing to hurt religious militias as they carted off the material future of Iraq and cached them in mosques after the liberation, may have been humane and logical, but that and other efforts at restraint have consistently sent the wrong message to jihadists and thereby emboldened killers—namely, that we would respect their own holy sites far more than those who had desecrated them with munitions. As way of illustration, the world should ask in April 2004, right now how many Churches, Temples—or Mosques—concurrently serve as weapons depots?

As I recall the radical Muslim world canonized armed Islamic criminals who desecrated the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem without apology to its Christian clergy. A general rule then: once armed combatants enter mosques for sanctuary, the United States military must declare that such shrines are immediately no longer holy sites, and then allow 48 hours for Islamic clergy to remove such killers before it does it for them. A mass-murderer in a wheel chair, or a street tough wearing a turban really is not a holy man—and the Islamic world needs to realize that when the fatwas of mullahs and imams invoke the name of "God" to murder, then they have sacrificed the sanctuary of religion.

Read the entire piece here .