Desecration

Via Emperor Misha I comes the link to this article at the Washington Times. Misha has already done his usual job of commentary but I thought this was the money quote:

U.S. commanders, as The Post reported, designated all Shi'ite holy sites in these Sadr battlegrounds to be "exclusion zones," sites where fire — American fire, anyway — was effectively verboten. That is, it didn't matter that the Sadr forces had transformed religious buildings into munitions dumps. Americans were under orders not to return fire unless they could see their attackers, which was nearly impossible under the circumstances. (emphasis mine)

It's not our soldiers who are desecrating these holy sites. It's the terrorists and other insurgents who are doing so by hauling their weapons into those buildings and then firing those weapons from the shelter they provide.

Our policy toward mosques and other holy sites should continue to be the same as it is now, provided that our enemies are not using them for weapon storage and as shelter when firing on our forces. If they do, on the other hand, then all bets are off. They are now legitimate military targets and we should have no compunction against busting through walls with tanks or shelling them with artillery. We've done so once that I know of. I haven't heard that we've continued with that policy or not. If not, then we should do so immediately.

The media will play this up, of course. Therefore, the point that our enemies are the ones defiling those sites must be made strongly by our military commanders and the administration. And don't forget to make the point that it helps save the lives of our soldiers. Those who oppose that will be revealing something about themselves that they may not want made visible.