All the more reason to abandon Limited and go for All Out.
The great short-sightedness in all of this, at this point, is that we are dealing with an enemy whose very modus operandi is to target innocent civilians and recruit them for suicide missions. We are dealing with an enemy who, win or lose, will kill civilians anyway, and with great fervor. This mindest is so perverted, the implementation of conventional moral guidelines only increases their power and increases the pain and suffering among innocent civilians who are quite literally at their mercy.
Put it this way. If the hostage-taker starts shooting the hostages, the proper response of law enforcement is to go in with guns blazing. Under normal circumstances, where it is more likely than not that the hostage taker can be appealed to not to harm his innocent captive, law enforcement rightly bides its time and negotiates a release of the innocent. In this circumstance, the hostage taker (Al Qaeda, Iranian insurgents, etc.) are systematically killing their hostages (the Iraqi populace), and we’re wringing our hands over conventional guidelines which are impotent in the face of such wickedness.
Sadly, there is no other way to do this. But as hundreds and hundreds of civilians are being ruthlessly slaughtered AT ANY RATE, we fear killing them in the process of destroying the malignant cancer in their midst. At the end of the day, we need to be confident that our goal of bringing peace and prosperity to Iraq, is morally superior to the goal of Al Qaeda to simply re-create hell on earth, breaking every convention known to man in doing so. The problem is, incredibly, a crisis of confidence that we hold the moral upper hand. Until we realize that we’re not the bad guys, contrary to the media, the only outcome of this war is a defeat for the good guys.