At least two Muslim clerics in Fallujah who refused to denounce the killings of the four American contract security men — Fawzi Nameq and Khalid Ahmed — nonetheless denounced the mutilation of the corpses.
Khalid Ahmed:
“Prophet Muhammad prohibited even the mutilation of a dead, mad dog and he considered such a thing as religiously forbidden. What happened in Fallujah is a distortion of Islamic principles and it is forbidden in Islam.”
That just shows that some of the decencies can be respected, even among enemies.
But the incident as a whole has a very grim message from the US viewpoint. We’re not just dealing with a bunch of partisan fighters hiding among a terrified population. At least in Fallujah — which is no mere village, but a city of 300,000 — and presumably elsewhere in the Sunni-dominated regions, the occupation is being rejected by the mass of the people, and by the religious and secular leadership, as illegitimate.
As another blogger noted, (Can some helpful reader supply the link?) “This isn’t Vietnam. This is Gaza.” [Update No link to that quote yet, but a reader reminds me that Fred Clark, the Slacktivist, has been writing about Iraq as Gaza for a while.
Since we’re presumably not prepared to go for the Carthaginian-style “final solution” Bill O’Reilly advocates (lovely turn of phrase, isn’t it?), our options aren’t very attractive.
Billmon at Whiskey Bar has more, with reflections on right-wing folk anthropology.