For that much, at least, we should be grateful. The Holy Grail of Western militaries is and for the foreseeable future will remain force protection, which has mutated into the notion that an unlimited amount of material resources should be expended, and an unlimited variety of firepower employed, before a single soldier's life is put at risk.

Combined with an unexplained impatience, this meant that four men with guns in a fortified position held off hundreds of American troops for hours, like Horatio at the bridge, while taking a sustained pounding from humvee- and helicopter-mounted heavy weapons. In other words, we made the least worthy of enemies look heroic in death.

The commander on the ground considered calling in heavier forms of air power associated with close air support, but settled in the end for merely slaughtering the trapped foe with a barrage of anti-tank missiles that left the ruined house to stand as a monument to the brothers' stubbornness. It was a clumsy and stupid operation from start to finish, resulting in marred corpses that the Coalition authorities seem understandably reluctant to show on television.

To paraphrase the Book of John, Clausewitz wept.