For the past year, Iraq has been under the gentlest occupation in the history of warfare. Most Iraqis have responded well to that, genuinely grateful to have been liberated from the decades-long dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist thugs. The rape rooms and torture chambers are closed for business, and the mass graves are being exhumed instead of filled. Most Iraqis, according to a recent poll conducted by Oxford Research, have a better life now without Saddam, and look forward to even more improvements in the future, including the chance to participate in a democratic form of government for the first time. However... one area of Iraq, known as the "Sunni Triangle," has never felt nor acted as though they were "liberated." This is the area in which Saddam was born, and one which he never brutalised as he did the rest of the country. Since the day Saddam abandoned Iraq to crawl into a spider hole and pull it in after himself, Coalition forces have treated the Sunni Triangle with kid gloves. They have even gone so far as to stay out of the town, allowing Fallujah more autonomy than any other area except the Kurdish territories. It's time for that to end.

In a brutal yet cowardly attack, a mob of Fallujah inhabitants murdered and mutilated four American civilians who were setting up security for a food shipment to the town. Shouting defiance of the Coalition, they dismembered, disgraced and burned the bodies -- all violations of Islamic law, incidentally. Many Iraqis were shocked at the barbarity. The bodies were dragged through the streets, obviously intended to invoke memories of Mogadishu. On 3 October 1993, 18 American servicemen were killed in the capital city of Somalia in an incident which inspired the film "Black Hawk Down." The result was that the ragged citizens of Mogadishu were able to force the United States of America to run away when then-President Clinton ordered them to evacuate rather than suffer more casualties. As Osama bin Laden said in 1998, "The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the America soldiers are paper tigers. After a few blows, they ran in defeat..." Dan Rather told Larry King, "I know that Saddam Hussein -- this is not speculative -- I know that Saddam Hussein's favorite movie was 'Black Hawk Down.' He watched it several times a week in the period preceding the American attack, because he was saying to himself, this is not made up, he was saying to himself, that's what we can do here." That is precisely what Saddam Hussein taught his people, and precisely what must NOT happen ever again. In the Arab world, it is fatal to be percieved as weak.

The only possible response to this atrocity is to make Fallujah into an example for the rest of the Sunni Triangle. The Coalition must engage in a full military occupation of the town, including martial law, zero-tolerance curfews, and the systematic, house-by-house search for and arrest of every single adult seen in those horrible photographs and videos. Those who attack Coalition forces -- not to mention civilians both Iraqi and American -- must be removed from circulation altogether, no matter what the rest of the world may think. If the inhabitants of Fallujah want to continue the war, we should give them what they ask for. If we ignore their attacks, turn the other cheek, and give in to their demands, we only prove Saddam and Osama right, and embolden the murderers further.

Thirty years of ruling Iraq as part of a totalitarian dictatorship have hardened the Saddam loyalists and molded them to scorn weakness. We can only show these insurgents mercy after showing them our strength -- strength is all that they respect. Any other course of action will only "prove" to them that they can continue their attacks with impunity.

The Sunni Triangle is the source of most of the internal strife in Iraq. If we don't pacify that area before we hand over power to the new Iraqi government, how are they supposed to deal with it?