The blame for the recent murder of 18 Americans in Mosul lies not only with the insurgents who initiated the attack, but also with the Bush Administration's suicidal policies. The insurgency would have been crushed long ago, and yesterday's attack averted, were it not for America's altruistic policy of placing the lives of Iraqi civilians above its own self-defense.

America must destroy the insurgency if we are to implement a non-threatening government in Iraq. This can be done, but to do so we must make the insurgency's complicit civilian population--those who harbor and support the insurgents--pay for the violence that they abet. We must enforce their complete surrender to our presence. Thanks to such a policy, during the occupation of Japan zero soldiers were killed by insurgents and the threat posed by the country was ended.

Shamefully, the Bush Administration has been unwilling to make hostile Iraqi civilians pay for their crimes. Time and again, it has treated Iraqi lives as sacrosanct and American security and soldiers as dispensable. It is in the name of sparing civilians that our soldiers have been ordered to follow crippling rules of engagement that have cost hundreds of their lives. It was in the name of sparing civilians that we withdrew from Fallujah in April, and in November allowed thousands of insurgents to flee to places like Mosul. Such capitulations have preserved and emboldened the insurgents, while giving hope to Islamic terrorists worldwide.