My town of Franklin, Tenn., suffered the loss of a Marine who graduated from high school here in 2004. Lance Cpl. Richard A. Buerstetta, 20, was killed in action Sunday in the al Anbar province in Iraq by an IED. Also killed, probably in the same blast (not yet confirmed by the Marine Corps) was Lance Cpl. Tyler R. Overstreet, 22, of Gallatin, Tenn., just north of Nashville. Both men were Marine reservists of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment.

Lance Cpl. Buerstetta’s high school is only two miles from my home. Both my sons graduated from that school. Funeral arrangements for both Marines are incomplete. Marine officials said it would take a few days for the remains to be transported here. Lance Cpl. Overstreet left behind a son born two days after he deployed to Iraq about a month ago. Lance Cpl. Buerstetta is survived by his parents, I don’t know whether he had siblings. The Tennessean’s story is here. It’s a sad day in the Nashville area. A soldier from Springfield, Tenn. was also was also killed in action over the weekend. Please keep all these families in your prayers.

Quelle surprise! Reports on FNC just now say that France has disavowed the ceasefire plan that it and the US laboriously worked out last week. Now we’re told that France wants the immediate withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Lebanon, then a ceasefire. Also, France no longer supports the formation of a new multinational force to the country. Developing . . .

We awoke this morning to reports that Israeli planes had killed at least 40 civilians in the town of Houla. In a report time-stamped at 10:14 a.m. EDT, Reuters reported,

“An hour ago, a horrific massacre took place in Houla village as a result of the intentional Israeli bombardment that resulted in more than 40 martyrs,” Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told an Arab foreign ministers meeting in Beirut.

But not so fast. Now Haaretz reports,

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora on Monday reversed his earlier claim that 40 people had been killed in an Israel Air Force strike on a southern Lebanon village earlier in the day, saying that there was at least one person dead.

“The massacre in Houla, it turned out that there was one person killed,” Siniora told reporters. “They thought that the whole building smashed on the heads of about 40 people… thank God they have been saved.”

Rescuers said that some 50 people had been found alive in a shelter under the ruins of a bombed building in the border village of Houla.

Even so, it could have been a much more lethal attack than it turned out to be. But this is good news. And it should lead us to remember the old Army adage, “First reports are always wrong.”

News has broken this morning that Israel bombed a building in Qana, Lebanon, in which several dozen women and children were seeking shelter. Early reports are that two dozen children were killed and at least 25 adults, mostly the children’s mothers.

Some of the dead of Qana, killed by Israeli missiles

The Sydney Morning Herald reports,

The attack prompted the Lebanese government to cancel a planned visit to Beirut by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he would hold no negotiations before a ceasefire and officials said they had told Rice to stay away from Beirut until the fighting stopped. …

Lebanese Red Cross officials in Beirut said rescuers had extracted 38 bodies from the devastated buildings, including 23 children, and seven wounded. At least 17 more bodies were feared to be still under the rubble, seven of them children.

It’s not clear what the intended target was at the building. Nor are there any accusations that Israel destroyed the building knowing that the civilians were inside. Israel has said for many days, though, that the presence of civilians at a legitimate military target will not prevent attack.

Israel’s Olmert government said after the attack that its air offensive will continue. In Beirut and large crowd gathered outside the UN mission building, chanting anti-Israel and anti-American slogans, then stormed inside to break windows and generally create havoc. A new poll, reported on cable news last night, before the attack, revealed that Hezbollah now enjoys suport of 85 percent of the Lebanese people.

Analysis:

Even if Hezbollah was storing rockets in the building and intentionally sacrificing the women and children as propaganda tools, expecting Israel to bomb the building, the repercussions from the video and images of the dead children and women will overwhelm any Israeli attempts to justify targeting the building.

So far, the Olmert government has stood fast. It sent a proxy spokesman, a former Israeli foreign minister whose name I didn’t catch, to make the cable news rounds this morning. He reiterated the basic goals of the Olmert government in the war. An Israeli lieutenant colonel was quoted on FoxNews this morning as saying that Hezbollah intentionally created the tragedy in order to garner international condemnation of Israel, which, according to the Jerusalem Post, was promptly forthcoming.

Again, it appears to me that while Israel has strategic goals in the campaign, it does not have a well-developed strategic plan . For example, yesterday, Israeli ground forces withdrew from Bint Jbail, where they had battled Hezbollah for several days. IDF spokesmen said that the town had been mostly reduced to rubble and the Hezbollah was no longer a significant presence there. This may well be true and probably is, IMO.

But the manner in which the withdrawal was conducted handed Hezbollah a strategic leg up. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah immediately issued a statement claiming Hezbollah was defeated the IDF at Bint Jbail. If Israel had understood that Bint Jbail was strategically, not merely tactically significant, it would have taken steps to document its victory there to the world. With news media reps crawling all over the area, the IDF should have arranged a media tour of the town before withdrawing.

Israel’s reluctance to commit significant numbers of ground combat units is puzzling. Having already expressed a willingness to fight for many more weeks, I wonder what is the point of continuing the frenetic pace of aerial bombing. Hezbollah is still able to launch 100 or so rockets per day into northern Israel. Since ending those launches is the number one near-term goal of Israel’s military campaign, Israel’s strategy and tactics cannot be said to be successful. The intermittent presence of aircraft over southern Lebanon cannot stop the rockets. Only boots on the ground can do that.

Israel seems not to be taking advantage of its great advantage of ground combat mobility over Hezbollah. One result is the tragedy at Qana. With a thoroughly mechanized, powerful set of ground formations, the IDF could be blocking Hezbollah strongholds from the rear, preventing their reinforcement or evacuation, and they can do this far more effectively than aircraft, and with much greater target discrimination. Other units could then engage Hezbollah in direct combat, forcing them to surrender or die.

“Prolonged indecision,” said Douglas MacArthur, “is never a just aim or war.” Yet it is exactly the situation Israel seems to be bringing about. With the mass deaths at Qana, time is running out for Israel to reach a decision on the ground. We have argued on this site against accusations that Israel’s campaign has been disproportionate, but more incidents like Qana will open Israel anew to such criticisms. And such accusations will be difficult to rebut.

Unless Israel very soon commits ground forces in number and speed to defeat Hezbollah in direct combat, it will undercut the moral case it made for mounting the campaign to begin with. More and more, its air bombardments will appear to be only brutality rather than purposeful strategy. That moment is already very close. Israel’s cause is just, but it is very close to the line of unjustly fighting for it.

——

Breaking - just as I finished this post, former Prime Minuister Ehud Barak said on cable news that the Qana bombing will accelerate the world’s calls for cease fire. He also said that it should cause Israel to conduct a more powerful ground campaign. He said that Israel wants other world powers “to impose UN Resolution 1559.”

An Iranian-made Zilzal rocket, destroyed by Israeli aircraft, falls to earth in Lebanon

Ha’aretz, via Blue Crab Boulevard:

an Israel Air Force air strike in Lebanon on Monday destroyed at least one long-range Iranian-made missile capable of hitting Tel Aviv, IDF officials said.

The officials said an IAF aircraft targeted a Hezbollah truck carrying the weapons before they could be launched. The force of the blast sent at least one missile flying into the air, but it fell nearby. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity under military regulations.

Officials said the destroyed missile was an Iranian-made “Zilzal,” which has a range of about 200 kilometers [120 miles - DS].

Lebanese TV stations broadcast video pictures of the downed missile which they initially reported was an IAF aircraft falling to the ground.

During nearly a week of fighting, Hezbollah militants have fired missiles up to 40 kilometers into Israel. But officials have raised concerns the guerrilla group could strike Tel Aviv, roughly 120 kilometers south of the border with Lebanon.

AS BCB notes, Hezbollah is not aiming their rockets at Israeli military units or installations. They are deliberately targeting Israeli civilians.

More on Hezbollah rockets here.

Al Qaeda says Zarqawi’s successor personally beheaded two American soldiers

According to Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Muhammed-Jassim, head of operations at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, the two American soldiers found dead last night in Yusifiyah had been tortured and “killed in a barbaric way.” Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker had been tortured by their captors, according to Iraqi officials.

Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, murdered by al Qaeda in Iraq Monday night

American commanders have not yet announced the two bodies were those of the Menchaca and Tucker, who were kidnaped last week after their outpost was attacked by insurgents. Spec. David J. Babineau was killed in the attack.

“Killed in a barbaric way” almost certainly means, “beheaded.” Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq resumed beheading hostages after a U.S. Air Force F-16 dropped bombs on terrorist commander Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killing him. They had begun executing prisoners by gunfire after being reprimanded by no. 2 al Qaeda figure Ayman Al-Zawahiri that beheadings were counter-productive to their cause.

An al Qaeda web site today claimed that Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, had personally killed the two men. The NYT reports that the site used “a word for slaughter that is commonly understood to mean beheading… .”

I predicted two years ago that if terrorists in Iraq started beheading American military captives,

… the terrorists will learn something else: they have made the war personal. When that happens, the American experience of war shows that our troops will shed the veneer of restraint like a snake’s skin. And for every American head Zarqawi severs, he will soon find three of his own men’s heads.

That kind of retribution by US troops has happened before; read the post for more information.

The man whose wedding party was bombed by al Qaeda in November says that the air strike that killed al Qaeda mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was “heavenly justice.”

Ashraf al-Akhras lost his father and both his new in-laws in the attack in Amman, Jordan, an event that brought almost all Jordan’s people to denounce Zarqawi and his terrorist network.

“Time may heal something simple, but what happened to us was big,” he said. “I don’t remember it as my wedding day, it’s a day in which the eyes of Amman turned black and cried.

“I can’t describe how I feel,” he said, tears in his eyes.

The slackening of the appeal of radicalized, violent Islam will almost certainly be accelerated by Zarqawi’s death.

“Maybe this will signal the start of the road to safety for our brothers in Iraq,” said Akhras, a Muslim who had no time for Zarqawi’s radicalism. “We pray to God that such people wake up and go back to the true religion.”

I have said before (and I am pretty sure I was one of the early ones to say so) that the heart of the terrorist war was the literal and ideological war within Islam.

But how can Muslims make war on other Muslims when it is prohibited in the Quran? The same way that Christians in Europe killed one another over religion during the religious internecine wars of Europe that occurred regularly from the 16th to 17th centuries. If you see yourself as the defenders of the true faith, then you exclude from the faith the other side. …

As I pointed out in August 2002, the Muslim world is faced with defining what Islam really is. If al Qaeda is not in fact the keeper of the true faith, then the rest of the Muslims must unite to destroy al Qaeda just to ensure the survival of Islam itself. They need to understand that the present crisis is not primarily that of Islamists against the West, it is the Islamists against everybody who does not toe their line.

Austin bay points out the utopian character of hardline Islamist, including al Qaeda and Arabian Salafism, quoting accused alleged terror conspirator Zakaria Amara:

“I hate flags. I hate countries… I hate man made laws…. I hate nationalism with a passion… I love for the Sake of Allah and I hate for his sake…… When the islamic [rule] comes back… there will be no palisitne flag, no philipino flag… no pakistani, somali, american, or british flag… it will just be 1 flag,” he wrote, using the pseudonym “Aleph,” the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. He then posted an image of Arabic script followed by an English translation: “THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH AND MUHAMMAD IS HIS FINAL MESSENGER…”

In religious terms, this is a religion of “realized eschatology,” that by acting as if the utopian state can be significantly achieved in this present time, then the day will come, fairly soon, when the utopia will be entirely realized, an accomplishment that they view as certain anyway. Hence, the point of al Qaeda’s terrorism, and of their allied groups, is to put them on the right side of history, to borrow a Marxist term. They understand that one way or another, the dar al Islam will ultimately triumph over the dar al harb: Islam will reign supreme over infidels. They seek, first, to be true Muslims and second, to help history move toward that triumph.

Their willingness to wage jihad against the infidels, especially giving their lives to do so, is how they cement their place as keepers and defenders of the faith. This faithfulness is not intended to make Allah suddenly, personally strike his enemies dead, but to make Islamist victory inevitable. Why? Because when they order their lives according to Islamic dicta (as they propound it), the flow of human affairs will naturally lead to Islamic triumph. That’s the way Allah has ordered the world.

But this belief is dependent upon a few things, not least of which is that Islam is actually the one true faith in all the world. It depends on their presuppositions that America is weak and weak willed. It depends on the Muslim ummah really wanting to see Islamism established across all the Arab lands, and that the ummah are willing to revolt to make it so.

All these things are highly problematic. However concrete al Qaeda’s ultimate goals may appear, achieving them rests on a serious sense of self delusion and premises that are far from certain.

Make no mistake, the death of Zarqawi does nothing to make their vision of utopia appear more likely in the eyes of the hundreds of millions of Muslims who are sitting on the fence, wanting to know which side to step off to. If al Qaeda et. al. are keepers of the true faith of Islam, as they insist they are, then it’s reasonable to ask just when Allah will finally get in the game.

And more and more Muslims will decide that Ashraf al-Akhras is right: Allah is in the game, but not on al Qaeda’s side.

Update: According to Major General William Caldwell, a member of Zarqawi’s own al Qaeda in Iraq ratted him out by naming Zarqawi’s spiritual advisor, who was painstakingly tracked until Coalition commanders were certain he was visiting Zarqawi last night. This betrayal from within al Qaeda’s own ranks, even if for bounty, buttresses my point, I think, that the religious appeal of violent, utopian Islamism is losing its charm.

(added to OTB’s Beltway Traffic Jam.)