BELMONT CLUB POSTS more thoughts on what’s going on in Fallujah: “The Corps, besides incorporating the Chinese word Gung Ho into its vocabulary, may have finally proved to the Arabs that they can out-hudna anyone who ever stood on a patch of sand.”

Read the whole thing, which is quite interesting and suggests that blogospheric calls for a more, um, forthright approach were possibly misguided.

UPDATE: Belmont Club has a followup post. I hope that this analysis is right, and that what’s going on is clever negotiations and divide-and-conquer of the sort that the Marines are good at. I just can’t tell from here.

And here’s some useful perspective, noting that Fallujah isn’t Iraq, much less a proxy for the entire war on terror. That’s certainly true, and it’s interesting that it’s getting so much attention. It’s almost as if it’s meant to distract everyone.