In the Senate of Ancient Rome, Marcus Porcius Cato – 234-149 BC, subsequently known as Cato the Elder to distinguish him from his great-grandson Cato the Younger – became famous for concluding every single speech he gave, no matter what the subject, with the exhortation: Carthago delenda est. Carthage must be destroyed.

Today, we need Senators and Congressmen to conclude every speech they give with the exhortation:

Fallujah delenda est. Fallujah must be destroyed.

I don’t mean metaphorically. I mean for the entire population of the city, every man, woman, and child, given 24 hours to leave and be dispersed in resettlement camps, moved in with relatives in another village, wherever, and the town turned into a ghost town. Then the entire city carpet bombed by B-52s into rubble, the rubble ground into powdered rubble by Abrams tanks, and the powdered rubble sown with salt as the Romans did with Carthage. Fallujah must be physically obliterated from the face of this earth.

It is very easy and justifiable for every American to take the barbaric horror that occurred in Fallujah on March 30 personally. It is even easier for me in particular because the private contractor who provided the convoy guards murdered and butchered by the Fallujahites is a personal friend.

Yet this is a crime that requires far more punishment than simple revenge. Let me state it clearly: the people who committed this crime are sub-human. They have relinquished their claim to be considered members of the human race.

One year ago, Americans saw on their television screens another act of barbarity, the abused bodies of American soldiers taken prisoner in Nasiriyah filled with bullet holes and dumped into a pile.

The words of that essay are now ringing in my mind:

“The War in Iraq is a continuation of the World’s Oldest War.

It is a war that began 25 centuries ago, when a few thousand Athenians, representing the founding culture of Western Civilization, faced a Persian horde many times their size on the field of Marathon.

The Persians thought they had a holy right to conquer and rule anyone they wanted to. The Greeks looked upon them as Barbarikos, barbarians who valued neither individual freedom nor the individual as such, who lived instead in an anthill society and were willing to subject themselves to the rule of an almighty dictator.

The Persian dictator, Darius, was sure he would crush these impudent Greeks who dared to demand their freedom from him. At the end of that fateful day in 490 BC, 6,000 Persians lay dead, versus 200 Athenians. Barbarism’s first attempt to subdue civilization was defeated.

There have been many, many attempts ever since. For centuries, the Roman Legions held off vast human wolfpacks, but finally succumbed, resulting in the Dark Ages. Islam has conducted a Jihad against the West for 13 centuries. The barbaric insanities of Marx and Hitler erupted from within Western Civilization in the 20th century. Today the Oldest War continues, now against Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

There could not be a clearer demonstration that the War in Iraq is one between Civilization and Barbarism than the Iraqi behavior we saw on television yesterday. The Oldest War is one that must be continually fought and won anew.”

The people of Iraq as a whole are not barbarians. Yet there is a barbarism in their culture capable of perpetrating sub-human atrocities. Thus the critical conclusion:

If Fallujah is not destroyed now, the genie of barbarism is out of the Iraqi bottle with Iraq disintegrating into a civil war of annihilation.

Turning Fallujah into rubble, smashing its atrocity with a hammer, is the only way to get this genie back in the bottle. Iraq is not a real country, only a collection of tribes who hate each other. If the Sunnis of Fallujah can burn and mutilate Americans, Shias will be only too eager to do the same with Sunnis, Kurds to Turkmen, on and on, once American soldiers are no longer there to prevent them from doing so.

Iraq has been liberated from a monstrous tyranny and handed its freedom on a platinum platter. The question now is: Are the Iraqis capable of keeping the freedom that has been given to them? The atrocity of Fallujah is evidence they are not. The destruction of Fallujah will contain the virus of barbarism and give all Iraq a chance to be inoculated against it.

The power of the Internet enables all of us to be a modern Cato The Elder.

From now on, every pro-American writer and blogger should conclude whatever he writes no matter what the subject, every pro-American private citizen and everyone reading this essay, should conclude any email they send no matter what the topic with:

Fallujah Delenda Est.