1. Regard any hostile power that attempts to acquire or develop weapons of mass destruction, or refuses to sign and abide by a non-proliferation agreement, as a belligerent state. Such countries must be exposed to the traditional consequences of belligerency, from blockades to possible invasion.

2. Acknowledge that, while Islam is a great religion, it contains a strain hostile to Western civilization, and recognize that a state of war exists between that particular strain of Islam and the West. This includes all Arab and/or Muslim countries whose governments nurture or tolerate such a hostile strain.

3. Face the fact that terrorism is the chosen tactic of Islamist militants who can't penetrate the defensive perimeters of Western powers from the outside. Face the fact that terrorism depends for its success on fifth columnists; face the fact that Western residents of Arab/Muslim background, along with Arab/Muslim visitors or students, are susceptible to Islamist recruitment as fifth columnists; and face the fact that the loyalty of such residents and visitors cannot be taken for granted...

4. Remember that up to, and including, the Second World War, military operations weren't conducted with the view that the enemy was merely "the regime" and not the population... During the Cold War, even though it was evident that most people inside the Soviet camp hated the regime -- they brought it down in the end -- the West prepared and relied on a nuclear deterrent that by its nature couldn't distinguish between the supporters and opponents of communism.

5. Americans will have to consider that making the avoidance of civilian casualities a rigid priority in war has two predictable consequences. First, there's reduced military effectiveness and increased exposure of one's own troops to danger. Second, a campaign may not be evaluated primarily in terms of its military/strategic achievement, but in how successful it was in avoiding collateral damage... Arab/Islamist military efforts specifically express themselves in the bombings (or suicide bombings) of civilian buses, planes, discos, or office buildings, along with ruses de guerre such as using civilian shields, dressing military units in civilian clothes, placing military targets in civilian quarters, etc. The indignation of Arab and Islamist belligerents -- who, after deliberately targeting civilians, protest when Western or Israeli action results in some collateral civilian damage -- ought not to persuade Americans that they have some moral duty to impose extra conditions on themselves in addition to standard conventions of war.

6. A year ago, I wrote that asking whether Iraqis will look at the coalition as liberators is asking the wrong question. It assumes a unanimity in Iraq we would never expect to find in our own countries. In America, most people share the same liberal-democratic heritage, yet even Americans are divided on the question of whether they're liberators or occupiers. In Iraq, there's at least a six-way division...

7. Relying on the possibility, or even probability, that most people within Islam -- or specifically within Iraq -- would prefer to live in a democracy, and that only a minority support despotism and enmity with the West, is a grievous error. It's not an error because it may not be true, but because it's immaterial. Majorities do not necessarily carry the day even in free countries, let alone in theocracies or tyrannies. Militant minorities are far more likely to set the tone in a given country, period, or civilization...

8. Terrorist despotism, theocratic or secular, must be confronted; it cannot be accommodated or appeased. Defeating the enemy is the best way to change his mind. Anti-civilizational ruthlessness, Marxist or Muslim, is to Western democracy what Hannibal's Carthage was to Rome. Some 2,000 years ago, Marcus Porcius Cato ended his speeches in the Senate with the words Carthaginem esse delendam -- Carthage must be destroyed. At his press conference this week, even if somewhat more diffidently, President Bush conveyed the same message.