"Nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."

from London's Mayor Ken Livingstone... after the bombings this time last year.

I want US citizens and leaders to think and speak this way.  This is toughness, resoluteness.  This is the message I want on monuments and in public places.  I don't want today's messages that are brash, arrogant, full of victim speak or out and out fear mongering. 

If it is worth the sacrifice of the military to protect our freedom, then it is worth the sacrifice of citizens who happen to be killed in a terrorist action.  Forget the victim speak about those who died in NYC, DC, PA or elsewhere.  They were on the front lines, they just did not know it. Likewise I may be on the front lines today and I don't know it.

We Americans pushed for the paper version of women's rights in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now that there is a rape accusation in the real world why is there silence? Where is the cultural sensitivity and communication? Where is the advocacy? Where is the recogniton of the policy impact? 

Juan Cole speaks to the huge impact of the event: 

That a secular person [MP Safiyah Suhail, a woman representative from the National Iraqi List and a former ambassador to Egypt] is so stirred up about this suggests to you what the Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists are thinking. For most Iraqis, honor is bound up in the chastity of their women, at least in public, and a foreigner raping an Iraqi girl is a profound humiliation for the entire country. This matter is not going to go away quietly and if the Bush administration thinks it is just a matter of disciplining unruly troops, it has another think coming. Entire colonial empires have been shaken by such incidents in the past.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki:

"We do not accept the violation of Iraqi people's honor as happened in this case. We believe that the immunity granted to international forces has emboldened them to commit such crimes in cold blood and ... there must be a review of this immunity." 

[underlining is my emphasis]

Be it Condi Rice, Karen Hughes, Laura Bush or others, they should be speaking to the subject.  They should be doing what Juan Cole did this morning, explaining what this means in another culture and the bigger foreign affairs impact. They should be advocating to the US military and Administration to get it right. They should be providing national and international leadership.