Tuesday, November 14, 2006

[1840 - Claude Monet, impressionist painter, born in Paris]

[1889 - Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of India, born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India]

Fallujah Liberated

Two years ago today, Lieutenant General John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, took a cue from the premature expostulations of his Commander in Chief and proclaimed: "We have liberated the city of Fallujah." Proof that even our Marines, (at least the senior officers), have mastered the art of Rightspeak, and can now be certified as politically correct. Indeed, General Pace, the most senior Marine ever, said on the News Hour last year that the Iraq war was no longer about body count, and that we should focus on changing the "life style of the insurgents." One sure hopes our Marines have not forgotten how to kill the enemy in their search for alternative life styles.

With the perspective of two years, it is time to do the numbers on Fallujah again. On the plus side, we conquered a city that was at rhat time symbolic of the resistance to the US occupation of Iraq, and eliminated a safe refuge for insurgents, (many of whom had already moved on). We exacted revenge for the killing and public mutilation of four US civilian contractors. We also showed the UN Secretary General who was boss when he warned us not to go in. We furnished CNN, Fox, and other cable news channels with weeks worth of what Chris Hedges correctly calls "war porn." Then too, one of our battle weary Marines was photographed with a cigarette dangling from his lips, and was instantly dubbed the new "Marlboro Man." Our stated purpose in going into the city was to pacify it so that elections could be held in January 2006, and they were.

On the debit side of the ledger, the Sunnis who lived in Fallujah (and most of their brethren) boycotted the January 2006 Iraqi elections, and then voted overwhelmingly against the new Iraq Constitution, almost defeating it. The cost in US lives to take the city was over three dozen of our bravest and most loyal warriors, and many more have died there since, with no end in sight. Several hundred more were wounded, some maimed for life, and the insurgents are using more sophisticated weapons to kill our Marines every day. General Sattler knew better than to use the term "light casualties," but that is what they would have said in the old days before we became so sophisticated about how to characterize such matters. Casualties are light unless you are the parent or spouse who answers a knock at the door to find two uniforms and a chaplain standing on the front porch.

In addition, about 1500 Iraqi insurgents and an untold number of civilians died. These people don't look or talk exactly like we do, but they were members of the same race. We fostered a bloody Sunni uprising all over Iraq that has now degenerated into civil war. The insurgents had little difficulty in setting up shop elsewhere with deadly effect, and the violence is much worse today than it was then. We reduced a city of 300,000 to rubble, rendering most of the inhabitants homeless, and undoubtedly radicalizing some young men to become Al Qaida recruits. We unmasked prime minister Allawi as a US surrogate by forcing him to order the assault on the city, thus destroying any pretext of legitimacy for the interim government and helping defeat it in the election that followed. We also reinforced the image of the United States as a brutal conqueror and occupier throughout the Middle East, an image that today persists around the globe.

William's Whimsical Words:

One continues to wonder how much more liberation the country of Iraq can endure, or the USA can afford.

to Fall 2006

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