Some Marines angry over deal to pull out of Fallujah

spacewar.com ^ | Apr 30, 2004 | AFP

[Destro]

Some marines angry over deal to pull out of Fallujah

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) Apr 30, 2004

A decision to let former members of Saddam's army handle security in Fallujah has infuriated some of the US Marines who pulled back from the powderkeg city after weeks of violent battles. "Now it's going to get worse," said Lance Corporal Julius Wright, 20, one of the marines who withdrew from positions on the frontlines of the embattled Iraqi city that had been under a US siege since April 5.

The marines started a gradual withdrawal to a wider perimeter Friday as the first 200 members of the new Fallujah Brigade moved into parts of the city.

US commanders hope the Iraqi force, made up mainly of former members of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's disbanded army, will be able to restore some form of law and order to Fallujah, a city partly controlled by anti-coalition forces.

Senior US officers acknowledge they are not fully convinced the deal will work out, and that Marines are prepared to retake their frontline positions if it doesn't.

Many of the grunts, on the other hand firmly believe the idea is doomed.

"Honestly, I don't think they're going to be able to do it," said Corporal Elias Chavez, 28.

"We had the insurgents cordoned off, they couldn't go anywhere, we had a chance to get them."

"Now they can flee wherever they want, and we're still going to have to deal with them," said Chavez, expressing doubts the new force, largely made up of Fallujah residents, would apprehend anti-coalition fighters.

"A lot of them have ties to anti-coalition forces," he said in reference to the Fallujah Brigade.

Colonel John Coleman, chief of staff of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said it is not necessarily a bad thing having some of the more moderate insurgents switch sides. "We'd actively reach out to those people," he told reporters at Camp Fallujah, the main marine base just outside the city.

Some of the grunts who camped out for weeks in abandoned factories and warehouses on the outskirts of the powderkeg city, coming under fire daily, feel they spilt blood in vain.

Scores of Americans died in fighting in Fallujah, which also killed hundreds of Iraqis.

Now that the marines are pulling out without having defeated the insurgents, the deployment "was a waste of time, of resources and of lives," said Chavez.

"Everyone feels the same way, especially those who know someone who was killed," he said.

Wright agreed.

"We pulled out when we should of went in."

[milemark]

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

You can catch even more flies with terrorists' corpses.

[TalBlack]

"Why don't we wait until the battle is over before we jump on the bandwagon and declare defeat?"

For the same reason that it's not a good idea to wait until the balls past the plate to decide whether or not it's a pitch you will swing at it.

Every day now I turn off my radio in disgust hearing what sound suspiciously like the program for Korea Viet Nam shaping up in the present war.

FACT: We are not fighting this war the way war should be fought: full tilt with everything we have. We seem to be bringing Political and other considerations into the prosecution.

[TalBlack]

"NOW THEN, that being said.....
If enemy patrols seem to be able to "get around" the Iraqi Army checkpoints or blocking positions and attack the Marines at their pull back position -- THEN we've got a whole new scenario..."

Why would they need to attack the Marines at their fallback positions? THEY "MADE" THEM FALLBACK IN THE FIRST PLACE. That is the point in operation here. Attacking the US Marines in their fallback positions isn't a terribly bright or healthy thing to do and is down right stupid if it isn't neccessary.

[bushfamfan]

I heard the Marines were rightfully mocking the patrols they are to be sent out on as SUICIDE PATROLS. Yes, all for nothing. The murderers are still going to be murderers and I suppose the military 'leaders' and President just think we're going to have to continue to take casualties without going after the source. This is a complete mess and it's understandable that the Marines who spilled blood are going to be very angry at the political bs that's going on.

[nathanbedford]

I cannot for a minute concede that the transparent attempts to paint this
Opera Boufle as a brilliant plan to lure the Iraqis into thinking that we have
Found their next George Washington because he will win Fallujah is anything remotely resembling rality.. Put your tin foil hat on because the explanation is that the Americans have already won but do not want to say so because they want the credit to go to this Baathist general and thus the transition to Irakization will be seamlessly assured.

If you join in this version of reality I can only suggest that you have leaped through the looking glass.

The reality is that Baathists in Fallujah have revolted againt coalition rule. A baathist general
Is selected to bring them to heel and sort out the good baathists from the bad baathists. Right.
I can just hear him now talking the administration to put him in charge, Please, what ever you
Do, Brer Bush, do not throw me into that Fallujah Briar Patch. What the hell do you think
The bad guys were fighting for? The Baathists are celebrating in the streets and the Marines are grumbling. Does that tell you anything? And you accuse me of dealing in illusion over reality?

I object to a feckless policy of vacillation which propery should be called Bluster and Bug out.

[verity]

Some marines angry over deal to pull out of Fallujah.

Nothing remarkable about this, game boy!

[ColdSteelTalon]

They should be upset. telling a Marine to stop fighting is like telling then to stop breathing...

[SauronOfMordor]

This Iraqi general and his troops can tell an Iraqi local from a Syrian from a Saudi. This Iraqi general can do something we can't: segregate them out (with the help of Iraqi locals) and execute them all.

Assuming his platoon leaders don't get paid off to go in on patrol, and come out with more troops than they went in with (with the "excess" melting away into the countryside after they get thru our lines)

[Polybius]

Curious that you did not cite the Tet offensive to illustrate reality over perception.

As endthematrix pointed out in his previous post, the American liberal media and the European press would have created an anti-American perception no matter what the strategy may have been used in Fallujah.

In Fallujah, there is a definite strategy.

Right after the four contractors were murdered the hand wringing started on FR. What to do? The usual opinions were offered.

One group, as usual, yelled "MOAB!" Yes, pull another Dresden and incinerate 300,000 people. How do think that would play in your German neck of the woods and the rest of the World? How do you think that would play next November at the Presidential election? Most likely with a President Kerry, a Democrat Congress and an abhorrence to use U.S. military power for the next 25 years.

The other group was the "This is a Vietnam quagmire so let's just admit defeat and go home".

I proposed the following military solution on several FR threads:

1. Surround Fallujah with a cordon sanitaire.
2. Let civilians out but keep insurgents in.
3. Wait as long as it takes to have all civilians out of the city.
4. Once you have an urban battlefield with nothing but buildings and insurgents, use a maximum of airpower and artillery and a minimum of U.S. infantry to achieve complete destruction of the insurgents with a minimum of U.S. infantry casualties.

As it turns out, that is, basically, how the battle of Fallujah has been fought.

The "ceasefires" and "negotiations" ("This is Vietnam!!!") have been used to allow civilians to leave. The insurgents are not only trapped in Fallujah but in a certain slum section of Fallujah. In an improvement over my plan, that called for a minimum of U.S. infantry participation, Iraqi infantry is being sent in.

From where I'm sitting, everything is going pretty much according to plan because this is the plan I envisioned before the battle at Fallujah began.

Such a plan, designed to maximize insurgent deaths while minimizing Iraqi civilian and U.S. infantry deaths, takes time and patience. During that time, the rabid anti-American news media, both at home and abroad will, as endthematrix pointed out in Post 91, use whatever happens in any particular day to paint the U.S. in the worst possible light.

I suggested my plan before this operation ever began and it must have had some validity bacause it is being followed with improvements. You have now pointed out the criticism of this particular plan by the anti-American press.

So, Nathan, how would you have handled Fallujah if you were the senior American commander in theater? You do the planning and I will do the nay-saying this time.

**** MOAB Fallujah?.............Anti-American Press Reaction: "In the most horrific act of genocide commited by a Western nation since the Holocaust in World War II, President George W. Bush ordered the incineration of 300,000 innocent human beings in order to kill what even American commanders claimed were only 2,000 insurgents......"

****Full scale assault by the Marines?.............Anti-American Press Reaction: "President George W. Bush has ordered a full scale assault of Fallujah by U.S. Marines thereby unleashing the most bloody urban combat since the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. American casualties are high as are Iraqi civilian casualties as fighting goes from house to house and from room to room. The names of Americans killed and wounded today will be listed at the end of this broadcast."

****Admit defeat and go home?.............Anti-American Press Reaction: "The end of the Iraqi quagmire is at hand. President George W. Bush has finally seen the foolishness of his Iraq policy and has ordered a withdrawl of American forces from Iraq. This stunning defeat of American military power was achieved by a rag-tag band of ill-equipped Iraqi insurgents that......"

Hey, you know what? Nay-saying is a lot easier than I thought.

Now that I have listed the top three options frequently advocated on FR, why don't you tell us how you would handle the military situation in Fallujah and I will come up with how the anti-American news media will spin your plan of action.

Wait .......One more! One More!........ I think I got it this time.

****Have the CIA assasinate all members of the Press, both American and European, determined to be anti-American by a secret Presidential Council of Blood?.............Anti-American Press Reaction::

What do ya think, endthematrix?

Finally, a strategy that will not result in an anti-American perception created by the anti-American media!

What? It violates the First Amendment of the Constitution and it won't look good come the Judgement Day?

Rats!! Foiled again!!!

[FreeReign]

They should be upset. telling a Marine to stop fighting is like telling then to stop breathing...

Marines are trained to fight when so ordered -- little kids hold their breath when they don't get what they want and understand.

[FreeReign]

The Marines had secured 2/3 of Fallujah, all except the rabbit warren Golan section. This is where the foreign fighters and islamikazis are holed up. US forces could go in door to door, but only with great casualties. Our troops can't tell one arab from another. We would end up shooting all the men, flattening the Golan, killing lots of women and kids (all live on world TV.) This Iraqi general and his troops can tell an Iraqi local from a Syrian from a Saudi. This Iraqi general can do something we can't: segregate them out (with the help of Iraqi locals) and execute them all. He's positioning himself for a top top position in post American turnover Iraq. To grab that brass ring, he needs to perform now. I don't know what odds to put on this gambit succeeding, but it's very interesting poker. We're on a timetable to turnover, and the general wants to leverage the timetable into a new career. Let's wait and see.

I give the odds to be about 50/50. If the fatso-general does what he's supposed to do then it will be a major turning point in the WOT.

Other "local" operations from the Pakistan's NW territories to Saudi Arabia will be watching.

[Polybius]

"Why don't we wait until the battle is over before we jump on the bandwagon and declare defeat?"

For the same reason that it's not a good idea to wait until the balls past the plate to decide whether or not it's a pitch you will swing at it.

Deciding to swing at a pitch is a tactical and not a strategic decision.

A more apt baseball analogy would be to claim that Joe Torre is intentionally trying to have the Yankees lose the game because, in the ninth inning with runners on second and third and one out, he.......get this.......you won't believe it........he had his pitcher intentionally walk the next batter!!!!

He allowed the Red Sox to load the bases! On purpose!! Why???? Even my wife doesn't understand why and she taught me all I know about baseball!!!

Can you believe that? Is he stupid? Crazy? Is he gambling with the Mob and betting against his own team?

I mean......He is deliberately trying to lose the game!!! He should be fired!!!! He should be banned from baseball like Pete Rose!!!! He should.......

What?

The next batter grounded a ball to the shortstop?

Double play?

The game is over?

The Yankees won?

Ohhhhh.....

Ummmmm.......Well, ahh, hmmmm.....Never mind.

In the above analogy, TalBlack, subsitute "Battle of Fallujah" for "baseball game" and substitute "senior U.S. Marine commader in theater" for "Joe Torre, Manager, New York Yankees".

[Vigilantcitizen]

Good post bump.

[Ben Chad]

Yes, something stinks.

[nathanbedford]

You ask me to become armchair general, a task for which I am not qualified, a condition which I acknowledged in my very first post on this subject, number 25,

I do not comment here to interpose my judgment from 5,000 thousand miles away against trained professionals on the field, but I do note from the foreign press that the administration is getting absolutely killed over this apparent about face.

You pose three alternative scenarios for the Fullajah situation. You drew the distinction between nuke em and cut and run. I refer you again to my original post,

At the commencement of the seige I read on these threads how we should nuke the place or at least wipe them out to avenge our four dead. Now I see rationalizations for the withdrawal.

You might recall that this seige had been laid on because of the murder of the four American civilians and the desecration of their bodies had generated massive outrage in the States and gave the word press occasion to claim that Irak was descending ito a Beruit and that the American occupation was a sham and a grand humiliating failure. The administration had to act or risk the unravelling of its entire years work in Irak and the loss of prestige which could not be tolerated in the midst of a world war on terrorism. It chose to act by proclaiming strong words by the Generals in the field and by the President himself(the bluster part). The American press demanded action but for days the Marine general said he had a plan. During this lag before Marines could erect their cordon sanitaire, there was ample opportunity for the actual perpetrators of the massacre and the ringleaders of the insurgents to flee Flaujah if they chose. We do not know if they did so we will not know if our new Baathist general is telling us the truth when he reports they are nowhere to be found.

Now you propose a third alternative which it appears the Marines have employed, which I will dub the boa constrictor plan which envisions the reduction of the insurgents area by tightening the noose while facilitating the escape of innocent civilians as refugees. Presuming the innocents want to leave and presuming the insurgents cannot stop them, this seems a good approach which should, as you point out, reduce the leftists press clamour about indescriminate casualties etc., which we both agree are virtually as unavoidable as they are unjust.

I have mused that the Marines boa constrictor plan was about the best of three bad options but did not so post because I have no expertize in field generalship beyond common sense and, unlike some of my fellow Freepers, I felt some constraint not to burden the threads with uninformed armchair generalship. However, you will no doubt be surprised that I agree and always agreed with your 4 point boa constrictor plan.

What I do not accept is that this bug out and hand off to the Baathist establlishment is a clever denoument to your plan. It simply does not fit.

First, the plan, undeniably, was implemented because the perceptions of Fallujah after the murders had become politically untenable both at home and in Irak. Now you assert that the US should abandon the close investiture of Fallujah and suffer a stunning blow to its image, which you can document from a quick read through this forum. A Reuters article comes to mind. Such a move sets at naught the very rationale for the seige in the first place. We started the seige so we sould not have to wrestle with a hundred Fallujahs. Remember the run up to Falujah, no more Mogadishus?

We started a battle for perception, upped the ante with bluster, and then at the final thrust, blinked.

This is true even if this last minute hand off to our beretted Baathist general friend was part of the original plan which I do not for a moment believe and neither does most of the rest of the world. The burden is on the administration to sell that spin and so far they havent even tried. But even if true, the battle is lost because the world sees it lost. The world sees it my way, not yours and I take no joy in that observation.

The rest of the world now believes that the America of the Bug out from Beruit and from Mogadishu, is still the America of George Bush.

I can remember 9!11. I was sitting in a golf shack in Germany when the phone rang and we were told to turn on the TV in time to see the second tower struck. I remember the looks the Europeans gave me when I said in German, thank God George Bush is in office and not Bill Clinton or Al Gore. They thought I was mad. I told them that we now at last had a Prisident who meant what he said.



Please forgive punctuation lapses caused by a temporary keyboard in a different language.

[Travis McGee]

Our goal is to turn over authority to Iraqis and get the hell out. Don't forget that fact. It's not to have the toughest American battalion in Fallujah in five years. It's to turn over and get out.

[Travis McGee]

Our goal is to have a turnover and get the hell out. All military decisions will be made with that imperative in mind. We don't want to be holding down hundreds of fortified bunkers all over the Sunni triangle in five years, "proving" that we can control Iraq. We don't want to be manning checkpoints, and searching cars, and getting blown up with IEDs and car bombs. It's not the point to prove we have the baddest military around, everybody knows that. The point is to extricate ourselves, adn leave a govt which is capable of eliminating the terrorist haven problem. If this general is tough enough, great. If he's a new Attaturk, I will shine his boots gladly. That, more than anything, is what Iraq needs: an Attaturk. If Saddam signed his former paychecks, I could care less at this point.

[Polybius]

Thank you for your detailed post.

Let's meet back here on 30 May 2004 and see how things turned out.

[nathanbedford]

Be well until then.

[monkeywrench]

Great posts! You're always the voice of reason. :)