Posted on 04/30/2004 9:40:37 PM PDT by 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."
Hey I was oly trying to compliment the Marines not call them children dude. ;)
If the entire world continually looks shitty to you, maybe the view would improve if you pulled your own head out of rectal deflade!
The Marine leaders on the ground know that the jihadi are scamming them. They understand this. What, you think they take stupid pills at Canoe U. and Quantico? They are pulling back to let the Saddamites take a whack at things. The Saddam general is thick with the local tribals. Not with the jihadi. This is his chance to be the big cheese in town. He has to finger the jihadi to do it!
The jihadi will have none of it, of course, and find a way to kill the general. He's the modern version of Anastasio Somoza, and will be meet the same fate, but for now, he is useful to this chapter of the Marine's Small Wars Manual. Like it or not, he's our stooge. But he'll try to survive by playing both sides of the street.
Natch, the jihadist will have him car-bombed by Iraqi "patriots" (only after he has paid the jihadi a king's ransom in bribes to keep him alive, all to no avail). This craven dog will be sent to Allah for final disposition.
That's when we "restore order", after we let the Iraqis find a way to screw things up. Always find a way to allow the Arab to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity and they will never let you down.
Now ask yourself, do these people really deserve their own civilization?
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Which do you feel is more important at this moment, reality or the media created perception of reality?
This is what really angers me. Someone should resign. We need new leadership somewhere.
Agreed, fair enough...... 94 posted on 05/01/2004 3:05:33 AM PDT by nathanbedford
Well, here we are a month later.
What do you think?
The Fallujah Brigade: How the Marines are pacifying an Iraqi hot spot. (A definite should-read!)
Anyone who predicted that our Fallujah solution would end badly must surely be rethinking whatever facts and logic they used in forming such disproven thoughts, too.
My objection was primarily to the perception issue. You will recall that I posted in favor of your boa constrictor tactic and objected only to the notion that running the beretted Bathist General in at the last minute was part of the original plan:
However, you will no doubt be surprised that I agree and always agreed with
What I do not accept is that this bug out and hand off to the Baathist Establishment is a clever denouement to your plan. It simply does not fit
The gravamen of my complaint was stated thus:
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 haven't 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 Beirut and from Mogadishu, is still the America of George Bush.
I do not mean to introduce a red herring here, I do not think the matter turns on whether the plan originally called for an Iraqi general to gallop in to our rescue, that would hardly be fair or productive. My objection remains one of PERCEPTION of the whole battle. Did and does the world regard the operation around Fallujah as a defeat or as a victory for America? Additonally, I had posted that the promise of apprehending the murderers of our four civilian citizens so stridently made by the administration and its General was cynically betrayed by this turn over to the Baathist General. But first, the matter of perception.
Why should perception matter? After all isnt reality on the ground why wars are fought? The reply, in a phrase: The Tet offensive. No one my age can forget the television image of Walter Cronkeit stepping through the rubble and declaring the battle lost. The air went out of the baloon at home and the war was lost, no matter that Cronkeit had it wrong, America had defeated the Viet Cong on the ground, but the world thought otherwise and so, in the end, Walter Cronkeit was not wrong but ironically he was right because he had made his own reality and put it our living rooms and we believed it. Since that moment, every President who wages war, especially, a preemptive war, must do so while negotiating the following obstacles: 1) He must win decisively within a few weeks and preferably within days. 2) He must do so virtually without casualties. 3) He may inflict only limited collateral casualties 4) He may not damage any sacred sites 4) He must go to war only with UN approval. 5) He must not sustain any surprises. 6) His troops may not commit any atrocities or even imagined atrocities. 7) He must accomplish all this on live television. These are obstacles presented by television and the 24 hour news cycle. Cronkeit had to wait years to spring his trap but he was operating without satellites. Since the first Gulf War the list could be expanded to require the President to avoid all asymmetrical terror attacks on the troops, which I conclude means that we may no longer occupy a liberated land absent a causus belli involving a direct strike on our homeland from the occupied country or the discovery of WMDs.
So what has all this got to do with Fallujah? Well, at minimum, given the above list, it means that the Bush administration must at all costs avoid the appearance of indecisiveness or muddle. No one can deny that the administration looks absolutely confused at Fallujah. If nothing else in the modern age of televised warfare, the President must not fail to meet expectations which he himself and his generals have created i.e. he must capture or kill the bad guys who murdered our civilians in Fallujah. The administration has failed these tests. I note that the article alleges the capture of 27 of 28 insurgent leaders but I assume them not to be the actual murderers.
You can complain that these tests are unreasonable and impossible and you will gain my sympathetic understanding. The President may ignore these strictures and rely on the inertia of patriotism and his popularity to carry him. But eventually the friction of the left wing media will prevail and his capacity to wage war will be weakened. Bush has crossed this threshold and Fallujah (or should I say the perception of Fallujah) is part of the reason.
The President simply cannot lose the war of perceptions and remain a war President.
Of course other factors like Najef and especially the prison scandal have contributed. But there can be no doubt that Bush has lost the perception battle over the battle of Fallujah. The question is, has he also lost the war? The first sentence of your article from the WSJ Opinion page says it all, meaning the media is simply not reporting the administrations successes in Fallujah. These three have been used by the media to disillusion the American public and make them war weary. Consider the cost to Bush in the last 30 days to his approval ratings, the confidence in the conduct of the war, and his standing in the polls. More than half the nation now disapproves of his handling of Iraq and the line was crossed since we handed off at Fallujah.
We react to Fallujah because we are emotionally involved because of the atrocities committed there but we should also care about Fallujah because it is part of the war in Iraq and thus part of the World War against terrorism. To the degree that Bush loses ground in the election, America loses ground in this greater war and that imperils us at home.
I believe that Fallujah is also important ( and now I have the chance to finally find something positive to say,) because it represents a sea change in our policy in Iraq and one which I might add thankfully goes a long way to solving the 7+ perception problems listed above which confront a war President. In essence, Fallujah represents the inflection point in which the administration abandoned its Wilsonian goal of granting Iraq a Jeffersonian democracy through and extended occupation with attendant unavoidable casualties in favor of a more Machiavellian reality which deals with the Mullahs and local strongmen in a way reminiscent of the British occupation of India. I have previously posted along these lines many times.
It seems to me there are two models of waging war on the ground against terrorists. The first is Afghanistan and the second is Iraq. In Afghanistan, America demonstrated the capacity and the will to take out a government which had supported terrorists but undertook relatively little in building a shining new western democracy. Our cost in blood and treasure has been minimal. The second model, Iraq, saw the attempt to build a democratic paradigm at much greater cost.
Rather than being applauded for our selfless trouble, the distorted Arab mind sees our efforts and losses to be indicia of defeat in a quagmire. Indeed, much of the world, including western Europe and the domestic Democrat party see the efforts as, at best, misguided. These efforts in these two countries should not be judged sui generis but in the context of the world war against Muslim fanaticism and terror. I believe that Assad while Machiavellian is not foolish and has considered and rejected the possibility that he could end up in solitary confinement like Saddam if he flirts too closely with the terrorists. He probably fears his own fundamentalists more than the possibility that America will take him out. This is not the fear of Uncle Sam that we want to be animating the actions of these Arab dictators.
I listened intently to Charles Krauthammer s acceptance speech at his award from the Heritage Foundation in which he argued cogently that the Iraq model of building a democracy was not a bridge too far. I hope feverently that he is correct but I suspect that some dictators like Assad are betting that he is not. Assad has, in effect, concluded that George Bush has shot his bolt and cannot possibly start another war. He sees a fifty fifty chance that Bush will lose this election and Kerry will revert to the feckless appeasement of the Clinton administration.
I think it is time we reconsidered whether we can virtually alone take on the task of nation building throughout the Arab world and in Iran with the inevitable attendant guerrilla conflicts following a relatively cheap and easy regime change. Bush should modify his doctrine to confine it to regime change without the moral obligation to pay and bleed and die for a new democratic nation. If in the aftermath of regime change and new odious dictator assumes power, so be it, unless he supports terror in which case he will know that he will go the way of his predecessor.
I pray that the successes which this article cites are real and enduring. I pray equally that they are seen to be such. I earnestly hope that the turn in Fallujah on the ground and as a figure of the administration's change of policy has not come too late.
However, as the commander on the ground decided, as noted in the article, that would have caused too much destruction. The cost/benefit analysis is his call.
In regards to perception, we now, unlike 59 years ago, unfortunately have an enemy that will ensure that we always lose that battle:
Post 15 of FR Thread "Death Toll: U.S. Iraq Casualties Setting Records (gag alert)"
Here is an interesting account from a marine to his dad:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1146613/posts
Incidently, I was flattered to hear Faheed Zakawia(?) of Newseek and of ABC'S Stephanopolus adopt my Brithish Raj analogy on Aaron Brown a few minutes ago.
Here is another view of Fallujah for your review:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20761-2004Jun6.html
Here is yet another account for your review of the failure of the deal in Fallujah:
Marines: Deal with Iraqis in Fallujah may be failing
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1153593/posts
Here is one of several articles quoting Marines who believe that the "Fallujah solution [has}end[ed]badly..." I think those who reflexively supported their President or just the Corps should now come out and restate their positon on the Fallujah deal. At the time of the deal, I posted that the violence would diminish but that no murderers of our civilians or ringleaders of the insurgents would be brought to justice and that the whole bug out resembled Tora Bora. One might justify the Fallujah deal on domestic political terms but all pretenses of a military strategy suceeding should be recanted.
Why? 2,000 of the 2,500 insurgents were killed in Fallujah. The remaining 500 have no national support and are stuck fighting with fellow Iraqis.
Iraqis are now bleeding to police their own nation. This is what we want. We don't want to baby-sit them forever, we want them taking responsibility for themselves.
Moreover, it is up to the *insurgents* to go out and wreck the peace. Every day that they are stuck in Fallujah means yet another victory for our countrywide peace efforts.
In short, don't confuse the lack of complete anihilation with failure. The insurgents left in Fallujah serve as a daily reminder to the people of Iraq that no one wants to be stuck without a supply chain, without popular support, and without the ability to do anything outside of that one town. Who wants to live under the oppressive rule of the Fallujah mullahs and militia commanders? Who wants to fight fellow Iraqis? Who wants to go without pay and get shafted with poor equipment and lousy food? Who wants to live in an area that isn't getting U.S. rebuilding funds any longer?
Fallujah is a national recruiting poster, writ large, for what Iraqis *don't* want.
In the meantime, the new Iraqi government is fast becoming a fait accompli. The insurgents spent so much of their efforts fighting the wrong battles that they are only now realizing that they missed the bigger war.
Don't make that mistake yourself.
The President, the administration, and the generals promoted the investiture of Fallujah as the means of apprehending the murders of our fellow citizens whose bodies were mutilated and hung from a bridge.
The "deal" which was used to justify our bug out before the last holdouts were killed was touted as part of the original "plan" which was advertised in advance of the battle when it was obviously nothing of the kind.
The bug out was so egregious that posters like me called it another Tora Bora and flatly predicted all these outcomes...
and we were right on every count.
Fallujah is a national recruiting poster, writ large, for what Iraqis *don't* want
No Fallujah is a poster for a change in policy from democratization of Iraq to deal cutting and no amount of revisionism can change the reality. Fallujah is a poster for the fact that the American writ no longer runs in Iraq. It is a poster which says that terrorism and resistance works and that the American Marine corps is not willing to accept the casualties necessary to make its writ run.
You can argue that this change of policy to one of cutting deals with strongmen and Baathists is a good idea, but please do not try to deny the evidence before our eyes.
The evidence before your eyes is that millions of Iraqis are living their daily lives as if there wasn't even an insurgency. More electricity is being delivered, more oil is being sold, more schools and hospitals with better staffs and equipment in all...are all better now than pre-war everywhere except Fallujah and Sadr City.
The evidence before your eyes is that Iraqis are policing their own in Fallujah.
Sure, you wanted the clear victory of ego-gratifying overwhelming force that turned Fallujah into the next Carthage. Fine. Wish away.
But the broader goal was to start getting Iraqis responsible for policing thier own country, something that they are now doing in Fallujah...even at the cost of their own blood.
That's the victory. That and the honeypot effect that lead so many insurgents into that one little pocket for our Marines to dispatch by the thousands.
Hey insurgents, who wants to mass in the thousands today?! Anyone? Class? Class? Anyone? Farris??
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