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."

[endthematrix]

That thread got hammered! Americans have an instable desire of ignorance of other cultures. Harvard and Yale policy wonks are notorious at this too.

[FreeReign]

Saddam was not afraid of world opinion when he was wiping out hundreds of thousands. Please explain our fear of it?

A: Saddam is a murderous a$$hole -- our president isn't.

---------------------------------------------------

So what you are saying is that if we storm the city and kill the rebels, we are murderous a$$holes - in your opinion?

Nonsequitur. The thousands that Saddam killed are innocent. The rebels in Fallujah are not.

[endthematrix]

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Learn and become wise...

[FreeReign]

If and when the Iraqi General and his Battalion remove the remaining resistance in Golan, who do you think will have won the war of Fallujah? -- while you look at pictures.

Does the name TORA BORA have any reasonance with you?

The Marines are still surrounding the city and there are no cave getaways in Fallujah.

Now answer my above question.

[AntiGuv]

I think you mean fully engage as opposed to containment.

Yes, that is what I meant. Sorry.

[Polybius]

Pictures, sir, pictures. The world does not have time for your nice definitions and punctilious concerns about whether I have misused the phrase bugging out. The world sees pictures of tanks backing up and Marines removing wire. The world sees the Marines bugging out, not repositioning . The next set of pictures shows a beretted Bathist general graciously acknowledging the cheers of the citizens of Fallujah. We just lost a battle in the picture war and the world is not stopping to read your dictionary

Reality, sir, reality.

It is better to win a real battle in a real battlefield in the Real World than to win a "Picture" battle in the news media of a European Continent that lost it's manhood in 1945.

The ruse de guerre has been used since the dawn of war: From Hannibal at The Battle of Trasimeno to the Normandy Invasion.

If Germany and the rest of Europe have forgotten the Art of War while enjoying the benefits of the Pax Americana these last 59 years, that matters as much as which tree my dog decides to relieve his bladder on tomorrow morning.

The only thing that matters is who is victorious when the battle is over.

In regards to Iraq, Germany's opinion matters as much as the opinion of my 13 year old daughter.

[churchillbuff]

They were soooo tough!

I assume you are posting from some battalion in Iraq, and not from a lazy-boy in Duluth. A tough guy like you volunteered to fight in Iraq, I'm sure.

[Major_Risktaker]

Maybe the old generals can keep a lid on them.

The old General will be dead in a week.

[nathanbedford]

There will be no reckoning in Fallujah in terms of disarming and neutralizing the insurgents. There will be an Arab deal just as there was at Tora Bora.

How are you going to judge who is an insurgent? The Bathist general certifies the place pacified and the real bad guys exfiltrate to murder elsewhere. The Marines are withdrawn after the administration claims victory resulting from its policy of vietnamization, opps I meant Irakization, and the insurgents renew their control of Fallujah, now in league with our denazified Baathist general.

Meanwhile, the world looks at pictures which show America humiliated and exposed as a paper tiger at Fallujah and a torturer of prisoners instead of a liberator.

I do not like the pictures any more than you do but I am not willing to dismiss their undeniable power when they do not fit my world view.

[easonc52]

Corporal Chavez should drop and do 300...

[Polybius]

There will be no reckoning in Fallujah in terms of disarming and neutralizing the insurgents. There will be an Arab deal just as there was at Tora Bora. How are you going to judge who is an insurgent? The Bathist general certifies the place pacified and the real bad guys exfiltrate to murder elsewhere.

The Baathist General is under the command of a U.S. Marine Colonel.

Fallujah is completely surrounded by Marines and a five foot high berm built by field engineers.

Nobody is getting out of Fallujah that the Marine commander does not want to get out.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

"Nonsequitur. The thousands that Saddam killed are innocent. The rebels in Fallujah are not."

Then you agree that we are backing off them only because of warped world opinion and not conscience.

[nathanbedford]

Reality, sir, reality.

It is better to win a real battle in a real battlefield in the Real World

What real victory? What battlefield? This is not D Day, this is Tora Bora.

Meanwhile, you cannot fight the greater war on terrorism and exterminate the terrorists before they destroy Cleveland without the help of Europe. If you cannot get Europe to help because it is right, then get them to help because we are meanest mothers in the valley.

Right now the pictures make us look like il Duce conducting an Italian ground campaign and not a force which must be accomodated. Even your 13 year old daughter can look at the pictures and tell the difference.

[GopherIt]

au point

[nathanbedford]

The Baathist General is under the command of a U.S. Marine Colonel.

Please.

These decisions are going all the way to Washington. A week of quiet and the place is certified safe and we declare victory. How are you going to identify a couple of hundred core bad guys from a hostile population of tens of thousands? You are not. You must accept the representations of your new best friends, the Baathists, who are cutting deals every night in the bazaar.

To hold otherwise is to knowingly and gleefully embrace a naiveté which would be amusing if it were not so dangerous

[Travis McGee]

My take:

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.

[nathanbedford]

Take a look at this George Will column, written, do doubt before the bug out. Imagine his consternation upon learningt that, at best, we have returned to the policy of the 82 Airbourne.







May 1, 2004


WASHINGTON -- ``We came here to start a soccer league,'' said a Marine major after a fierce firefight in Fallujah last week. ``Instead, they are forcing us to topple mosques.'' The attempt to manufacture soccer mullahs, like ordering thousands of Frisbees for distribution to playful Iraqis, may seem like episodes from a Graham Greene novel -- ``The Quiet American in Mesopotamia.''

But before the games can begin, the war must be won, and no war is won until the losing side knows it has lost. ``An uptick in localized engagements'' was the U.S. command's description of the current wave of violence that menaces the four main roads from Baghdad to Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Kuwait. And Bush administration voices still dismiss the insurgents as ``gangs'' and ``thugs.''

``The enemy did not run,'' said another Marine officer after another Fallujah battle. ``They fought us like soldiers.'' The enemy is coordinated and clever. The attack by two speedboats loaded with explosives that targeted a tanker taking on Iraqi oil in the port of Basra failed, in the sense that one boat was destroyed before it could strike the tanker, and the one that struck the tanker did not explode. But the attack succeeded in this sense: overnight the insurance rate for tankers shipping Iraqi oil exports doubled. This ``terror premium'' could make Iraqi oil too expensive for sale at the world market price, further damaging Iraqi reconstruction efforts at a time when pandemic violence in Iraqi cities has confined many private contractors to protected compounds.

By storing weapons and munitions in mosques and by firing from minarets, the insurgents do indeed compel U.S. forces to damage mosques, or adhere to rules of engagement that endanger American lives or preclude retaking any cities the insurgents choose to turn into combat zones. But if U.S. forces are to economize violence, they must disabuse the enemy of his recurring delusion that the United States is paralyzed by squeamishness about violence and its collateral damage.

Also, the enemy must not be allowed to bog down U.S. forces, or Iraqi units organized by and reporting to U.S. commanders, in protracted urban sieges -- sieges leavened by dickering about weapons surrenders. Such standoffs give the insurgents huge infusions of prestige for holding the superpower at bay and being treated by the superpower as a legitimate interlocutor.

If such standoffs are the real alternatives to forceful suppression of the insurgents, then it is feckless to object to such suppression because the insurgents hope to draw America into violence that will alienate the population. The population may detest an America that fights its way to control of cities, but the population will have contempt for an America that is unable or, worse, able but unwilling to wrest cities from insurgents.

Patrick J. McDonnell and Tony Perry of the Los Angeles Times report from Fallujah that some Marines criticize the tactics of the 82nd Airborne, which recently turned responsibility for the city over to the Marines: ``From the Marines' standpoint, the paratroopers left Fallujah to the insurgents, carrying out a containment strategy and allowing enemy forces to fester and grow.''

The 82nd tried to avoid a provocative presence, concentrating on targeted raids based on intelligence. Approximately 1,000 houses were searched, hundreds of suspects were arrested and many senior aides to Saddam Hussein were killed or arrested. McDonnell and Perry say the 82nd's tactics ``left a core insurgent element in Fallujah'' but ``also resulted in fewer casualties, both civilian and military.'' The 82nd lost only one paratrooper in its six months in the city, which ``while always restive, never deteriorated into open revolt.''

Marines, report McDonnell and Perry, say ``the veneer of relative calm was deceptive. The city has served as a `center of gravity' for insurgent activity throughout western and central Iraq."

All this will be studied by the services for years to come. Meanwhile, military commanders in Iraq face agonizing choices entailed by those antiseptic political locutions ``regime change" and ``nation building." The commander in chief seems not to fathom the depth of the difficulties when he describes the insurgent cleric Moqtada Sadr as a person who will not ``allow democracy to flourish." ``Allow"? If some bad people would just behave, democracy would sprout like tulips?

At a memorial service this week for Daniel J. Boorstin, the great historian who was Librarian of Congress from 1975 to 1987, and who died recently at 89, a eulogist recalled Boorstin's belief that history is ``a cautionary science." It is, but only if you know some. Those who do, will not send Frisbees to combat zones.

[nathanbedford]

Please see my post number 77

[smonk]

there has got to be more to this than we know right now.

this just doesn't seem like GWB and rummy.

[Southack]

You seem to be getting upset that Americans aren't doing all of the heavy lifting in Iraq, as if letting Iraqis handle Iraqi problems was an impediment to turning their country back over to them.

Let this Iraqi general calm Fallujah down. Should he actually lead and do real, useful work, then Iraq will be far along on their path towards taking back control of their own government.

And if he fails, the American military solution is always available...and it isn't like anyone can stop our military when we choose to unleash it.

Ergo: no downside.