"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.
Baloney. You are changing the standard to suit events.
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.