The Fallujah Brigade: How the Marines are pacifying an Iraqi hot spot. (A definite should-read!)

The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal ^ | June 1, 2004 | Brendan Miniter

[quidnunc]

In Iraq, apparently no news is good news. Two months ago everyone was talking about Fallujah. Four American citizens had been brutally murdered, and then a raging mob dragged their bodies through the streets and strung them up from a bridge. Every mosque in the city was calling for jihad, while the local police and fire departments ceased to exist. Then two days into offensive operations, the Marines suddenly seemed to halt their advance. Fallujah quickly became a metaphor for everything that was going wrong in Iraq.

Today, however, the city of 200,000 is relatively quiet, and there's little reporting on why. To find out how the Marines were able to pacify a city in the heart of the Sunni Triangle — despite accusations that they were shrinking from a fight for political reasons — I spoke with Col. John Coleman, who is in Fallujah and is chief of staff for the First Marine Expeditionary Force, which is in charge of about one-third of the land mass of Iraq. What he said revealed a continuing battle in Iraq that appears neither hopeless nor without progress. In speaking with Col. Coleman it quickly became clear that many of the images of the war that trickle back through the media and reports of "cutting deals" with insurgents are often out of context. This is a sentiment Navy Secretary Gordon England also sounded last week in a speech over lunch at the National Press Club. Before taking over in Fallujah, the Marines identified 28 individuals who were leading the insurgency in and around Fallujah. To date the Marines have killed or captured 27 of them, he said. The coalition is clearly winning.

As they were battling through the city two months ago, the Marines realized they could easily crush the insurgency in Fallujah but in the process would "rubble the city." That would leave thousands of Marines patrolling the city, repairing infrastructure and trying to build working relationships with the inhabitants who remained. "That doesn't work us out of a job," Col. Coleman told me. Nor would it leave the Marines free to conduct other operations.

-snip-

[CGVet58]

thank you for the link, very informative.

In reading it, there are a few levels of information that stand out: that Yes, there is an inferred difference in occupation approach between our allies and us, and though the article is dated 23 may 2004, I have no trouble accepting the supposition that the Brits would have posted this approach last year, if only because the opposite (that they were more like us, then changed tack recently) simply does not have much of a leg to stand on.

But I sense a vestige of media bias in the article as well when discussing (and repeating again and again...) the "scandal" of Abu Ghraib. In todays media driven world, any scandal almost becomes defined by the life it first gains, then maintains, through the repitition and focussing it gets from the press. It's a vicious circle; the more the press reports on the event, the more "scandalous" it continues to be... at least, until the next issue which offers a chance to further drive a wedge between coalition partners, or offers the opportunity to discredit coalition efforts through selective and partial reporting presents itself again. At which point, the first "scandal" sort of drops off the radar as the world gets to see the indignant press vigorously chew on the next morsel on it's plate.

CGVet58

[Carcharodon]

Put simply, the Brits feel they know better when it comes to occupation because of their experience in Northern Ireland.

The fact that there's still parts of South Armagh where they prefer to fly out their rubbish rather than risk the roads may give lie to this, but there you go.

Put simply, I don't believe the Brit line. If the Paras were up in Fallujah or Najaf, they'd be doing what they've done at every place they've occupied from Boston to Amritsar to Derry - shoot civilians and generally act like animals.

[elfman2]

Thanks for the ping. I’ve been away lately.

This is a hopeful and underreported side of the Fallujah story. To be realistic though, it is focused on just that one side.

This sentence near the stands out, "Col. Coleman admits using the Fallujah Brigade wasn't necessarily the Marines' first preference... " I wonder how much of an understatement that was. {smile}