Learning from Fallujah’s agony

Learning from Fallujah’s agony
Scilla Elworthy
7 - 11 - 2005


The second siege of Fallujah by United States forces in November 2004 inflicted huge damage and casualties on the Iraqi city. Scilla Elworthy asks what went wrong, and what strategy could have worked better for civilians and military alike.

...

With no time to take the path of negotiation, the coalition forces planned a “final” assault in November 2004 – “Operation Phantom Fury” – with US troops in the lead and British troops moving from the south to give cover. The US decided to subdue the city by force, closing all roads and putting it under total siege, as insurgents carried out car bomb attacks, killing Iraqi army and police, US army and Iraqi civilians.

...

It is easy to be wise after the event. But some further, overall lessons are worth learning for any military operation in the future:

It is foolhardy to engage on an invasion of this kind without the language skills and cultural understanding to collect and use intelligence in order to bring civic leaders “on side”; An invasion promoted as “liberation” needs to treat the liberated population with the same respect that would be shown to people in the home country; The ability to use overwhelming force is dangerous; soldiers at all levels need to be challenged to use the minimum necessary force at all times; All of the above have deep implications for the kind of people recruited into the military and the way they are trained.


http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-terrorism/fallujah_2999.jsp

... gave the US perspective: “This is not retribution. This is about making the city liveable so people don’t have to live in fear of the thugs who have taken over the city."

You don't by any chance work for the Pentagon do you, Briar?

Is this piece supposed to pass for a thoughtful consideration of what we did in Fallujah? You've got to be kidding.

If you want an honest treatment of the wanton slaughter we committed in Fallujah I suggest you visit this DU thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5298214

not the same as supporting it. It deserves thoughtful consideration, consisting as it does of criticisms of actions taken by the US military and recommendations for avoiding the mistakes made. Especially with regard to improving the training provided, which makes wanton slaughter (I agree with you about that: I don't share the writer's perspective, and I don't think it was limited to Fallujah nor that it is over) inevitable.

Getting the ordinary man or woman in the street to even start entertaining the idea that criticising the military is treason is so hard that any attempt to approach the matter is to be welcomed.

...What we did in Fallujah was NOT a mistake. It was an intentional massacre, which included the use of chemical weapons banned by the Geneva Convention, of ALL occupants (men, women, and children) of an entire city. That's no mistake, that's a war crime of the highest order, and to treat it as anything but that is to deny the truth.

inevitably involve the slaughter of civilians. A characteristic of modern war is that many times more civilians than soldiers are always, inevitably killed. Any time we go to war it is with the certain knowledge that innocents will die, and thus any attempt to distinguish what we choose to call "collateral damage" from the casualties of terrorist outrages is, in my opinion, specious. Order an army to war and you order the deaths of civilians as surely as night follows day, so you had better make absolutely certain there is absolutely no other alternative.

That was not the case with Iraq and so in my view the entire debacle is a war crime.

...that you don't consider what we did in Fallujah as standing out or really being so different from what we've done all across Iraq, and while I certainly agree that the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq was and is illegal, I don't believe anything we've done there compares to Fallujah. To do what we did in Fallujah, and then reflect on it talking about "unintended mistakes," "collateral damage" and "training issues" is to turn away from the truth of what transpired---we planned and executed the massacre of an entire city and ALL it's occupants. This is the stuff of Nazi Germany and there needs to be an accounting for it---we need a war crimes tribunal.

it has been done again and again since and may well be happening now. We are not, of course, being told very much at all. This is what happens when an occupying force attempts to control a population determined to resist. From the first catastrophic error we have plunged deeper and deeper into the mire.

I can only hope you're mistaken in this claim, but I don't doubt that we've committed equally horrific atrocities, if not on a somewhat smaller scale, elsewhere in Iraq. You're quite right that we continue to plunge deeper and deeper into the mire. How and when will this madness end?