Autopsy of a Failed Occupation

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18397
Autopsy of a Failed Occupation

By Christian Parenti, AlterNet
April 13, 2004

Arrogance and incompetence are becoming the signature aspects of U.S. military rule in Iraq. Exhibit A is the siege of Fallujah, where more than 600 hundred have died within the past week.


Let's be perfectly clear about why we are in this bloody situation: The current uprising in both Sunni and Shia areas of Iraq was provoked by L Paul Bremer III, the American proconsul in Baghdad. First, he shut down al Hawza, the small weekly newspaper (circulation 10,000) of Moqtada al Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric. Then Bremer arrested one of his top aides and announced the imminent arrest of Sadr himself as an "outlaw." When Sadr's followers gathered in protests in Firdos Square, U.S. troops opened fire on them, and then took the battle into their stronghold, the Shia slum of Thawra, or Sadr City.


At the same time, Bremer and the U.S. military vowed spectacular revenge for the brutal killing of four contractors in Fallujah. In retaliation, the Marines laid siege to the town and are now bogged down in bloody fighting on its outskirts.


The truth is that had Bremer and Pentagon's top ground commander Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez played it cool and not provoked the Shias or attacked Fallujah, Iraq today would probably be limping along in relative peace – as it has been for the past year.

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a Failed Occupation

"Arrogance and incompetence are becoming the signature"

Bremer inc.

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In counterinsurgency efforts past, lack of real reform – that is lack of real reconstruction – has forced the military to use increasingly greater levels of terror to ensure compliance. To separate what Mao Zedong called the "fish" of guerilla from the "sea" of the people, counterinsurgency forces use aerial bombardment, defoliation, forced relocation, torture and lots and lots of killing. This was the pattern in Vietnam, El Salvador and Guatemala and is still the case in Colombia.


This hyper-violent "plan B" that is now rearing its ugly head in Fallujah, where AC-130 gunships are being used to concentrate fire into densely packed civilian neighborhoods.

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policy that has created even more ill will, if that is possible, around the world. What a horrible way to enter a new millennium.