More on Events in Fallujah
Here are some links on recent events in Fallujah.
From the Washington Post’s Pamela Constable, a reporter embedded with the Marines, apparently, comes this story. I think it provides an important perspective that has been missing in the items I’ve posted so far: A wrong turn, chaos, and a rescue:
Marine officials said the three-hour battle that erupted at dusk Tuesday on the streets of Fallujah, and was recounted Wednesday by several of the key officers involved, exemplified the bravery and resourcefulness that Marines are known for, even when surprised and surrounded by a host of enemy fighters on alien urban turf. By the end of the tumultuous encounter, the charred personnel carrier had been towed to safety by a tank and most of its 17 crew members — several of them wounded — had been rescued from a house where they had taken shelter.
But the incident also revealed some startling facts about the insurgency that the Marines are facing here, officers said. More dramatically than any armed confrontation since U.S. forces surrounded Fallujah nine days ago, it showed the tenacity, coordination, firepower and surprisingly large numbers of anti-American guerrillas who still dominate much of the city.
“We definitely stumbled into a wasps’ nest. They were definitely a lot more organized than we thought,” said Capt. Jason Smith, 30, commander of the company whose armored supply vehicle made a wrong turn into insurgent territory and was immediately inundated by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades from all sides.
Marine officials here said offensive operations in Fallujah would remain suspended, extending a pause that was ordered Friday to allow civilians to leave the city and let political leaders in Fallujah and Baghdad attempt to negotiate a solution to the conflict.
Just before dawn Wednesday, however, AC-130 Spectre gunships launched a devastating punitive raid over a six-block area around the spot where the convoy was attacked, firing dozens of artillery shells that shook the city and lit up the sky. Marine officials said the area was virtually destroyed and that no further insurgent activity had been seen there.
I bet. It’s pretty hard to recconcile this last part with the earlier reassurances by Lt Col Byrne of the Marines that 95% of those being killed are armed insurgents. How do you flatten six city blocks in a punitive raid while making sure that you only kill 1 non-combatant for every 19 enemy fighters?
I find it interesting that the Marines were surprised by the level of coordination and resistance they encountered. The earlier items by the relief workers who travelled into and out of Fallujah over the weekend made it clear that pretty much the entire male population of the city, from little boys to old men, are toting Kalashnikovs and itching for a chance to shoot back at the guys sniping and bombing them — and that they are doing so with the active support of their neighbors.
Anyway, here are some more perspectives, courtesy of those anti-American propagandists at the Christian Science Monitor: Refugees tell of rising anger in Fallujah and Siege of Fallujah polarizing Iraqis. From the latter:
The Marines and coalition officials say they doubt many civilians have been killed in Fallujah and promise that their rules of engagement limit civilian casualties. “My solution is change the channel,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said earlier this week, after being asked about TV images of dead Iraqi civilians.
“The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources, that is propaganda, and that is lies.”
While the fog of battle makes it difficult to get to the bottom of their differing accounts, the political impact of the television images and of what most Iraqis deeply believe can’t be denied.
I’ll grant that it’s difficult to know exactly what the proportion of innocents to insurgents being killed is. But it’s obvious to anyone looking at the various accounts that this is a very different kind of fighting, with a much higher incidence of “collateral damage,” than the “pinpoint bombing” and “surgical strikes” that were employed during the initial invasion.
Let’s be honest about what has happened here. There was a conscious decision to make Fallujah an example, to respond in a forceful way to its ongoing defiance of the occupation, and in particular to the desecration of the bodies of the four contractors who were killed in late March. That act showed graphically, in a way that could not be spun away, that at least in Fallujah we were not viewed as benign liberators opposed by a mere handful of bitter-enders. We were hated occupiers facing a population that was united against us. So the word came down, no doubt from the highest levels, to show them who was boss. As with the Iraq invasion itself, the goal was to bypass that namby-pamby diplomacy/law enforcement/negotiation stuff and just go in with guns blazing.
I haven’t linked to it before, but I keep thinking about the short piece Scott Forbes posted on his “A Yank in Oz” weblog: Chickenhawk down. In it, he speculates that the strategy in Fallujah may represent the right wing’s response to the perceived weakness displayed by Clinton in pulling out of Somalia after Mogadishu. We know how to deal with brutal savages who parade our side’s dead bodies through the street. With force, brutally applied. Anything less will be taken as a sign of weakness, and will simply encourage more attacks on us.
Well, it’s an interesting theory, and one that obviously resonates with the way George Bush looks at the world. Whether it is moral, or will be effective in advancing US interests, is another matter. I’m skeptical, but I guess we’re going to get a chance to find out.
One more item: George Paine’s commentary on all this, from which I obtained most of the links above: Of punitive raids and public opinion. He calls what has happened in Fallujah a war crime. I think he’s probably right.
April 15th, 2004 at 8:59 pm
This is the second time you’ve referred to a law enforcement/diplomacy/negotiation option to solving the Fallujah rebellion, prior to force. But you’ve never said how that course of action would actually have worked. I suppose we would go in and simply ask the general population where the bad guys are and then arrest them? Surround every building, every house, every crack in the wall, and wait them out until they surrender? Send in a negotiating team to see what they will accept to get along nicely? You want wads of money? Sure. Thousands of guarenteed jobs? You got it. A promise that coalition troops will stay out of town? Done. A greater influence for the Baathists in the future government? You bethcha. Saddam’s release from custody? Alrighty. Total withdrawal of US troops from Iraq within 3 months? Consider it done.
And once every other city, from the most rebellious to the most tolerant, sees that their good behavior is up for sale, they will want to negotiate their own deals.
The people leading these revolts are not interested in fair dealings, in having a set of grievances heard, or getting a decent job and sense of security to raise their families. These people want coalition troops dead or gone. Period. They want to fill the resultant power vacuum with remnants of the prior regime or a new Islamic radical fundamentalism (depending on what group you’re talking to).
You can point to the disadvantages in the current course of action being used. It certainly has it’s share. But, despite my obvious sarcasm, I really would like to hear how this alternative approach would have actually been put into action.
And George Paine is right. There very likely are war crimes going on in Fallujah. Fighters using civilian homes, not to mention civilians themselves, to draw enemy fire. Forcing civilians to take up arms by way of threats. Killing civilians who refuse to cooperate.
Wait a second….were you talking about…..never mind.
April 16th, 2004 at 9:47 am
I hear hints of the same sort of straw-man argument that Bush likes to use. It’s not a question of an all-military versus an all-law-enforcement solution. In the real world, there are options in the middle.
Yes, you’re correct that the people leading the armed resistance to US occupation of Iraq are not interested in negotiated solutions. They’re interested in provoking a heavy-handed US response that will neutralize centrist Iraqis and drive the population toward their own more-militant position. Sort of like bin Laden did with the 9/11 attacks. And in each case, Bush’s response has played right into their hands.
Many of your sarcastic suggestions are, in fact, exactly the sorts of things we should be doing. Not in order to reward the violent, but in order to compete more effectively for the allegience of the not-yet-violent.
I think we need a less-narcissistic leader who doesn’t view every provocation as a challenge to his sense of self-worth, and who then makes a disproportionate response in order to salve his bruised ego. Because that’s what we’ve got now.
On the war crimes issue, point taken. Though I don’t think it’s necessary to share my moral revulsion at our current military action to realize that from a practical point of view, it’s a really bad approach. Unless you actually _like_ the idea of US forces killing noncombatants, policies that lead inexorably to more of that happening would seem like a bad idea, regardless of whether the other side is doing the same thing.
I wonder if you read that piece from MSNBC/Newsweek I linked to a few days ago. The author (Fareed Zakaria) had some interesting suggestions. Quoting:
[begin quote]
To defang the Sunni insurgency, military operations will not be enough. Force alone has rarely been able to crush an insurgency with popular support. The U.S. must bribe, cajole and co-opt various Sunni leaders to separate the insurgents from the local populations. It’s easier said than done, since there are few non-Baathist Sunnis of any stature. (They were all killed.) But the tribal sheiks, former low-level Baathists and regional leaders should be courted assiduously. In addition, money must start flowing into Iraqi hands. Too much of the money being spent in Iraq is going to American firms. Iraqi unemployment must keep falling fast if people are to believe that their lives are getting better.
[end quote]
While it wouldn’t satisfy the emotional impulse to hit back at the people who committed the March 31 atrocities, or, in the absence of the actual perpertrators of those acts, to turn the city they live in into a free-fire zone, such an approach offers the redeeming virtue of actually having a chance of making things better.
Appeasement! Caving in to blackmail! Well, yeah, from a certain point of view. But that’s the kind of position Bush’s decisions on Iraq have put us in. We broke Iraq. Now we get to fix it. It’s petulant and babyish to complain (as Bush and his supporters seem to be doing more and more lately) that the kinds of actions that will be necessary to achieve that, and which were predictable from the outset, are the kinds of things we don’t want to engage in.
To succeed in Iraq we’re going to need to be willing to acknowledge error, to cede real power to the UN, to cede real power to Iraqis other than Chalabi and his ilk. But Bush simply isn’t willing to do that by reason of personality. We’re basing our actions on a childish sense of injury, rather than acting like grownups. And that will predictably make the situation in Iraq spiral downward into more violence and chaos, with our soldiers and marines standing right in the middle of it.
Which seems pretty dumb to me.
April 16th, 2004 at 11:36 am
” It’s not a question of an all-military versus an all-law-enforcement solution. In the real world, there are options in the middle.”
I think you, and a lot of other people, need to keep this in mind in your criticisms of the current situation, as much as Craig and Bush do. It is wrong to condemn the violence of war as a matter of course, especially when you admit on the other hand that such violence is ultimately necessary. Of course the destruction of a city is horrible and will cause its share of horror, distrust and ill-will, but there’s not much to suggest that a completely non-violent response to Iraqi violence will do much good, either.
I must also suggest that your suggestion of American “war crimes” is a bit vague and inflammatory, just I have suggested that a few of your other low moments in the recent past have been vague and inflammatory. Soldiers killing people in combat, destroying property and bombing targets are not, in and of themselves, war crimes. They are often tragic, and some may not agree with the politics behind the actions, but they are not war crimes, unless you are prepared to take the position that war is, in and of itself, a crime, or that your dislike of this war has made everyone involved in it a criminal. Feel free to take either position, as much of the anti-war left has already taken one or both, which is why no one bothered to listen to them before this ugly business began. Otherwise, pony up with specific war crimes, or tone the rhetoric to a dull roar.
April 16th, 2004 at 12:10 pm
The sniping of ambulances is the thing I’ve seen cited most often as being a violation of war-crimes conventions. It is much-discussed in several of the items I’ve linked to.
If you can find somewhere where I’ve asserted that we can and should employ a completely nonviolent solution in the current situation, I’ll apologize for it. I don’t recall doing so.
I don’t think my own war-crimes rhetoric was particularly inflammatory. The only mention I’m of that that I’m aware of having made was this:
[begin quote]
[George Paine] calls what has happened in Fallujah a war crime. I think he’s probably right.
[end quote]
I don’t think I’m particularly naive about the sorts of things that happen in war — at least, no moreso than anyone else who hasn’t actually experienced it firsthand. I think a strong case can be made that the entire Iraq was was indeed criminal, in the sense that it violated international norms and treaties that the US has signed and claims to abide by. But I agree with you that that’s probably not a useful way to approach the issue at this point in time. Which is why I’ve been focusing more on the practical objections to the particular way we’re waging the war.
Everyone is free to, and everyone does, in fact, draw their own lessons from these events. The lesson that the last few weeks’ news out of Iraq has driven home with _me_ is that George Bush really has no way out of the current crisis. He’s emotionally incapable of acknowledging the reality of what is transpiring, and as a result will stick with policies that are driving us in the direction of failure.
He will never acknowledge that what he has done, and is doing, is wrong. His need to be right, and to be surrounded by people who repeatedly tell him he is right, is too strong to allow that.
I think our recent actions in Fallujah provide a glaring example of that. I also feel responsible, to some degree, for the evil that has been carried out there by our side, and so I’ve talked about that here.
I’d like very much to live in a world where wars don’t happen. I’m aware that I don’t live in that world.
April 16th, 2004 at 7:32 pm
Do you honestly believe US troops are intentionally sniping ambulances?
April 16th, 2004 at 7:47 pm
Dunno. But two different observers described lots of examples of it. Maybe the Marines in question decided that any moving vehicles in suspicious sectors needed to be taken out, flashing lights and ambulance insignia or no.
I think it’s actually a pretty peripheral point.
April 16th, 2004 at 9:50 pm
If any service man from any army takes shots at a clearly marked ambulance (assuming it does have flashing lights and /or ambulance markings, which might not necessarily be the case in a war zone such as Fallujah – but let’s assume, for the sake of argument it is ,) I hardly think it’s a “peripheral point.” If any soldier wantonly fires upon a clearly marked medical aide vehicle, it’s a direct violation of the rules of war, as every member of the Amnerican military is taught from day one. There is nothing “peripheral” about what is a basic breach of protocol and human decency. If what is occuring in Fallujah is criminal, and a main offense is the wanton firing upon ambulances by the US military, it seems pretty central to the issue of war crimes in Fallujah, wouldn’t you agree?
Do you think this is how American troops usually behave in the field, or does the climate of this particular war somehow encourage such indescriminate targeting of civilians?
April 17th, 2004 at 7:06 am
The question of whether or not Marines fighting in Fallujah have fired upon clearly marked ambulances may well be central to a determination of whether or not our side has committed war crimes in the assault on the city. When I call it peripheral, it’s not because I have a cavalier attitude about war crimes committed by the US. It’s because I think the question of whether war crimes have been committed in this particular way are dwarfed by larger questions about whether the US was justified in invading Iraq in the first place, and whether the forceful “pacification” of Fallujah will help or hurt the larger US mission in Iraq.
Now, obviously, I’m not there. But I’ve read the accounts of activists who say residents have described repeated sniping of ambulances. One talked about ambulances being disabled, such that they were left with no option but trying to use unmarked vehicles as ambulances. One story included a photograph of an ambulance with a bullet hole in the driver’s side windshield.
From the other side, we have Marines telling reporters about things like flattening a six-block area in a punitive bombardment after rescuing a group of Marines. We have Marines saying that in some cases, they consider anyone moving in the streets to be a legitimate target.
I”m also completely willing to believe that the insurgents would use ambulances to move their forces here and there through the city, assuming Marines were scrupulously honoring the “don’t fire on ambulances” rule. And I can imagine that if even one Marine saw even one armed man getting into or out of an ambulance, word would quickly spread through the Marines that the bad guys were doing that, and that ambulances should be considered a legitimate target.
As I say, I’m not making a big deal about this particular issue, because I think that given the circumstances, it’s actually pretty predictable that things would quickly devolve to Marine snipers shooting ambulances.
You seem to think that such behavior, if true, would be much more significant. Can you tell me why you think that way? Do _you_ honestly believe that in the current circumstances in Fallujah, Marines would actually _refrain_ from shooting at ambulances?
April 17th, 2004 at 7:49 am
Now that you have made the situation more clear, I don’t think most people could argue with Marines firing on some ambulances, in cases such as those you have described. However, I don’t believe that either you, or the activists (there’s a loaded word) you cite, initially intended to clarify the situation as you just have. There are opponants to this war who are trying very hard to give the impression that the US military is commiting indescriminate war crimes, and using the destruction of ambulances, without providing the context you just have, to back their point. Whether I think this war is right or not, that bothers me. It bothers me that you were willing, before you and I entered into the present conversation as deeply as we have, to paint an image of Marines firing upon well-marked ambulances with “flashing lights,” without conceding, up front, that some of these vehicles are probably not even ambulances, and those which are might be legitimate military targets.
I don’t believe for one second, based on my own experiences involving the US Military and military personel that the US Marines have made any widespread policy of firing upon marked ambulances, or disabling ambulances, unless the enemy has so undermined the ambulance system that the designation, “ambulance” has become meaningless. I do believe, however, that the situation in Fallujah, which many on both sides of the war debate have come to see as the make-all, break-all engagement in this war, has become so politicized by both sides that almost everything we hear about events in the city are highly suspect. The right-wing media portrays the operation as Wyatt Earp saving the day from the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, which is simplistic, but no more distorted than the suggestion among certain left-leaning sources that the US Military is behaving like the Viet Cong. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people believe that this war will be won or lost in Fallujah, and are entrenching themselves for the aftermath. Supporters of the war, and of George Bush, will sanitize war coverage to make all of this look mightier and more righteous than it is. Detractors of the war worldwide, and supporters of John Kerry in the US, will paint this conflict up as an impending defeat for the US or, in the event the US triumphs, sully the victory with suggestions that we won the day by sniping ambulances and targeting civilians. Now that the war seems to have become the only campaign issue, I don’t trust any partisan view of what’s happening in Fallujah, and will take for granted that any view – including my own – is a partisan view until the smoke clears.