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Return to Fallujah(Iraq Links) The Last Word on Iraq and Other StuffApril 13, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq - On television, the children are unmoving, dead in the streets, blood pooling and spreading underneath them. On radio, announcers accuse Americans of attacking helpless civilians, not even allowing them to move for treatment of their bullet wounds. In newspapers, the stories ask if the deaths of perhaps hundreds of innocent civilians is not a greater crime than the horrific deaths and mutilations of four Americans.It is the continued enthusiasm for imperialism, an imperialism that imagines the rest of the human race is of so little account that entire towns can be blasted into rubble for emotional gratification, that fills me with anguish. There is an extremely hazy distinction between stupidity and evil. I would venture to say that these rulers of Iraq we have are stupid to a degree that embraces evil. When this conflict began, I favored an explanation that partook chiefly of evil: there was the intractable dilemma of the sanctions regime, and afterwards the disposition of Iraq's awesome oil rents by CPA fiat that would have served nicely. But it would transpire that this war is like the conflict in Vietnam thus: it is so costly it defeats any rationalist explanation for it. Bremer has administered the country in all respects to serve American sensibilities—pride, arrogance, and vanity. The appropriation of contracts was from the first a sinecure for the Beloved of George. The conduct of foreign relations after the fall of Baghdad was calibrated to caress the ruffled feathers of the war party; opponents of the war in other nations were snarlingly dismissed as pointless, and denied the privilege of bidding on reconstruction contracts. Who know it would be a favor? In theory, economically-minded people spend $1000 to get $1000 worth of utility. In practice, people often have occasion to murder for satisfaction; their neighbors pick up the tab. In practice, people will commit a crime of turpitude x, then—rather than admit they were wrong—commit another crime of 10,000x. How would I explain this to a young historian when I am old?
What do supporters of the Administration think at the moment? One commentator opines thus: Comments, Political Animal: Here is something to consider: could anyone have done a better job? I am strongly inclined to say no.Notice the writer borrows a rhetorical page from Donald Rumsfeld. Unfortunately, even our heroic apologist's straw man is able to land a few haymakers. We offered the Iraqis democracy. At this point, I don't know if they are going to accept it.I want to say I've read comments by this commentator before, and I think he's basically a nice guy who has an astonishing capacity to overlook painful facts. We certainly are stealing their oil and raping their women, and I'd venture to say the oppression is fairly well established. Readers who doubt me should request evidence. Our soldiers died to free them from Saddam. Hundreds of thousands of others have risked their lives for the same noble cause. We spent a lot of money trying to transform Iraq into a more modern state.Sure, this is true. But when the tire hit the pavement, Iraqi society went backwards. We helped write a constitution. Are prepared to hold free and fair elections.Sorry, that was fantasy. There are lots of dictatorships with fine constitutions; it's the governing institutions that matter. We are offering them paradise. And there's no ulterior motive here. We don't want them to support Israel or sell us oil at deeply discounted prices. All we want is respect for human rights and regular elections. Nor is there any condescending colonialism. We are offering Iraqis these things because we believe in them. They're not just brown tribesman "incapable" of self-rule. No, we presumed that they are just capable of it as we are.Do I need to explain why I believe this is moonshine? May I delegate this detail to foreign readers? Do I see a show of hands of volunteers? Be nice, please. He means well. A lot Iraqis have spit in our eye.Actually, the contractors were killed by an RPG; a group of gangsters holding the Japanese hostages threatened to burn their hostages. Nor need I add, "Has the gentleman never heard of napalm? It also burns people alive." But it looks to me like the writer is judging our initial kindness to the long-suffering Iraqis to have been a mistake. The people fighting us aren't fighting for a just and worthy cause. Sadr is no Thomas Jefferson or Simon de Bolivar. Nor are those Baathist holdouts. They're thugs, evil incarnate.Lord, I must have read this a million times. And yes, people believe this. I recall a supporter of the invasion (who had opposed American involvement in the Vietnamese Civil War) telling me "Saddam is no Ho Chi Minh." Well, he certainly wasn't; but then, was Ho Chi Minh ever Ho Chi Minh? I think a leader of unimpeachable virtue is never necessary for this sort of thing. People hate having their country occupied and forcibly transformed. Why is this difficult to understand? I believe that most Iraqis don't support the extremists, or at least don't really want them to be in charge. I suspect, though I cannot prove, that most would be perfectly content to live under a western-style democracy and don't crave a theocratic state.Believe it or not, actually doing precisely that would be a very popular decision in the Arab world. I don't believe the author understands how profoundly and how frequently Western nations meddle in the affairs of the Arab world. If the Arabs are this brutal, maybe they really can't handle democracy.Which they have done quite a lot of already. I don't think the writer meant to parody the internal dialogue of imperialists, but I'd say he's done a splendid job. But wait, there's more; he really does mean well: Now, I am not sure that I believe the above. But it has been a discouraging week. I am not — repeat not — ready to declare defeat yet. Part of the reason is that if I think that if the extremists really enjoyed popular support, they would not need to resort to violence in order to prove their point. They could simply wait until June 30, and power would be theirs for the taking. Also, the coordination of this offensive is very suspicious to me. If there were really a huge groundswell of Iraqi nationalism or anti-Americanism, we would have seen it already. Personally, I smell the involvement of neighboring regimes, but I don't know enough to say so for sure.Is this guy channeling Eugene O'Neill? But man, it's been a discouraging couple of weeks.I swear by the seven saints I am not making this up. In the short term, I think we need to stay the course. Let's see what happens after June 30. At that time, the new Iraqi government will be able to do things that we cannot — like hang some thugs from lampposts, for example. Also, I continue to believe in the Iraqis and think that they will embrace the miracle of democracyI greatly welcome comments and rebuttals, though I guess you already knew that as a general principle. ADDENDUM: I was very impressed by posts by Tex at Unfair Witness (1, 2, 3). Tex is doing an amazing job. Also, I have been remiss in failing to link to Steve Gilliard. Would it entice readers to visit him if I posted an extract? I shall, then: Thomas Hamill was a dairy farmer not long ago. But then he sold his farm and started driving trucks. Living in rural Mississippi, that didn't pay great. Then, of course, his wife had open heart surgery a couple of months back. With debts and a sick wife, he was looking for a better paying job. Kellogg, Brown and Root had one. Great pay, 10K a month, tax free. Benefits. Only one catch. It was in Iraq.Have I mentioned that imperialism is unpopular among the subject peoples? (Permalink | Iraq Links) NOTES: 1.1 Ben Tre is the name of a province and its capital city; the entire province is part of the vast Mekong River delta. In February 1968, US and ARVN forces recaptured the city from the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), which had taken it during the Tet Offensive. Afterwards, Peter Arnett (then of Associated Press) quoted a US Army major declaring, "It was necessary to destroy the city in order to save it." Very early on in the war, the methods and priorities reflected a colonial war against a subject population, rather than the defense of a friendly people against their enemies.Return to FallujahNovember 14, 2004
(Wiki article on Fallujah; USA Today flash of Operation Phantom Fury; Global Security map)
The assault on the western Iraqi city of Fallujah resumed in earnest a week ago yesterday. I've combed a number of news reports, as well as everything Juan Cole and Mir Rosen have had to say about the matter (which see). A few observations:
First, the ideological disparity in coverage is very stark. I did not spend very much time reading the National Review or the American Spectator, which were not interested in the subject anyway (the AS, I perceive, seems very indebted to the philosophy of Oswald Spengler; link is to a site of ill-repute, so be forewarned); however, the NYT coverage tended to emphasize the role of the town as a rebel enclave, suppressing the fact that many tens of thousands of civilians live in the city, and probably several thousand were killed or maimed; they also tended to cultivate a narrative of fanatical defenders, fighting though doomed, and the conquest of the city as a logical next (final?) step towards the pacification of Iraq. The Washington Post, in contrast, was far more likely to portray the assault as a miscalculation. Al-Jazeera emphatically portrayed the assault as a series of de-contextualized atrocities, and the Independent furnished a context of a villainous administration covering its malfeasance with a massacre.
Second: this assault was singularly brutalizing, accompanied by a week of bombardment that curtailed food, water, medical treatment, and movement. Pres. Iyad Allawi denied any civilians were killed (Reuters), which is so implausible a remark that it seems impossible that he expected anyone to believe it. Instead, I would argue that he is warning Iraqis in code that insurgent towns can expect no quarter from his junta.
This extends to the tactic of cutting off relief convoys from the Red Crescent. The Marines appear to be forcing the entire population to either accept aid from them directly, or face death by thirst.
The scope of misery inflicted by Iraqi government and US forces in Fallujah can be found at Amnesty International: [...]
More than 10,000 US marines and 2,000 Iraqi security forces launched, on Monday night, an attack on Falluja which has been under insurgents’ control since April 2004. At least half of Falluja’s residents reportedly left the city before the attack [Where did they go?—JRM]. However, according to press reports tens of thousands of civilians are still inside. There are concerns that a humanitarian crisis is looming with acute shortages in food, water, medicine and with no electricity. There are also many wounded people who could not receive medical care because of the fighting. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society stated that it had asked the Iraqi interim government and US forces for permission to deliver relief goods to civilians in Falluja and to send a medical team to the main hospital but had received no response. The crisis that led to the phase of Fallujan autonomy (April-Nov '04) seems to have been a long-simmering accretion of rejectionist clans and ideologues in the city. It may have been a nexus of Ba'thist loyalists after the invasion, but based on the Nir Rosen series (linked below), it had become a place where all manner of rejectionists made common cause, committing each other to a pact of utterly implacable resistance in the face of certain death. In a sense, the operation was calculated to poison the well for any future accommodation, since any president inheriting a post-Phantom Fury will inherit no pacified nation (the insurgents will no doubt either melt away, or be widely immitated by fellow clan members).
The failure of post-invasion planners in the Bush White House to contemplate the needs of 23 million Iraqi humans ensured that there would be a massive and sustained opposition. In dealing with such an opposition, the methods have if anything become increasingly harsh, and the re-election of George W Bush seems to provide the go-ahead to methods borrowed from the playbook of Hulagu Khan (examples here), subjecting the population in insurgent pockets to a crescendo of vengeance and provocation. As usual, defenders of the policy in praxis point to the monstrosities of some insurgent groups [**]. This has also been used, unsurprisingly, to defend the Sudanese government's atrocities in Darfur.
In fact, the atrocious behavior of the insurgents in Anbar Province or in Darfur do not justify what has been done either by US forces or by the Sudanese government in those respective regions. In both cases, the state had a duty to protect civilians, a duty it clearly ignored. And in both cases, defenders of the state insist that the trucculence of the enemy is the only context that matters. One could be justified in assuming that the fire-eaters at Little Green Footballs believe the entire population of Fallujah was, in fact, individually and personally responsible for whatever horror has occurred in Iraq since the hijirah of Muhammad 1382 years ago.
If I have to explain to any readers why this is unreasonable, I will, but I suspect this is painfully obvious. Strategically, the US management of the Occupation has left the Iraqi resistance with few choices; but this choice—occupation of selected towns, last stands, and violence against "collaborator classes"—remains open and, by and large, rewarding. I am not prepared to insist that the planners at the Pentagon meant for things to turn out this way; "this", being an epidemic of violence that Administration officials can then identify in the popular imagination with the entire neighboring population, and thereby validating endless slaughter as a satisfying denouement. That notwithstanding, I do say that the government and its media subalterns seem to adapt very efficiently to the new cover story, viz., that massive Fallujan deathtoll is self-exculpatory.
HUH?
Let me put this in plain English: the official take on the slaughter in Fallujah is that about 1,200 insurgents were killed in there in the last week. Very likely 1,200 persons did die in the city, probably a lot more than 1,200; but I suspect only a few were serious combatants. However, the large number of dead will be interpreted as evidence that this was merely a fierce battle, and so—as in all major wars—a large number of innocent bystanders were tragically killed. In other words, large battle means inevitably large number of civilian dead; especially since there is a gray area between civilian and combatant in this conflict.
The large number of "enemy" dead, in contrast, will be interpreted as evidence that the attack was a blow to the jugular, so to speak, of the enemy. It will be taken as grounds for believing more mopping up is inevitable and necessary because the war is a major one. A dialect of violence will become established, in which a climate of perpetual killing validates a mobilized US security apparatus, and all questioning of violence will be interpreted as treason.
UPDATE: The Battle of Fallujah continues scarcely abated (VOA; AFP; Reuters). Meanwhile, a battle rages for the northern city of Mosul (Arabnews; Reuters).
Juan Cole (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11); Juan Cole in Salon; Federal News Service (link—Juan Cole); Nir Rosen's reports from Falluja (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; courtesy of Dan Kervick (New Century Journal); Riverbend (Baghdad Burning; 1, 2, 3); EastSouthWestNorth; New York Times:
(Permalink | Iraq Links) Al-Jazeera:
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