Rant: Cease-Fire in Fallujah is wrong way to go

[maddogchen]

So why have we stopped in Fallujah? Is it because of the lack of troops to take over the town?

This cease-fire thing is a big mistake if you ask me. It just strengthens the position of the insurgents fighting against the Coalition. Its becoming a focal point as more and more muslims travel there to fight our troops. The longer they hold out in Fallujah, the more legendary they become, and the more muslims will heed the call for jihad. If we had crushed them fast and furiously it would have served as a warning "Don't fvck with us or this is what you'll get." But instead we get boggled down in quagmire while they resupply, rearm, and reinforce the town.

Now I understand that crushing the town's resistance would mean a significant amount of civilian casualties as already witnessed by the graves of women and children. Yes that is saddening. But what I'm concerned more about is the amount of Coalition casualties that will go on as this lingers. People are gaining confidence in the insurgents hold out in Fallujah to fight the Coalition, and thus delaying the rebuilding of Iraq, and the withdrawal of Coalition troops and increasing the casualties of our troops. As evil as this might sound, we should have crushed their hopes in one mighty blow by capturing the city quickly and punishing those that resisted. Then they would have reverted back to their defeatism state and be easier to manage as we try to rebuild the country.

Now some might say that crushing the resistance quickly and harshly in Fallujah would only incite more hatred and violence. Trust me we already have that here with the seige. All the people we could have incited are already heading there now. Fighters from Fallujah are now spreading out to other areas to draw more people to their cause to come fight in Fallujah. People from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria are again crossing the border to travel to Fallujah to fight. If we had crushed them quickly, they wouldn't have a cause to go too.

Now others might say we should have dealt with this without the seige and let the Iraqi governing council or some top Cleric negotiate the surrender of the people involved in the 4 murders and mutilations. Personally I think that would have never happened. But if it did, it still would not have removed the underlining problem of Fallujah. Fallujah had become a base, a safe haven for resistance members and former Baath party officials to coordinate and instigate attacks on Coalition troops because they knew US forces and Iraqi police rarely bothered them there. This would just have delayed the inevitable, which was a clash with US troops.

Now what about winning their hearts and minds some might say? Well it doesn't really always work. After a year in Iraq, we have won a few people to our side. But for the others that resist, we must use the other way, a giant paddle. Growing up near a large Vietnamese community, I've leared from many Vietnamese friends about the failure of the US at winning people over in Vietnam. They would tell me stories of how by day US troops would come into a village and become friendly with villagers there in hopes of gaining trust and information about the Viet Cong. It would work for a while but then the Viet Cong would come at night and shoot and kill anyone that cooperated with US soldiers. My friends had many grandparents who were killed in the middle of the night by other Vietnamese. Winning Hearts and Minds don't work when you got a gun pointed at your head. I have many friends who grandfathers were village leaders, and they were the first ones shot to make a point to the people, not to resist the Viet Cong. All of my friends' parents had to flee because their villagers couldn't or wouldn't protect them. So lesson: kill all the resistance leaders and the rest will follow what you say. (yes its evil, yes it works).

Here is an example of how standing by and having a cease-fire has galvinized people to go to Fallujah and fight:

The U.S. Marine siege of Fallujah, designed to isolate and pursue a handful of extremists in a restive town, has produced a powerful backlash in the capital. Urged on by leaflets, sermons and freshly sprayed graffiti calling for jihad, young men are leaving Baghdad to join a fight that residents say has less to do with battlefield success than with a cause infused with righteousness and sacrifice.


"The fighting now is different than a year ago. Before, the Iraqis fought for nothing. Now, fighters from all over Iraq are going to sacrifice themselves," said a Fallujah native who gave his name as Abu Idris and claimed to be in contact with guerrillas who slip in and out of the besieged city three and four times daily.

He spoke in a mosque parking lot emptied moments earlier of more than a ton of donated foodstuffs destined for Fallujah -- heavy bags of rice, tea and flour loaded into long, yellow semitrailers by a cluster of men who, their work done, joined a spirited discussion about the need to take the fight to the enemy. They included a dentist, a prayer leader, a law student, a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi police and a man who until 10 days earlier had traveled with U.S. troops as a member of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.

"Our brothers who went to Fallujah and came back say: 'Oh, God, it is heaven. Anyone who wants paradise should go to Fallujah,' " Abu Idris said.

The lopsided battle 35 miles to the west -- where 2,500 Marines have been deployed -- has had a profound impact here, redefining for many in Baghdad the nature of the campaign against U.S. troops.

Intense, sympathetic and often startlingly graphic coverage on Arab channels has deepened a vein of nationalism, stirred in part by still unconfirmed reports of high civilian casualties. Over the weekend, in the living room of a decidedly secular family, a woman wept over the images on a screen she finally leaned forward and kissed.

Headlines in Iraq's newly free press reinforce the video images: "Fallujah Wakes to a Grave Massacre" read the banner in Monday's edition of the daily Azzaman. Fresh graffiti sprayed in sweeping Arabic letters is turning up across the city. On one wall in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Jihad, the messages were spaced 10 yards apart: "Long live Fallujah's heroes." "Down with America and long live the Mahdi Army," a Shiite militia. Then: "Long live the resistance in Fallujah." And finally, "Long live the resistance."

The popular response -- of Shiite and Sunni giving aid, shelter to refugees and even volunteers to the fight -- has pushed fears of an Iraqi civil war to the background. The fighters in Fallujah are said to include Mahdi Army militiamen loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr. A housewife in Baghdad's Salaam neighborhood told of a passionate argument with her husband, a Shiite who insisted on joining friends volunteering to fight in Fallujah.

"This is jihad," she quoted him as saying. She added: "It was the first time he ever slapped me."

Some here are already speaking with the sense of history -- that powerful, deeply symbolic myths are being created.

"What is striking is how much has changed in a week -- a week," said Wamid Nadhmi, a political science professor at Baghdad University. "No one can talk about the Sunni Triangle anymore. No one can seriously talk about Sunni-Shiite fragmentation or civil war. The occupation cannot talk about small bands of resistance. Now it is a popular rebellion and it has spread."

"I think it will be bigger than Karameh," he added.

For a generation, the battle of Karameh created the myths that propelled a movement. On March 21, 1968, an Israeli force of 15,000 struck at the Jordanian village of Karameh. The raid was retaliatory -- guerrillas had staged attacks from the village, just across the Jordan River. But in a rare success, Palestinian guerrillas forced an embarrassing Israeli withdrawal with the help of Jordanian artillery and armor.

For an Arab world accustomed to humiliating defeats, a draw can assume mythic proportions. Repelling the Israeli army amounted to the guerrillas' biggest victory up to that time and energized Palestinians.
Fallujah is producing a mythology of its own. In the parking lot of the former Mother of All Battles Mosque, now renamed for the sacred shrine in Mecca, Abu Idris told of a Saudi who came to Fallujah to fight. Hearing that a Marine was sniping from a minaret, the Saudi asked for a sniper rifle of his own, "and whenever a man came to stand on the minaret, he killed him," Abu Idris told the assembled crowd.


The account inverts the reports from the Marine side of the front, where U.S. officers warned infantry of insurgents' efforts to draw fire to the mosque towers. But veracity may be a secondary concern in a capital preoccupied by the belief that Fallujah is undergoing an unjust collective punishment for the mutilation of four American security contractors by a handful of men two weeks ago.

"It's natural that many fighters from Baghdad want to go to Fallujah and fight," said Abdulqadir Mohammad Ali, prayer leader at the modest Great Mosque in Baghdad's Washash neighborhood. A Sunni mosque in a mixed neighborhood, it displayed a Sadr poster on one wall.

Ali's office smelled like a bakery, so fresh were the cookies young men poured into the dozen bulging bags that crowded the room, more food for Fallujah. The imam spoke over the din of the Koranic verses that have been booming out of the mosque's loudspeakers since the siege began more than a week ago. On a bench beside a window, an elderly man read a battered copy of the holy book and occasionally sobbed. Abdullah Hussein Othman, a 70-year-old ethnic Kurd, explained he had two daughters in Fallujah.

"The exact image I want to give you is the young men heading to fight in Fallujah are more than the refugees coming out of Fallujah," Ali said. "We cannot control the feelings of the young."

The fighters, he added, reject the label "fedayeen," the name for deposed president Saddam Hussein's most zealous fighters, who, like the new insurgents, favor black attire. "We say 'mujaheddin,' " he said, Arabic for sacred combatants.

Slang has also evolved. Many Shiites recall a slogan they saw written on the barrel of an Iraqi tank dispatched to crush a 1991 Shiite uprising: "No more Shiites after today." In the tumultuous aftermath of Hussein's fall a year ago, new slogans went up across cities in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq: "No Baathists after today."

Monday, in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, there was another variation: "No occupation after today."

The resistance also recently acquired a logo. Two fingers form a victory sign over an image of Iraq on posters that appeared in Baghdad on Monday. The words "No to the occupation" appear over the date Baghdad fell: April 9, 2003. Sadr makes the same gesture in a poster of his own.

"I don't think any honorable Iraqi could stand by and do nothing when he sees women and children killed," said Abu Ali, a merchant in the once avowedly pro-Hussein neighborhood of Karrada. "An Iraqi must either fight or leave the country. It is better for him to be hosted by the graves than just watching and doing nothing."

How many Iraqis are volunteering to fight in Fallujah cannot be easily determined. The Baghdad man who quit the Civil Defense Corps because of Fallujah said he could name 30 friends who have joined the fight. But the man, who gave his name only as Ahmed, also spoke of Saudi fighters recently arrived in the city "to sacrifice themselves" and of word passing through the resistance that Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian blamed by U.S. officials for many suicide bombings, is sending a group into the country.

"There is no number to count the army that will fight the Americans," Ahmed said. "It's so big, it's limitless."

Abu Idris said some Fallujah natives insisted that they did not need help, leaving many volunteers to roam the region between the city and the capital. The area has become a no-go zone in recent days, with several journalists kidnapped and convoys attacked.

"Mujaheddin are just killing the agents who are supplying the Americans," said a teenager who gave his name as Abu Hanifa. He smiled, then scampered into the back of a blue truck with the other volunteers. Calling out for a photograph, they laughed and held up two fingers in a victory sign.

As the truck pulled away, the teenager called out: "We will defeat you, God willing."

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Cliff Notes:
People inspired by resistance in Fallujah
Insurgents spreading rumors of atrocities there.
Muslims joining in truckloads to fight US soldiers there.
Bad for Coalition troops.

In conclusion: We should crush the resistance in Fallujah quickly and effectively to crush their fighting spirit so that it won't delay the rebuilding of Iraq, the handover to a solid government, and the withdrawal of Coalition forces which would mean less casualties in the long run.

 

[Spencer278]

The only way to crush the resistance is to nuke the town. Its not like the people resisting have a sign on them. People will take a few pot shoots at the troops and then disappear in the city.

 

[smashp]

unless The US has no intention of Handing over power to the Iraqi's on june 30th and needs A Legit reason Not To.


One possible scenerio.


But the they do need more troops.

 

[rahvin]

Why are you opposed to all the jihadists collecting into one point to engage our troops? I say if they are all going to go in there to help let them, but don't ever let them leave alive. I support all our enemies collecting into one location so we can kill them easier.

 

[Passions]

Yeah, cease fire is just not the way to go. I think we should have 20 AC-130's running 24/7, just spraying the whole city for terrorists. It would show them who's boss.

 

[maddogchen]

Originally posted by: rahvin
Why are you opposed to all the jihadists collecting into one point to engage our troops? I say if they are all going to go in there to help let them, but don't ever let them leave alive. I support all our enemies collecting into one location so we can kill them easier.

Wow thats a good one, didn't think of that one.

 

[maddogchen]

Originally posted by: smashp
unless The US has no intention of Handing over power to the Iraqi's on june 30th and needs A Legit reason Not To.


One possible scenerio.

Man that would be the worst thing. Thats like one of the biggest reasons why most of the Shiite Clerics aren't calling to join Sadr. Because they know they'll be able to gain more control after the hand over. Take away the hand over, and it'll be a bigger rebellion.

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: maddogchen

Originally posted by: rahvin
Why are you opposed to all the jihadists collecting into one point to engage our troops? I say if they are all going to go in there to help let them, but don't ever let them leave alive. I support all our enemies collecting into one location so we can kill them easier.

Wow thats a good one, didn't think of that one.

I read that the town is surrounded by checkpoints to not allow military age men out. So how are all these Bagdhad jihadi's getting in?

Maybe we "forget" a few roads in, then clean up the trucks before they reach town.

 

[maddogchen]

Originally posted by: alchemize

Originally posted by: maddogchen

Originally posted by: rahvin
Why are you opposed to all the jihadists collecting into one point to engage our troops? I say if they are all going to go in there to help let them, but don't ever let them leave alive. I support all our enemies collecting into one location so we can kill them easier.

Wow thats a good one, didn't think of that one.

I read that the town is surrounded by checkpoints to not allow military age men out. So how are all these Bagdhad jihadi's getting in?

Maybe we "forget" a few roads in, then clean up the trucks before they reach town.

I've read that they're using backroads that the US forces don't know about. The Marines are only covering the main ones. But yeah, I also read about Journalists talking to people in Jordan who are driving into Iraq in taxis and buses to fight. Why doesn't the US military see that and ambush them when they enter Iraq?

 

[smashp]

Originally posted by: maddogchen

Originally posted by: smashp
unless The US has no intention of Handing over power to the Iraqi's on june 30th and needs A Legit reason Not To.


One possible scenerio.

Man that would be the worst thing. Thats like one of the biggest reasons why most of the Shiite Clerics aren't calling to join Sadr. Because they know they'll be able to gain more control after the hand over. Take away the hand over, and it'll be a bigger rebellion.

I agree, But many of those Same Clerics have been Talking about changing the Laws We have Enacted that Allow many things in Iraq such as foreign ownership and the Control Of Telicommunication systems for Example. We Want to Still control Everything But the Health care System. We Cant hand it over to them if they change the laws that are in our interest or remove the US, But We cant NOT hand it over to them also. Quagmire.

 

[maddogchen]

Originally posted by: smashp


I agree, But many of those Same Clerics have been Talking about changing the Laws We have Enacted that Allow many things in Iraq such as foreign ownership and the Control Of Telicommunication systems for Example. We Want to Still control Everything But the Health care System. We Cant hand it over to them if they change the laws that are in our interest or remove the US, But We cant NOT hand it over to them also. Quagmire.

damn...can't think of a way out of that quagmire.:frown:

 

[onelove]

good thoughtful post dog. IMHO, a one-sided truce is a stupid political tool, not a reality on the ground. I just heard about the 20 marines that got caught behind enemy lines surrounded by 50-100 iraqis. took 40 more marines and a couple hours to extricate them. some truce. its a tribute to the skill of our soldiers that there have not been more casualties.

asking our military to play along with this one-sided truce while the IGC tries to negotiate a resolution ('cha- as if) is totally unfair & crosses the line of political meddling in a WAR. If we had the ability to retake Fallujah with Operation Vigorous Resolve without taking significant casualties, we would have done so already. Its a 300,000 person city. Last I heard, we had like 1,200 marines surrounding it.

Bush may say he doesn't listen to public opinion, but you can bet he's counting body bags & knows full well there is direct relationship between that number and public support for the war (and thus, "his government")

 

[Drift3r]

Originally posted by: smashp

Originally posted by: maddogchen

Originally posted by: smashp
unless The US has no intention of Handing over power to the Iraqi's on june 30th and needs A Legit reason Not To.


One possible scenerio.

Man that would be the worst thing. Thats like one of the biggest reasons why most of the Shiite Clerics aren't calling to join Sadr. Because they know they'll be able to gain more control after the hand over. Take away the hand over, and it'll be a bigger rebellion.

I agree, But many of those Same Clerics have been Talking about changing the Laws We have Enacted that Allow many things in Iraq such as foreign ownership and the Control Of Telicommunication systems for Example. We Want to Still control Everything But the Health care System. We Cant hand it over to them if they change the laws that are in our interest or remove the US, But We cant NOT hand it over to them also. Quagmire.

Can't hand it over to the Sunni's because they supported Saddam and the Baathists and you can't hand it over to the Shiite's because of their religous conviction to turn Iraq into another Iran. Giving it to the Kurds would mean a all out civil war where both Sunni's and Shiite's unite. Play all three sides againist each other will only result in a all out civil war just like above.

 

[Moonbeam]

You guys that are critical of the way Bush is handling this make me sick. You bunch of arm chair generals don't know your asses from a hole in the ground.

 

[arsbanned]

Yes, there's a lot of tough talk in here. It's easy to be tough when other people's children are doing the killing and dieing.

 

[onelove]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
You guys that are critical of the way Bush is handling this make me sick. You bunch of arm chair generals don't know your asses from a hole in the ground.

thanks hearts-, cA.., er, alch.., I mean, Moonbeam