The Washington Post reports that despite an agreement providing that "the Fallujah Brigade" was to provide security, insurgents control Fallujah:
The travelers entered Fallujah first through a checkpoint operated by the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a U.S.-trained paramilitary unit meant to add muscle to the American-led occupation. The men in black berets distractedly waved cars past, onto the city's main street.
Then it became apparent who was really in charge. A few yards in, wild-eyed young men in masks pulled cars over at will, searched them and demanded identification documents. No one could leave or enter without passing muster. Other groups of fighters in masks roamed side streets and alleys, brandishing rifles at all sorts of angles.
It was not supposed to be like this. Under an agreement made last month with U.S. Marine commanders, a new force called the Fallujah Brigade, led by former officers from Saddam Hussein's demobilized army, was to safeguard the city. The unruly gunmen -- many of them insurgents who battled the Marines through most of April -- were supposed to give way to Iraqi police and civil defense units.
Instead, the brigade stays outside of town in tents, the police cower in their patrol cars and the civil defense force nominally occes checkpoints on the city's fringes but exerts no influence over the masked insurgents who operate only a few yards away.
The Marines gave the brigade the task of apprehending the killers of four American contractors whose bodies were burned, mutilated and hung from a bridge in March, capturing foreign fighters and disarming the insurgents. None of that has happened.
[. . .]
"We don't intend to go in wholesale. There's no doubt we could clear Fallujah out, but to what end?" asked Col. Larry Brown, an operations officer with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force camped outside the city. "We measure progress in small steps. We prefer to bring them back into the fold slowly. It is a good sign that Iraqis are handling their problems."
[. . .]
Fallujah residents who supported the creation of the U.S.-backed Fallujah Brigade said the city was unsettled but not out of control. Jasim Saleh, one of the brigade's commanders, said "it is a mystery" who was kidnaping foreigners and that he opposed imposition of Islamic law in the city. Insurgents who came to Fallujah from elsewhere are being pressured by local leaders to leave, he said, adding that the killers of the American contractors have probably already fled the city. In any case, he said, "Everyone in Fallujah condemns the mutilation."
Saleh said there was no need for the Marines to resume patrolling the city, because about 1,700 brigade members are equipped to take control. "There are still influences in Fallujah trying to spoil the accord. Many are from outside the city and some from outside Iraq, but we will soon be able to dominate Fallujah," the former army officer said in a telephone interview.
My first reaction to this Washington Post article was we should have sent in the marines and sanitized Fallujah. I recalled that Lewis E. Lehrman and William Kristol as well as Victor Davis Hansen had written recently that we should destroy the insurgents in Fallujah.
Two weeks ago Lehrman and Kristol wrote in the Washington Post that before Iraq can be economically and politically reconstructed Fallujah must be conquered:
If a provisional Iraqi sovereign government is to operate effectively from July until the elected government takes power in January, adequate security is necessary. This requires striking a decisive military blow against the armed insurgencies that seek to prevent the Iraqi government from coming into existence. As was the case in 1864, the immediate task is therefore the destruction of the armies and militias of the insurgency -- not taking and holding territory, not winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis, not conciliating opponents and critics, not gaining the approval of other nations. All of these can follow after victory over the violent insurrection.
So any armed insurgency opposed to a peaceful transition in Iraq must be destroyed. Fallujah must be conquered and terrorists denied safe haven in Fallujah and other centers of insurrection.
Similarly Hansen also wrote
here that we should take care of business in Fallujah:
Small armies, whether those of Caesar, Alexander, or Hernan Cortés can defeat enormous enemies and hold vast amounts of territory — but only if they are used audaciously and establish the immediate reputation that they are lethal and dangerous to confront. Deterrence, not numbers, creates tranquility and the two are not always synonymous.
A thousand Marines shooting the first 500 gunmen they saw, broadcast on al Jazeera, would be worth the deterrence of another armored division. Taking Fallujah and killing Baathist killers while putting victorious Iraqi coalitionists on television would have been the equivalent of calling up another 40,000 reservists.
Then I remembered reading a
letter from Major Dave Bellon. Major Bellon explains that because the Marines are staying out of Fallujah, the insurgents are revealing themselves to be thugs and evildoers they are:
As far as Falluja goes, we have not been allowed to get back in there with any real numbers yet. Initially, it was confounding. However, a very interesting dynamic has developed. Since we have stayed out of Falluja and focused elsewhere, the mujahadeen have had their run of the town. As they have had no one to fight, they have turned their criminal instincts on the citizens. The clerics who once were whipping these idiots into a suicidal frenzy are now having to issue Fatwas (holy decrees) admonishing the muj for extortion, rape, murder and kidnapping. It is unfortunate for the "innocent people" of Falluja but the mujahadeen have betrayed themselves as the thugs that they are by brutalizing the civilians. There are, in fact, reports of rape, etc from inside the town.
While the muj are thugging away inside the town, we are about 1/2 mile away paying claims, entering into dialogue and contracting jobs. The citizens come outside the city for work and money and are treated like human beings. They go back inside and enter a lawless hell. In short, the muj have done more to show the people what hypocrites they are in a few short weeks than we could have hoped for in a year. The result is more and more targetable intelligence. If we are given the green light, we can really go to town on these guys (no pun intended). However, as much as we would like to do just that, the optimal solution is to empower the Iraqis to take care of it themselves. That is precisely what we are doing.
I think the strategy of the Marines to back off and lrt the Iraqis solve Fallujah is worth trying. It distinguishes us from the bad guys. If it doesn't succeed we can always do it the way Lehrman, Kristol and Hansen suggest. Our opponents and the allies in fact, the mainstream media, will then yell bloody murder about all the Iraqi casualties. The bad guys will at least fear and hate us. even if they don't respect us.
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