Here's what Iraqis are saying about Fallujah:
From Alaa at the Mesopotamian:
For the valiant soldiers doing battle in Falujah today: like the medieval knights, you have engraved on your shields severed heads of kidnapped victims, murdered children, the hundreds of thousands of the dwellers of mass graves. You are the instruments of the Lord’s retribution. Have no mercy on this vermin, they do not deserve any. God bless you and protect you for you are doing his work. Salaam
Over at Iraq the Model Mohammed writes:
... Iraqis are convinced that this emergency law won’t be similar to the “laws” that governed their lives under Saddam; people know that a real change is under way and that the new laws are going to protect the citizens instead of oppressing them.Perhaps the fact that most the Fallujans left the city proves that they have no intention to confront the Iraqi and multinational forces and it clearly means”go get the bad guys” and this discredits the media’s theory which claimed that “most of the Fallujans are willing to fight”.
The decision to enter Fallujah also shows clearly that the government is determined to build security and stability and to create a healthy environment for the coming elections and in fact the government realized that this is a public demand and that the time has come to answer this demand and start dealing really tough with the terrorists and outlaws.
Ays at Iraq at a Glance reports that the terrorist actions within Iraq struck close to him and he worries we won't be able to end them:
My brother’s friend has been killed in AlAnbar governorate last week, ‘AlTawheed wa AlJihad’ which belongs to AlZarqawi is responsible for that, they killed his wife too, because they were ‘cooperating with the occupier’. In fact they were doctors and supplying the Iraqi National Guards with some necessary medical things.They’ve been beheaded also.
I wonder when we can arrest one of those terrorists. We always find the corpses of the victims and can not capture those criminals, yes there are operations in Fallujah against the terrorists but I did not hear news saying that one of those terrorists was killed or captured. I think the enemy is stronger than we expect
Check out his later post about the history of Wahabist attacks on Iraqi Shia and Shia holy shrines. What is happening now has a long history.
Zeyad at Healing Iraq is a Sunni currently in Basra. He is sensitive to those sectarian issues that Zarqawi and the (nominally Sunni) Ba'athists wish to stir up:
The demands of the Fallujah negotiants from the government weeks ago were obscene and they clearly reflect the overt sectarianism and regionalism of the armed groups in the area. Iraqis here in the south were shocked to hear of these demands and sectarian tensions are on the rise. It scares me to see the reaction of people around me whenever Fallujah is mentioned. The director of a primary health care clinic was remarking the other day that "Fallujah should be burnt upon its residents and then razed to the ground. They are the sons of Mu'awiya, may Allah curse them all." Sidenote: Mu'awiya bin Abi Sufyan was the governor of Syria during the 7th century and he fought Imam Ali bin Abi Talib (Muhammed's son-in-law) over the Caliphate after the assassination of Caliph Othman. He became the first Ummayid Caliph and two decades later, under the Caliphate of his son Yazid, Imam Hussein bin Ali (grandson of Muhammed) was killed by his armies at present day Karbala. Someone hushed the director and pointed out to him that I'm Sunni. He was a bit embarrassed and tried to explain that he was referring to Wahhabis and foreign fighters. It was a bit uncomfortable and I could feel that people were giving me furtive glances.
However, an expat Iraqi is more optimistic:
I would point out that there is not one instance in Iraq's modern history of, say, a Sunnite village rising to massacre its Shiite inhabitants, or vice versa. The same is true of Iraq's other confessional and ethnic groups, with the exception of the maltreatment of Iraq's Jewish population over the issue of Israel in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Other than that one example, in those instances in which massacres of ethnic or religious groups have taken place, I am noting that guilt has always lain with the central government in Baghdad in exerting its authority over the population in question. Two prime recent examples are Saddam's monstrous chemical attacks in Halabja and other Kurdish areas, and his brutal suppression of the rebels in northern and southern Iraq in 1991. Saddam Hussein knows no tribal, confessional, or ethnic loyalties. He has killed members of his own family at the slightest suspicion of disloyalty. The point is this: When Iraq's central government does not play a malevolent role, Iraq's ethnic and religious groups have maintained a high degree of harmony and accord. Given a non-militarized, democratic government more devoted to development at home and peace with its neighbors, there is every reason to believe that Iraqis will rebuild a pacific, cohesive, pluralistic nation.
He goes on to say:
Some question, in the specific case of Iraq, whether the Iraqi populous is ready for democracy and if democracy would succeed in Iraq.. I submit that it is.Since the coup of 1958 in which Iraq's nascent political institutions were utterly destroyed to be replaced by the rule of a man/group/party, Iraq has been subjected to different level of tyranny spectrum, from the military figure Kassim of 1958-1963 to the fascism of Saddam Hussein. More particularly, over the past twenty years, Iraqis have paid a mortifying price for the absence of legitimate political institutions: 250,000 killed in the disastrous war with Iran; 200,000 Kurds killed in the Anfal Campaign; 200,000 killed in the Gulf War, first by allied forces, then by Saddam's thugs; then came the devastation of twelve years of on-going sanctions. The number of Iraq's dead over this twenty-year period thus approaches one million souls.
Iraqis have learnt the lessons of the consequences of tyranny. When given an opportunity, and with US help, the Kurds of Northern Iraq have re-established political institutions reminiscent of those which predated the coup of 1958. They have, for instance, elected a parliament to legislate in the areas in the northern no-fly zone. Iraq's Kurdish citizens began the daunting task of rebuilding a civil society at the first opportunity they had of doing so without fear of retaliation from Saddam. There is every reason to be sanguine that the rest of Iraq's population yearns equally to build a society based upon the fundamental freedoms we enjoy. This is proven through my personal talk with all different people in Iraq.. They all keep strong commitment to a democratic new system. Indeed, Iraq's opposition groups have recognized this truth; across the political spectrum, from the Iraqi Communist Party to the Psalmists, Iraq's opposition groups have committed themselves to a democratic Iraq after the fall of Saddam and his thugs.
There are other reasons to be optimistic about Iraq's future. Iraq's population is relatively well educated. First, the literacy rate in Iraq is between 85-90%, a figure actually higher than what is in the United States. (I note, in any case, that education is hardly a full match for democracy, as the examples of India and Bangladesh attest). This fact bodes well for a future, civilized discourse and for the rule of law in Iraq. Second, Iraq's intelligentsia largely dispersed in western Diaspora. Its physicians, engineers, scientists, humanists, and thinkers occupy positions at leading academic and commercial institutions the world over. Their contribution to a post-Ba'thist future will be indispensable in aiding a transfer of real democratic conceptions of self-governance to Iraq's polity.
This is an important point -- the bases for some democratic institutions are not foreign to Iraq, if we look back beyond the present young generation who grew up under Saddam. Let us hope that the participation of the expatriates in the upcoming elections helps, along with operations such as the one under way in Fallujah right now, to move Iraq along to a prosperous, free and stable future.
Yes, Robin, without question Alaa of The Mesopotamian is the essayist of the Iraqi blogosphere. If you haven't taken a look at it already you might like to read his November 4 post.
Most of the Iraqi bloggers have been calling for a much harder line against the terrorists and in favor of greater security for some time now. Make no mistake. The reason we've stayed our hand so far has been for domestic political consumption. And for our erstwhile European allies.
So the "Iraqi" soldiers that are fighting alongside us in Fallujah are Kurds, with the Sunni/Shiite forces either desserting or refusing to fire on their "brothers" and yet we're supposed to believe that things are improving.
We went in expecting to face 3,000 or more insurgents, we've killed 90 and lost about 20 of our own by most accounts. And, the resistance has been light?
What happened? Probably the insurgents have fled to carry on the rebellion another day in another place of their choosing. For some odd reason the U.S. believed that the insurgents would stand and face us en-masse in Fallujah. More and more the folks running this operation, from Bush on down, seem to be trying their hardest to re-make every mistake made in Vietnam. What are they going to say when after Fallujah is captured next week the attacks against U.S., British, and Iraqi forces continue unabatted?
Ah who cares, Bush has the will of his people at his back so he's no longer accountable, regardless of how many U.S. soliders and marines die to bring "freedom" to the Iraqi people who won't fight for themsleves.
The military objective in Fallujah is to secure the city and remove the Taliban-style social intimidation and violence that was imposed on the city's populace after the April withdrawl. It's a mistake to measure this operation by whether or not Baathists and jihadis fight and are wiped out -- that is not the primary aim. If it were, we would not have signalled our operations so openly for so long.
The price of saving as many civilians as possible was to let a bunch of the fighters slip out.
The sources your blog provides are invaluable. The conclusions drawn from them are mystifying however. Look at the Fallujah operation. The comments are involved w/ tactics, weapons, calls from Iraqi bloggers for greater security, et al. But they all constantly point out that the coalition is severely undermanned.
The coaltion is approximately 200,000 strong and doesn't include offshore carrier based weapons. If you add up all the police, sheriffs, marshalls and permanently assigned federal agents in California(a land mass approximately the same size as Iraq) you are close to that many people. The personnel in California are not facing X(you pick a number) people w/ fully automatic assault rifles, RPG's, mortars, anti-aircraft weapons and multiple tons of plastic explosive and trying to maintain order. This lack of manpower has always made me certain that the campaign against the Hussein regime in Iraq has never been about defeating Jihadists(ultra radical follwers of the faith of Islam) and bringing republican democracy to the Middle East.
The continuance of this crisis has been about suppressing dissent in America over economic issues in the USA. By being in a position of calling people unpatriotic and/ or traitors who oppose the campaign in Iraq especially those who link the spending of federal tax dollars for defense to their removal for things like education, the public health crisis, domestic security against terrorist tactics and the lock down of government information under the guise of national security you can obscure the real economic issues of our time and how they effect the American populace.
A classic example was in yesterdays(Wed 10 Nov) Wall Street Journal. Large corporations w/ contracts to their current and retired employees are going to court usually by provoking false claims to abbrogate their health care and pension liabilities. When this is achieved and it is being achieved we must ask who is know going to pay for this. The answer is the American populace.
We will pay for it through out obligations to the pension guarantee programs of the federal government, expanded roles of the medicare program and diviersion of federal capital from things that would grow our economy such as aid to education, health care and infrastructure. So a vicious cycle continues which does nothing but squander our national wealth.
Today is Veterans Day. I wish them and their families all good fortune. I wish all those whom currently serve a safe return to their loved ones. I cannot but despise those who squander our soldiers lives and health because they are undermanned on the battlefield and fecklessly lead by their civilian commanders who count on the fact soldiers follow orders to acheive their own ignoble ends.
Robert, that's a whole bunch of topics in one comment.
It's true that it would be useful to have more troops in Iraq -- IF they were fully trained volunteers. But you fail to address the technology being leveraged by our forces in Iraq. Talk with the Marines in Fallujah and I'll bet you find that their micro UAVs and stair-climbing recon robots are doing jobs that used to require many many people.
Pushing some of those systems out of the lab and onto the battlefield is not cheap -- except in lives. Nor are the classified radiation and biochem sniffers being deployed (as fast as they can be built and integrated) at key ports and other public places.
Is all the extra spending defense / homeland security related? No. But far more is than is apparent from a casual read of the news.
What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
'Nuff said...
If my letters are to you filled with a bunch of things it is intentional. I've always been fascinated w/ the military as an institution and history of them. I've always made attention to foreign affairs. Most of my life since college I've been involved w/ the equity and option trading so I'v trained and educated to engaged with many things. The prism of trading has made the objective analysis what is going
economics-macro or micro. And for a living, from there how do I exploited this information for profit.
I've been disturbed since the 70's, when women entered the work force not for pin money but to keep household income stable or growing, that we don't have honest discussions about what is happening to the economy as a nation. I know it is vitally important to discuss how we are going to expand the pie, whom the winners and losers will be and most importantly how to keep the smallest amount of interfernce from all sides in order to keep the pie growing. For without this growth our fears and hatreds come to the for and we deny each other freedom.
When you begin to discuss the economy you can't do it in a vaccuum. You have to watch the parallel events and realize they are all interacting with each other. That is why I am constantly trying to point out that these parallel events are occuring, whom are the actors and what their interactions mean for the country.
Robert Martin
Big props to Sgt B.
"If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields
Robert -
There's a side discussion to have in another thread about the gradual levelling ofthe world economy, and the impact on us who are used to being at the top of the food chain.
More later on this.
A.L.
Indeed. One metaphor for the geopolitical situation is the mixing of boiling water with ice and cold currents -- a whole lot of turbulence for a while. Twenty years or so, is my guess.