Iraq War: Fallujah floundering

It strikes me that some Iraq War critics are being a bit hasty in embracing this criticism of the increasingly controversial Fallujah operation earlier this year by outgoing commanding general James T. Conway:  Key General Criticizes April Attack In Fallujah by Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post 09/13/04

The outgoing U.S. Marine Corps general in charge of western Iraq said Sunday he opposed a Marine assault on militants in the volatile city of Fallujah in April and the subsequent decision to withdraw from the city and turn over control to a security force of former Iraqi soldiers.

While it's tempting to criticize the Bush administration on both ends of this, I'm not sure it's quite that clear-cut.  It's a favorite Republican applause line to say, as Ronald Reagan famously did when he retrospectively declared Vietnam a "noble cause," that politicians shouldn't send the military to fight unless they are willing to let the military win.  In fact, Conway gave a version of this to the Post:

"When you order elements of a Marine division to attack a city, you really need to understand what the consequences of that are going to be and not perhaps vacillate in the middle of something like that," he said. "Once you commit, you got to stay committed."

Then there's reality.

The assault on Fallujah almost certainly was a bad idea.  But what were the Marines going to do if they kept it up for another few weeks?  This is tap-dancing around the disaster the Iraq War has become.

This was a city, not a field or a desert with opposing groups of mainforce armies in regular formations.  The US military is not prepared to fight a counterinsurgency war on more than a very limited scale.  For that to be successfully done would also require an effective allied Iraqi army, paramilitaries and police.  Those aren't there in any more than rudimentary numbers, despite the Pentagon's puffery on the subject.

How many Marines in Conway's group were fluent in Arabic? It doesn't matter so much in conventional warfare.  But when the job is uncovering guerrilla cells and storage facilities in an urban area, it matters a lot.

The previous experience of urban guerrillas in Latin America has not been especially promising.  But the Iraq situation is different.  If there were supportive military, paramilitary and police institutions in place to support the American drive, urban counterinsurgency might be much more effective.  But they're not, and they're not going to be any time very soon.

It's possible that Conway is dead right that both the decision to go in at the time was bad and the decision to pull out and turn the city (effectively) over to the insurgents was bad.  It's also possible that he's embarassed by what a disaster the whole thing was and is looking to duck any blame for the outcome.

What's happening in Fallujuah now?  Juan Cole points to this AP piece about this past weekend and Monday:

The violence continued on Monday when U.S. warplanes and artillery units bombed the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, killing at least nine people and wounding 12, hospital officials and witnesses said. The U.S. military had no immediate comment.

Witnesses said the bombing targeted the city's al-Shurta neighborhood, damaging buildings and raising clouds of black smoke. Ambulances and private cars rushed the injured to hospital.

Dr. Adel Khamis of the Fallujah General Hospital said at least nine people were killed, including women and children, and 12 others wounded.

Witnesses said U.S. warplanes repeatedly swooped low over the city and that artillery units deployed on the outskirts of the city also opened fire. U.S. jets last week repeatedly bombed Fallujah, a hotbed of Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Cole comments:

The warplane strike and the helicopter gunship have become prime weapons in the US war against the urban guerrillas. This tactic raises all sorts of moral questions, including whether it is legitimate to fire into a residential area. Saddam Hussein made himself odious by doing just that in Najaf in 1991. I wouldn't have said it was legitimate, but apparently I am one of the few in whom this tactic raises anyqualms. I never see the issue reported as such, much less debated, in the US press.

He's right about the moral question, and he has also questioned the legality of the practice under conditions of occupation (although formally the US occupation is over).  There are also practical questions, starting with, is there any reason to believe this kind of tactic is effective.  I'm not familiar with many of the details of the fight against urban guerrillas in Argentina or Uruguay.  I don't recall that they included having warplanes bomb the cities.

In any case, I'm trying to picture in the Bay Area what I would think if warplanes were bombing San Francisco, Oakland or San Jose.  I think I would find it hard to believe that airstrikes in residential neighborhoods were carefully targeted to avoid civilian casualties.  I also don't think it would make me feel like things were going well in the counterinsurgency effort.

The story on Conway to me was more a story about how the US has plunged into a counterinsurgency war it's not prepared to fight.  And, given the conditions in Iraq, especially the near-total lack of domestic security forces to even assist the US forces, must less take the lead in counterinsurgency operations.