Iraq War: Escalation, aka, the Fallujah offensive

The Fallujah offensive, postponed until after the US presidential election, has begun.

There will be a lot of fighting between now and the scheduled January elections in Iraq.  And the political situation will be incredibly confusing.  The US, for better or worse, is escalating the fighting, and augmenting the number of troops in Iraq by at least a few thousand.  I have no doubt that at the end of this round of escalation, Our Side will declare yet another victory, yet another corner turned.

One Web site that I've found valuable for continuing news on the Iraq War is the Today in Iraq blog.  This blogger, who identifies himself in his e-mail address as YankeeDoodle, is no fan of President Bush.  He typically refers to him as "Lt. AWOL," as a matter of fact.

He was particularly ticked off by Bush's infamous "brang 'em on" posturing.  So he heads up his listing of daily war-related new links with reports of deaths and injuries among America soldiers, each announced with "Bring ‘em on."  It's a really valuable source for news on the war as well as commentary from various papers.

Sunday's (11/07/04) entries contain 14 "Bring ‘em on" items.  It's very true that the mainstream press does a mediocre (at best) job of reporting news from the Iraq War.  That's why a site like Today in Iraq is so helpful, because it allows the reader to relatively quickly access a number of different reports.  As lazy and irresponsible as the press has become the last 15 years or so especially, the old rule that getting your news from multiple sources gives you a better picture of what's going on still holds true.

One of the editorials to which he links in the 11/07/04 set of entries is this one: Reality will bite Newsday 11/07/04. 

Have no doubt about it: President George W. Bush knows where he wants to go and what he wants to do. He told Americans time and again during the campaign what his agenda would be, and he is, after all, a man of his word. He means what he says and says what he means: The United States must stay the course in Iraq and bring democracy to the Mideast. The more taxes cut the merrier. A privatized Social Security system, reformed tax code, caps on medical malpractice awards and higher standards for public schools. These are just the beginning.

The editorial goes into more detail about some of the domestic issues.  But it also has this to say about the grand project of Napoleanic wars of liberation in the Middle East:

Now that the election is over, the administration must face up to realities in Iraq. The key question is whether the American presence there is still part of the solution or part of the problem. While it's generally agreed that there must be an attempt to hold elections in Iraq early next year, what will come after that? Does the president need to greatly escalate the effort, even attack Syria and Iran, or will it be a time to find a way out? A continuing debacle in Iraq could wreck Bush's second term. That's reality.

More generally, how does Bush intend to spread freedom and democracy through the Mideast? The goal is noble, even correct. But for all the military power the United States has, relative to the rest of the world, our troops are still spread too thin and our treasury does not match our military reach.

The neoconservatives who have dominated Bush's foreign policy agenda have an idealistic vision of America leading the world unilaterally because it is exceptional, because it is better. But the reality is that without the cooperation of other major powers, the United States will find itself isolated and less secure, not more. Fighting terrorism will take a multinational effort. Trying to fight a war in Iraq unilaterally runs counter to that goal. That is reality, whether the neocons like it or not. Has Bush learned anything from Iraq? Or will a second term be more of the same?

Another incredibly valuable source on Iraq, and one I quote frequently, is Juan Cole's Informed Comment. Cole is an Arabic-speaking scholar who specializes in the politics of Shi'a Islam.  There aren't many weeks that go by that I don't quote something from his blog here at Old Hickory's Weblog.  It's one of my first stops on the Web every day.

The"Arabic-speaking" part is important, because he can do his own translations of Arabic articles from Al-Jazeera and the Iraqi press.  There aren't that many Arabic-speaking Western reporters in Iraq.  And the situation has been so violent and lawless in recent weeks that even they can barely venture outside their hotels.  But at least they can do interviews in the native language of the Iraqis with whom they speak and get first-hand impressions of the press commentary there.  It does not seem to be a coincidence that Arabic-speaking reporters generally produce less optimistic assessments of the situation than their colleagues who are more dependent on the Pentagon's press releases.

The British reporter Robert Fisk also speaks Arabic and has been reporting from Iraq.  His main gig is for the Independent in Britain, and they have been putting his columns behind subscription.  But they are usually available at this Web site soon afterward.

George Paine's Warblogging site is also a very useful one.  Although he provides links to other stories, sometimes obscure ones, he focuses more on providing analyses of the situations, really of the politics of the war.  He doesn't update every day, and the last few days he's been talking about the election.  But when he does update, what he has to say is normally well worth reading.

Al Jazeera also has an English-language site available.  I don't follow Al Jazeera on a regular basis, so at this point I don't have a good feel for how to go about reading these articles critically.  But some of their reporting does have a reputation of being good quality.  And the service is obviously widely-read in the Arab world.

As I write, the headline story there is US troops surround Falluja 11/08/04.

The US army closed all roads leading to the besieged city after Iraq's interim government declared a state of emergency throughout the country.

The northern Kurdish inhabited areas are exempt,the interim government said.

As night fell, artillery shells pounded a town east of Falluja, with tanks and helicopters offering support, an AFP photographer embedded with the American military said.

Some 20,000 US and Iraqi soldiers and marines are camped around the city awaiting orders to launch an assault.

The article concludes with the following:

On Saturday another military commander referred to the fighters in Falluja, as 'Satan'.

"But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him," said Lieutenant Colonel Gareth Brandl.

Take the latter with a grain of salt.  I mean, our military leaders wouldn't be talking like Christian Crusaders, would they?  See also Onward Christian Soldiers.  Both those links are to earlier posts of mine about our Christian General Jerry Boykin.

Finally, as lazy as our mainstream press is, they are reporting on the Iraq War.  One thing to watch with articles from the media heavies, like the Washington Post.  Often, if there is heavy-handed editorial intervention, it will show up most clearly in the first few paragraphs of the story.  It's not unusual to find the most interesting and helpful pieces of information buried in the later part of an article.

Here's an example: Fighting Around Fallujah Intensifies  by Karl Vick (with contributions from Saad Sarhan in Najaf) Washington Post 11/08/04.  It also reports the initial assault on the city, as the Al Jazeera piece does.  At the time I accessed Vick's Post story, It devoted the first five paragraphs to reporting what are the most "newsworthy" events, the beginning assault on Fallujah and the state of emergency.  It's a longer article than the Al Jazeera piece cited above.  It does not mention the item included in the Al Jazeera report thatthe state of emergency does not apply to the northern, predominantly-Kurdish, area of the country.

Vick's article does mention in paragraph 3 that over 80 people have been killed in the last two days in Iraq in violent incidents.  The latter part of the article provides considerable further detail on those incidents.  Paragraph 4 says, "The [state of emergency] order will run for 60 days but could be extended through elections planned for January."  Keep in mind the conventional journalistic assumption that the farther down one goes in the story, the fewer people are actually likely to read it.  This sentence could obviously raise the question, the free elections are going to be conducted under martial law?  Or at least that martial law will be in place in the weeks leading up to the election?  The Post reader would assume nationwide martial law.

Then in paragraph 6 and 7, we see an example of how a professional reporter can wave a flag to the readers to say, "Bush and his people are lying to you about this."  Now, they're not going to come right out and say that.  But anyone who's been paying attention can easily understand that from these two paragraphs:

It was not immediately clear which emergency powers Allawi intended to invoke or how they would help his government assert control of the country, which he described as largely calm during a visit to Washington six weeks ago.

Technically, the state of emergency gives the government wide powers to impose curfews, restrict movement and suspend liberties. But Iraq's security services have struggled to stand up to insurgents who operate with better weapons and intelligence, especially in the Sunni Muslim midsection of the country where resistance has proved most stubborn. U.S. and allied foreign military forces routinely operate on their own, making arrests, engaging in firefights and patrolling independent of civil authorities.

In other words, all that hooey that Bush has been saying about how there were going to be 100,000 Iraqi security forces stepping up and taking full responsibility by the end of December is about as real as the Iraqi WMDs.

The careful reader may also do a double-take on paragraph 9:

Those assaults followed a flurry of car bombings and mortar attacks Saturday that killed more than 30 people in Samarra, a Sunni Muslim city about 65 miles north of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi forces had reclaimed the city from insurgents last month in an operation that has been cast as a model for the attack on Fallujah.

Rummy can blather on all he wants about how Iraqi cities are no more violent than the typical American big city.  If there were any city in America where political violence killed 30 people in one day, every good Republican would be foaming at the mouth about the imminent collapse of the Republic.  And, Vick tells us, Samarra is a Sunni city (like Fallujah), the city had been "reclaimed from insurgents last month" (a victory like the one we will soon declare in Fallujah) and this attack is the model for the attack on Fallujah.

Feel better now?  Think Johnny will come marching home soon from Iraq?  Still believe Bush when he says they won't have a draft?

In paragraph 14, Vick mentions a figure of 10,000 US troops - excuse me, "U.S. and Iraqi troops" (yeah, right) - compared to the 20,000 figure in the Al Jazeera article, also for both "US and Iraqi" forces. 

And down in paragraphs 18-22, we get this:

Allawi's warning was immediately answered by a Sunni group that has been a leading voice for the resistance.

"This will increase the violence," said Mohammed Bashar Faidhi, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, which represents 3,000 Sunni Muslim clergy in Iraq. "The government is like a man walking in the dark who wants to avoid a small hole and falls into a big hole."

"At this point, the government can't even protect itself," Faidhi said. "How can it impose a state of emergency? Allawi, when he travels, half of the American Army accompanies him!"

Faidhi said the clerics' association supported a proposal aimed at reducing support for armed struggle by addressing Sunni concerns about U.S. influence on the election process and restricting the movements of U.S. forces. But Faidhi said the group's skepticism was being realized as preparations for the assault on Fallujah advanced.

"After breaking into Samarra, new people joined the resistance in order to get revenge," he said. And if Fallujah is attacked, "I don't exaggerate when I say the resistance will double."

Individual reporters also do make a big difference.  Some are more capable than others, some have more integrity, some are more familiar with their subject.  With any story that has the byline of the New York Times' Judith Miller, the default assumption should always be that one is reading a propaganda version of reality fed to her by some Pentagon neocon ideologue.  That doesn't mean that the story is useless or even wrong; it just means that readers who don't want to get suckered have to pay attention to what they're reading.  Miller was the source of some of the most influential - and false - stories about "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq.  If any one member of the press facilitated the unnecessary war against Iraq, Judith Miller was it.

Then, if you want to just believe in Bush the Magnificent and his wars of liberation, there's always Fox News.