Iraq War: The Fallujah offensive

The Fallujah offensive is now in full swing:  Early Target of Offensive Is a Hospital by Richard A. Oppell, Jr. New York Times 11/08/04.

The assault against Falluja began here Sunday night as American Special Forces and Iraqi troops burst into Falluja General Hospital and seized it within an hour. ...

American officials also say the hospital has been a haven for insurgents in what has been a "no-go" zone for American forces for months.

But Oppell's report makes it clear that the hospital was, well, a hospital.  The Americans did not have to fight there way in.  Oh, yeah, our Iraqi allies were there, too: "... there was only one injury: an Iraqi soldier who accidentally discharged his Kalashnikov rifle, injuring his lower leg."

Why would they target a hospital first?  This gives a good clue:

And they have made little secret of their irritation with what they contend are inflated civilian casualty figures that regularly flow from the hospital - propaganda, they believe, for the Falluja insurgents, whom they blame for much of the car bombings, beheadings and other acts of terror in Iraq. [my emphasis]

In other words, Army Special Forces deliberately seized a hospital because they were worried about the propaganda consequences of having the hospital report on the number of civilian casualties the assault causes.

Now, I don't know if deliberately targeting the hospital constitutes a war crime in this case.  It sounds like all they did was humiliate the doctors and scare the patients, plus bust down a few doors.  Maybe create a few more dozens recruits and sympathizers for the insurgents.

But this is worth keeping in mind as we hear Rummy tell us at news conference how carefully civilian casualties are being avoided and how remarkably few there are.

Also, Al Jazeera is covering this stuff and beaming their reports to the Arab world.  Here is a story from their English Web site: US forces seize Falluja hospital 11/08/04.

Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said 38 fighters had been killed in the operation to seize the hospital but US military sources disputed this and said 42 fighters had been killed throughout the city.

They reported no deaths at the hospital.

Oppell's report in the Times also reported only the one casualty I mentioned, an Iraqi soldier accidently wounding himself.

Taking my own advice from yesterday, here is an guest column posted by Juan Cole on his blog:  American Options in Iraq by William R. Polk 11/05/04.

The first option has been called "staying the course." In practice that means continued fighting. France “stayed the course” in Algeria in the 1950s as America did in Vietnam in the 1960s and as the Israelis are now doing in occupied Palestine. It has never worked anywhere. In Algeria, the French employed over three times as many troops, nearly half a million, to fight roughly the same number of insurgents as America is now fighting in Iraq. They lost. America had half a million soldiers in Vietnam and gave up. After forty years of warfare against the Palestinians, the Israelis have achieved neither peace nor security.

YankeeDoodle at Today in Iraq also links to that article and adds a few comments of his own:

I started this blog as a direct result of the American media’s complete failure to adequately cover the war outside a 24-hour news cycle. I don’t intentionally exclude “good news” stories, but the fact of the matter is that there is no good news coming from Iraq. “Good news” would be a decline in insurgent attacks, improved security, secure roads, repaired and functioning electric systems, oil pipelines and water facilities. You don’t see “good news” here because none of that is happening.

I don’t offer solutions because I didn’t start this war. Like millions of other Americans, I actively opposed Bush’s War. Partisan conservatives demonized us as “unpatriotic” and “peaceniks” and "hippies" without ever listening to our message. It’s helpful to remember that every bad thing the anti-Bush War people predicted has happened, while everything the neo-conservatives promised has failed to materialize. I didn’t [soil] the bed so I have no obligation to clean it up or sleep in it.

Thanks to 19 months of blundering by Bremer and Allawi, there are no good solutions remaining.

Al Jazeera also reports: Saudi scholars: Support Iraqi fighters 11/06/04.

Prominent Saudi religious scholars have called on Iraqis to support fighters battling US-led forces, saying fighting the presence of foreign troops is a duty and a right.

In an open letter addressed to the Iraqi people and posted on the internet on Saturday, 26 Saudi scholars and religious preachers stressed that armed attacks launched by Iraqi groups on US troops and their allies in Iraq were legitimate resistance.

The statement came as US troops, backed by air and artillery power, were gearing up for a major assault on Falluja.

The scholars - some of whom have been criticised in the past for their views - issued a fatwa, or religious edict, prohibiting Iraqis from offering any support for military operations carried out by US forces against anti-US fighter strongholds. ...

Among the scholars who signed the letter are influential Sunni Muslim clerics Shaikh Safar al-Hawali, Shaikh Nasir al-Umar, Shaikh Salman al-Awda, Shaikh Sharif Hatim al-Auni and Shaikh Awad al-Qarni.

Al-Hawali - jailed in the 1990s for five years without trial because of his criticism of US involvement in the 1991 Gulf war - is known for his radical views and was once close to Usama bin Ladin.

This article also provides some useful perspective: So We Win Fallujah.  Then What? by Fred Kaplan Slate 11/08/04.

The highly coordinated attacks in Samarra are particularly disturbing, as U.S. and Iraqi forces supposedly pacified that city just last month. They might now accomplish the same feat in Fallujah; between 10,000 and 15,000 American soldiers and Marines are involved in the offensive, after all. But after the fighting is over, the siege can't be sustained for long. Residents, who have fled the city in anticipation of the battle, will want to return home; commercial traffic will once again flow; and it will be hard to block a new crop of insurgents from coming and going—especially if many of the soldiers and Marines move on to the next insurgent stronghold. As has widely been noted in many other contexts, the U.S. troops in Iraq are too stretched to run a tight occupation in one area while waging full-blown combat in another. (In the old days, "two-front war" meant fighting simultaneously in Europe and Asia. Now, apparently, it means Fallujah and Sadr City.) [my emphasis]

This is also a telling incident:

[T]he offensive is billed as a joint operation by the U.S. military and the Iraqi national guard, but it hasn't worked out that way. National Public Radio's Anne Garrels, who is embedded with the Marines in Fallujah, reports that of the 500 Iraqi soldiers originally deployed to go in alongside U.S. forces only 170 were still on station when the operation began. The rest had deserted—whether simply to flee for their safety or to join the other side. And these Iraqis were members of the 36th Special Operations battalion, the elite of the country's new security forces. In short, quite apart from what happens in Fallujah, the Iraqis are not remotely ready to provide defense by themselves.  [my emphasis]

Between nationalist sentiments, religious fatwas and the insurgents' terror campaign against soldiers and police, only 170 out of 500 of the Iraqi Army elite soldiers stuck around to carry out their orders to attack Fallujah with the Americans.  The audio NPR story he cites can be found here.

And how's the "coalition" doing?

A small story in the Nov. 4 New York Times listed the various countries that are pulling out of this "coalition." Hungary had just announced, the day before, that it would withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq. This move would come on top of withdrawals, either actual or announced, by Spain (1,300 troops); Poland (2,400); the Netherlands (1,400); Thailand (450); the Dominican Republic (302); Nicaragua (115); Honduras (370); the Philippines (51); Norway (155); and New Zealand (60). Other countries will soon reduce their troop levels— Singapore, from 191 to 32; Moldova, from 42 to 12; and Bulgaria, from 483 to 430. For the most part, these aren't large numbers—the United States has always contributed the vast bulk of the forces, with Britain, Australia, and Italy trailing far behind—but that's not the point. Their joining the coalition was presented as a show of international support; their departing will be widely perceived as an erosion of that support.

The Times story to which Kaplan refers is here: Hungary Joins Others in Pulling Troops From Iraq by Judy Dempsey New York Times 11/04/04.