Comments on: Fallujah: my apology

By: bitchphd

bitchphd — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:31:35 +0000

A really lovely and meaningful post. Nice job.

By: mw

mw — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 19:50:47 +0000

To “surrender” for what? For being men of fighting age who happened to live in Fallujah?
Oh, please—the coalition forces could hardly allow the insurgents to walk through checkpoints and melt away or alternately to pick up weapons stashed in cashes behind the perimeter and start attacking from the rear.
Surrender for what? Surrender until the battle was over and those in custody could be vetted. Men of fighting age who had not left Fallujah by the time the battle began had a far above non-zero probability of being insurgents. Certainly it was necessary to detain them and check. Any commander who decided otherwise would have (properly) faced a court-martial.

By: pedro

pedro — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 19:05:43 +0000

Ah, just in case, uncle kvetch. Then they could be subjected—if deemed necessary by the appropriate decision-makers—to the power of stipulation of ticking-bomb scenarios, exercised with such marvelous discretion by those whose knowledgeable decisions cannot be explained in the open, for reasons of national security.

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 18:24:57 +0000

Paul Holloway:
As far as I am aware, although civilians were told to leave Fallujah, men of fighting age were turned back by the US forces when they tried to leave.
MW:
My understand was that they were allowed to surrender—but not to pass through checkpoints without possibly being detained.
To “surrender” for what? For being men of fighting age who happened to live in Fallujah?

By: mw

mw — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 18:00:59 +0000

Remarkably, mw wants the best of both blame-the-victim worlds: everyone in Fallujah was an insurgent, and every insurgent was a direct agent of Saddam. Maybe those 97% vote tallies weren’t frauds, after all.
Where on earth did I claim everyone in Fallujah was an insurgent or that every insurgent was an agent of Saddam? Some of the insurgents clearly are Al Queda-recruited foreign Arabs. Some also seem to be Syrian intelligence agents. As for the 97% tallies—the fraction of the Iraqi population supporting the insurgency is not large. Most Iraqis polled support drastic action against the terrorists (they call them terrorists there, BTW, not insurgents). Did you catch the news report of the recent demonstration in front of the Jordanian embassy protesting the ‘Martyr’s Wedding’ celebration in Jordan by the family of the suicide bomber who killed 130 Iraqis in Hilla?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/international/middleeast/15hilla.html
Less interesting to me than the question of whether or not Raad al-Banna was the Hilla bomber are the protests and the rapid backpedalling by Jordanian authorities and al-Banna’s family. How many other Jordanian families will now see fit to hold celebrations for ‘martyrs’ and pay for proud obituaries? Will the Jordanian government allow such celebrations even if families want to hold them? Al Queda’s work with the Iraqi insurgency doesn’t seem to be doing much for their popularity.

By: JRoth

JRoth — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:39:23 +0000

By: mw

mw — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:25:53 +0000

As I have mentioned a few times in the past, no doctor in the history of obstetrics has ever said “congratulations, Mrs Khan, a beautiful bouncing baby insurgent!”. These people were not insurgents before we invaded and would not have been insurgents had we not invaded.
No they would have continued to serve as Mukbarat agents, Fedayeen nut cases, Saddam cronies, and/or Al Queda recruits thrown into attacks elsewhere (the US? Spain? Morocco? Bali? Saudi Arabia?)

By: mw

mw — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:22:38 +0000

They could have waged aggressive war against another country. That’s a crime under international law, and has been since Nuremberg. In fact, it’s pretty much the international-law equivalent of murder: the worst crime possible. But the insurgents haven’t done that one, have they?
In their former roles in the Saddam government, they launched aggressive wars against both Iran and Kuwait. And, of course, the Al Queda wing of the insurgency has launched violent attacks against many countries. Right now, however, their capabilities to undertake such actions seems to be somewhat limited.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:17:20 +0000

As a primary tactic, they are killing large numbers of civilians with suicide bombs—the purpose of which is to try to ignite an ethnic-motivated civil war. They are also sabotaging civilian infrastructure with the goal of increasing the suffering of ordinary people.
As I have mentioned a few times in the past, no doctor in the history of obstetrics has ever said “congratulations, Mrs Khan, a beautiful bouncing baby insurgent!”. These people were not insurgents before we invaded and would not have been insurgents had we not invaded. Whatever their moral culpability, the consequences of their actions were predictable consequences of our acting in the manner in which we did, and so we’re at fault too. Chris has regularly pointed out that the blame game is not zero-sum.

By: ajay

ajay — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:02:49 +0000

Oh, I have one. They could have waged aggressive war against another country. That’s a crime under international law, and has been since Nuremberg. In fact, it’s pretty much the international-law equivalent of murder: the worst crime possible. But the insurgents haven’t done that one, have they?

By: mw

mw — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 16:34:43 +0000

As far as I am aware, although civilians were told to leave Fallujah, men of fighting age were turned back by the US forces when they tried to leave.
My understand was that they were allowed to surrender—but not to pass through checkpoints without possibly being detained.
Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with insurgents unless you are an apologist for the occupation forces – in fact, insurgency is an inevitable outcome of occupation.
In the abstract, there may be nothing wrong with insurgents, but in this case there is a great deal wrong with these particular insurgents.
They have declared Democracy to be an anathema. They are seeking to reinstate one of the most brutal tyrannies in the world (and using the same methods of brutality it used to hold power when it controlled the country). As a primary tactic, they are killing large numbers of civilians with suicide bombs—the purpose of which is to try to ignite an ethnic-motivated civil war. They are also sabotaging civilian infrastructure with the goal of increasing the suffering of ordinary people. It is hard to think of any outrage against humanity that they could have committed and have not.

By: paul_holloway

paul_holloway — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 15:22:23 +0000

As far as I am aware, although civilians were told to leave Fallujah, men of fighting age were turned back by the US forces when they tried to leave. As for mw’s comment 18 – you treat all people living in Fallujah as insurgents when that plainly isn’t the case. Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with insurgents unless you are an apologist for the occupation forces – in fact, insurgency is an inevitable outcome of occupation.

By: Donald Johnson

Donald Johnson — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 14:44:23 +0000

Civilians were advised to leave Fallujah and bombed for months before the final assault. Under that onslaught most fled before November, though the Lancet paper shows that probably many died in the meantime. Pentagon officials told the NYT (I saved the clipping, but don’t have it handy) that civilian casualties had a good side because civilian suffering might cause a rift between the inhabitants of Fallujah and the insurgents.
But yeah, it’s all the fault of the insurgents and none of it is our fault. Exactly the same procedures were followed in Vietnam with the same excuses made. You would think it’d be possible to find a prowar supporter who was deeply embarrassed by this, just as there were military supporters of the Vietnam War (like John Paul Vann) who were disgusted and horrified by US bombing of villages. I guess such people haven’t shown up in this thread yet.

By: mw

mw — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 14:08:43 +0000

Usually CT seems like one of the more reasonable left-leaning sites, but not here. Comparing Fallujah to Dresden? Dresden was burned to the ground, without warning, by incendiary bombs with all the civilian population still living there.
I have read differing accounts of the extent of damange to buildings and infrastructure, the rate of reconstruction, and the number of returned refugees—the degree of optimism or pessimism seems to depend on the politics of those doing the reporting (as is the case with Iraqi civilian casualties). However, I’d be willing to bet that Cole turns out to be as wrong as he turned out to be about the elections in this pronouncement:
Cole: Readers often write in for an update on Fallujah. I am sorry to say that there is no Fallujah to update. The city appears to be in ruins and perhaps uninhabitable in the near future.
Ruins? No Falujah to update? Unihabitable? I’d be willing to bet that the months to come will demonstrate that to have been ridiculous (but then it will, of course, have long since scrolled off his blog).
But completely aside from the question of percentages of buildings damaged and infrastructure repaired, I do not see any sense here that what was at stake in Fallujah was important—that had Fallujah been left as it was, as a safe haven for the Baathists and Al Queda alliance, the insurgency would be very much stronger now. Other areas of Iraq (perhaps all of the Sunni triangle) would also be firmly under insurgent control, and they would be poised to grab Baghdad as soon as the U.S. stepped aside. Obviously there would have been no elections.
If you see defeat of the terrorists as important, if you see a decent outcome in Iraq as critical not only for the people of Iraq, for the region, and, by extension, for the rest of us—then the damage to buildings in Fallujah pales ridiculously in comparison to what is at stake and to the liberation of european cities from the nazis (many of which, of course, were piles of burning rubble and yet did not long remain uninhabitable). On the other hand, if you do not believe the defeat of the Baathists and Wahabbis much matters (and perhaps that, on balance, the checking of U.S. power would be a preferable or at least acceptable alternative), well then I guess you weep over piles bricks and mortar in Fallujah (and avert your eyes as they’re put back together).

By: Geordie

Geordie — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 14:03:30 +0000

Shouldn’t Daniel’s tearful apology belong in Chris’ “Further religious news” post?
http://www.warrens.net/miracle.htm