Marines pull back from Fallujah: a debacle for American imperialism

[Iceburg]

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/05/04/7939603

By Patrick Martin
4 May 2004
WSWS (http://www.wsws.org)

snip
The decision by the Bush administration and the Pentagon to pull back the Marines besieging the city of Fallujah is a devastating setback for the US occupation regime in Iraq. Faced with the prospect of house-to-house combat against an insurgency rooted in the city, the US government apparently decided that the cost of retaking the city, both militarily and politically, was too great.

....
snip
One resident who spoke to the Los Angles Times described the uprising as a popular revolt against the occupying power. “Every Fallujan who was able to carry weapons participated,” he said. “All of us are mujahedin. No masks will be used anymore by the mujahedin. We are struggling openly. Our relationship with the new Iraqi commander and his people is very good. They did not come on the back of the American tanks. They are our sons.” The Times reporter cited a sign hanging on the gate of a mosque that captured the mood. It read, “We are the soldiers of Muhammad and not the soldiers of Saddam. We love death as you love life.”

From bluster to retreat ... more

[Gothmog]

1. Declare Victory and run for it

We have declared that we have won a great victory and now are beating a hasty retreat.

[BrotherBuzz]

6. Not unlike Jem in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Jem lost his pants.

[seemslikeadream]

2. Iraq: It’s all over!

THE situation in Iraq is “disintegration verging on collapse,” said Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador to the United Nations, on the last day of April. It was a month that saw more American troops killed than during last year’s invasion, a decisive US defeat in the siege of Falluja, and horrific revelations about the torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by both American and British soldiers.

It may be years yet before the helicopters pluck the last Americans off the roof of the Baghdad embassy (or a post-Bush administration might still manage a more graceful exit), but basically the game is up.
One hundred and thirty-eight American soldiers were killed in Iraq in April, and over a thousand wounded. The ABC network’s decision to devote its ‘Nightline’ programme on Friday to showing pictures and reading out the names of the 721 American soldiers who have died in Iraq was not driven by hostility to the Bush administration.

The producers were just responding to what their audience was feeling — but it spoke volumes about the state of American public opinion.
Meanwhile, any hope of getting the consent of Iraqis to a permanent
US military and political presence in the country has gone gurgling down the drain. It is still not clear who ordered the siege of Falluja in
response to the killing and mutilation of four American ‘security contractors’ (mercenaries) at the end of March, but it was a blunder that will be studied in military staff colleges for decades to come, the lesson being: when there is no way that you can succeed, it is wiser not to reveal your weakness by trying and failing.

There was no way that US Marines could occupy Falluja and destroy the local resistance forces without killing thousands of Iraqis, most of them civilians. There was no way that they could ever identify and capture the men who killed and mutilated the ‘contractors’. Besieging the city was an emotional response that made no military or political sense, as they only realised about three weeks too late.

http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/20/357828

[leftchick]

4. I doubt the administration has put a hold on those bases being built...

and how about the world biggest embassy? I wonder how that is coming along? The lives and money this mis-administration has cost is unfuckingbelievable!

[ze_dscherman]

5. Good read! n/t

nt

[seemslikeadream]

8. How are we going to get through this?

It may be years yet before the helicopters pluck the last Americans off the roof of the Baghdad embassy

[TahitiNut]

3. As I said last Thursday ...

... they (the Busholinis) jumped the shark with this one. There remains no reasonable doubt in my mind that a continued US military occupation of Iraq is totally untenable. The sun has set on any "good will" that Arab/Muslim nations might have for the US. We're toast.

The Busholini madminstration has again failed abysmally in its duty to behave in a ethical, legal, and moral fashion, even marginally representative of the common interests of the people of our nation. This is another LIHOP, imho -- everlasting war for rhe everlasting profits of the "Military-Industrial-Complex" -- the global corporatist cabal.

It'd be nearly impossible to overstate the impact of the Abu Ghraib scenario -- a scenario undoubtedly mirrored in Guantanimo and elsewhere.

[skip fox]

7. No matter what politics you put to it, we should be glad

that cooler heads prevailed. For this reason, I will not criticize the administration on this call. It's the choice I would have made given the alternatives (to go in heavy or to stand down and try to resolve it differently), so I have a hard time criticizingg anyone for or making political hay out of this decision. (Of course, I never would have invaded Iraq in the first place, so . . .)

And here's an observation. IF Bush is criticized too severely for this backing off, he is just the type who will do the opposite just to spite his critics . . . and many will die as a result.