Fallujah Bugout
Apparently there's plenty of confusion and handringing about the Marines handing over the siege of Fallujah to former regime elements, as I mentioned yesterday. Billmon and his commenters have great insights, as usual.
As Bob Herbert said today:
Mr. Bush has enmeshed us in a war that we can't win and that we don't know how to end. Each loss of a life in this tragic exercise is a reminder of lessons never learned from history. And the most fundamental of those lessons is that fantasy must always genuflect before reality.
It appears that the Marines fantasy of subduing Fallujah has genuflected to the reality of its impossibility.
Billmon and many of his commenters suggest that the 1000 or so strong "Fallujah Protective Army," under the command of former Baathist generals, will quickly merge with the "insurgents" in Fallujah and turn their American-supplied weapons against the Marines or whatever coalition forces they happen across. Most seem to think that this action only makes sense as a first step to full withdrawal from Iraq. I hope that's what it is. If the U.S. loses in Iraq, in the narrow Bushian sense, the world wins, including the U.S., in the larger sense. Uday and Qusay are dead. Saddam's in the brig. Declare victory and come home. We can convert our cars to biodiesel, and worry about things like poverty and education instead of terrorism.
Apparently there's plenty of confusion and handringing about the Marines handing over the siege of Fallujah to former regime elements, as I mentioned yesterday. Billmon and his commenters have great insights, as usual.
As Bob Herbert said today:
Mr. Bush has enmeshed us in a war that we can't win and that we don't know how to end. Each loss of a life in this tragic exercise is a reminder of lessons never learned from history. And the most fundamental of those lessons is that fantasy must always genuflect before reality.
It appears that the Marines fantasy of subduing Fallujah has genuflected to the reality of its impossibility.
Billmon and many of his commenters suggest that the 1000 or so strong "Fallujah Protective Army," under the command of former Baathist generals, will quickly merge with the "insurgents" in Fallujah and turn their American-supplied weapons against the Marines or whatever coalition forces they happen across. Most seem to think that this action only makes sense as a first step to full withdrawal from Iraq. I hope that's what it is. If the U.S. loses in Iraq, in the narrow Bushian sense, the world wins, including the U.S., in the larger sense. Uday and Qusay are dead. Saddam's in the brig. Declare victory and come home. We can convert our cars to biodiesel, and worry about things like poverty and education instead of terrorism.
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