Fallujah is finally under U.S. control. In one sense, the operation took only seven days. In another sense, it took more than seven months.
In April, the U.S. began an offensive against the town, but amidst cries that there were still too many civilians in place for safe military action, the attack was called off. Now, seven months later, U.S. forces are victorious in what, militarily speaking, was a quick and decisive manner. There are still small pockets of terrorists holding out, but there is no longer any doubt that those who still resist will be quelled.
Civilian casualties were almost non-existent, since most of the inhabitants of Fallujah had been evacuated. U.S. casualties were light, at a current total of 31 dead and somewhere in the realm of 200 injured. Contrast that with 1,000 to 2,000 terrorists ("insurgents" or "militants" if you work for the main-stream media, "thugs" if you're a U.S. Army commander) dead and a further 400 surrounded.
In both the tactical and the humanitarian aspects, our taking of Fallujah was successful. Our troops have found rooms where terrorists beheaded their Western captives, and freed several of those captives. Iraqi civilians can now return and set up their own government, and Iraqi Red Crescent workers can now deliver aid to the city.
But in another sense, the attack missed the mark. The man behind many of the beheadings and attacks throughout Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, was nowhere to be found when U.S. forces swept into the city. It seems that in giving Iraqi civilians time to get out of harm's way, some of the terrorists were able to escape.
According to Marine Major General Richard Natonski, "We never expected them to be there. We're not after Zarqawi. We're after insurgents in general."
On one level, I'm sure this is true, but something tells me that commanders would have been a whole lot happier had we actually caught the big fish.
And so we see the dilemma: how does one fight a war that is humane enough to minimize civilian casualties and yet take decisive enough action not to let the enemy continually slink away to fight another day? I'm not sure that I have the answer to that, but I think the question itself might be more interesting. It reveals much about what sets one side apart from the other.
If we weren't asking these types of questions, if we were waging war and taking no note of its consequences for average Iraqis, those that we claim to be helping, would there be any difference between the terrorists and us? Maybe, but they would certainly be harder to find than they are now. I would much rather have our military commanders contemplating how to track down one man, while the populous of an entire city is returning to renewed rule of law and security contemplating how to tell the Iraqi citizens that destroying an entire city and killing thousands of civilians was necessary and for their own good.
I know there are many of you out there who don't agree with the decision to go to war. I just hope that you will be able to join me in saying thank you to our troops, and to tell them that the way they're fighting this war makes me proud to be an American.
Write to Tim at tabirkel@bsu.edu
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