US battle plans begin to
unravel By Michael Schwartz
In the New York Times this week the first crack appeared
in the armor of the "victory in Fallujah" facade
maintained by the major US media since the battle
began. Eric Schmitt and Robert Worth discuss a secret
Marine Corps report that reveals the major bind the US has
gotten itself into by sweeping through Fallujah and
attempting to pacify it. This US strategy has created
exactly the dilemma that many critics of the war had
been predicting: in order to hold Fallujah the United States has
to keep large numbers of troops there, and then the Americans will
not have sufficient troops to handle the uprising
elsewhere in the Sunni areas.
The problem is
summarized thusly in the New York Times article: "Senior
marine intelligence officers in Iraq are warning that if
American troop levels in the Fallujah area are
significantly reduced during reconstruction there, as
has been planned, insurgents in the region will rebound
from their defeat. The rebels could thwart the
retraining of Iraqi security forces, intimidate the
local population and derail elections set for January,
the officers say."
Beneath this general
problem lie three key problems that made the attack on
Fallujah a desperation measure in the first place, and which
is now creating a new and deeper crisis for the US
military in its aftermath.
First, and most
important, the people of Fallujah hate the Americans and
support the guerrillas (even if they may have complaints
about much of what they do). This means that as soon as
the people return, so will the resistance, hidden from
US view because virtually all the guerrillas are
residents of Fallujah with supporters in the community.
They will not be turned over to the US or to Iraqi
police, and they will therefore begin to mount attacks
on whoever is left to guard the US-installed local
government.
Second, the US cannot depend on
Iraqi police or military to fight this next phase of the
"battle of Fallujah". Here's how this problem was
reported by the Times: "Senior officers have said that
they would keep a sizable American military presence in
and around Fallujah in the long reconstruction phase
that has just begun, until sufficiently trained and
equipped Iraqi forces could take the lead in providing
security. 'It will take a security presence for a while
until a well-trained Iraqi security force can take over
the presence in Fallujah and maintain security so that
the insurgents don't come back, as they have tried to do
in every one of the cities that we have thrown them out
of,' General George W Casey Jr, the top American
commander in Iraq, said on November 8. American
commanders have expressed disappointment in some of the
Iraqis they have been training, especially members of
the Iraqi police force. Other troops have performed
well, the officers have said."
The
key thing here is that when the Americans entered the Fallujah
battle they believed that the Iraqi forces would be ready
to take over immediately after the city was cleared.
But the mass defections and unwillingness to fight
exhibited by the Iraqis have forced a drastic revision in
these estimates, so that now US military leaders are
forced to keep a US presence during the "long
reconstruction phase" (read - "until the guerrilla
attacks stop") while they wait (probably in vain) for a
new cycle of training to produce an Iraqi force that is
capable of resisting the guerrillas (the first three
efforts to produce such a force have already failed -
there is no reason to believe that the next will
succeed).
The third problem is that the US
simply does not have enough troops to hold Fallujah and
also do all the other fighting that is now necessary.
The Times reporters expressed it thus: "If many American
troops and the better-trained specialized Iraqi forces,
like the commando and special police units, are
committed to Fallujah for a long time, they will not be
available to go elsewhere in Iraq, possibly creating
critical shortfalls." In other words, when the
resistance drives the police and local government out of
other cities (as they did recently in Samarra, Tal Afar
and Mosul) the US will not have sufficient troops to
recapture the cities, and they will have to allow them
to remain in rebel hands, just as Fallujah remained in
rebel hands for six months.
This is the ultimate denouement of
the attack on Fallujah. The US is now faced with the
choice of leaving Fallujah and allowing the
shura
mujahideen government that has ruled it
since April to return to power, or allow the resistance
to take power in many other cities. Either option
will leave the US in a significantly worse position than
it was in before the attack. As so many predicted,
the attack on Fallujah has strengthened the resistance
and weakened the US occupation.
And one final note:
the only remedy for the third problem is a vast increase
in the number of US troops in Iraq. And that means
a draft in the United States.
Michael
Schwartz , professor of sociology at the
State University of New York at Stony Brook, has
written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and
on US business and government dynamics. His work on
Iraq has appeared on ZNet and TomDispatch, and in Z
Magazine. His books include Radical Politics and
Social Structure, The Power Structure of American
Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and
the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo).
He can be reached atms42@optonline.net.
(Copyright 2004 Michael Schwartz, used with
permission.)
