Marine Maj. Gen. Conway decides that it is better to have Fallujah policed by ex-Baathist soldiers commanded by generals whose addresses the Marines know. The alternative? U.S. Marines kill 1,000 Fallujah insurgents, 10,000 Fallujah civilians, and flatten half the city.
I have no idea whether Conway is right or not. I do know that he is there, on the ground, and that his critics are not.
Posted by DeLong at May 10, 2004 01:45 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postwashingtonpost.com: Gamble Brings Old Uniforms Back Into Style By Rajiv Chandrasekaran | Washington Post Foreign Service | Friday, May 7, 2004; Page A01
FALLUJAH, Iraq, May 6 -- The crackle of gunfire, omnipresent here just a week ago, has been replaced with the din of car horns. Shops that had been shuttered during a month-long siege by U.S. Marines, giving this city on the Euphrates River the feel of a ghost town, have begun to reopen. Attacks on the few remaining American troops in the surrounding desert have nearly ceased. But the seeming normalcy has come with a cost. Fallujah is now caught in a time warp. Iraqi soldiers wearing their crisp, olive-green army uniforms -- a sight unseen since former president Saddam Hussein's government was toppled more than a year ago -- now man checkpoints on roads leading into the city. Stout generals, their lapels adorned with stars and crossed swords, stroll around the mayor's office with the same imperious air they projected when Hussein was president.
The Iraqi soldiers are back because of an agreement that is one of the most significant military gambles in the 13-month-long U.S. occupation of Iraq. Over the past week, U.S. Marines have pulled out of positions in and around Fallujah and handed over responsibility for security to an untested militia led by a group of generals who had been barred from military service by the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq. The agreement to give the generals a chance was negotiated by Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the top U.S. Marine commander in Iraq, who was eager to avoid an all-out attack on the resilient insurgency here. In secret discussions with Conway last month, the generals agreed to assemble a force of former soldiers to restore order to this troubled city. Thus far, the generals appear to be opting for a strategy of co-optation instead of confrontation. They have recruited scores of young men who fought against the Marines last month, according to U.S. officials familiar with the new force, called the Fallujah Brigade. The officials said they believed that most members of the brigade participated in the fighting. "Many of the guys who were shooting at the Marines have simply put on their old army uniforms and joined the Fallujah Brigade," said a U.S. official familiar with the new force.
Some of the Iraqi generals, including a leader of the new force, had been officers in Hussein's Republican Guard, an elite army unit dominated by Sunni Muslims and accused of human rights abuses against Shiite Muslims and Kurds. The generals, whose return to power has angered many Shiite and Kurdish leaders, do not pretend to hew to the U.S. military message about the insurgency in Fallujah. They have joined residents in proclaiming a victory over the Marines. They have publicly dismissed American claims that foreign militants are holed up in Fallujah. They have also urged U.S. troops to stay away from the city. Mohammed Latif, a former official in Hussein's intelligence service who was named the brigade's leader, proclaimed to reporters on Thursday that "there are no insurgents" in Fallujah. Conway's aides said they were not alarmed by these developments. More important, they insisted, was improving security in the city and getting Iraqis to take responsibility for restoring order. They said they were encouraged by former fighters joining the brigade. They also said that Iraqis without extensive military service would not have had sufficient clout to take charge in a city such as Fallujah, where a disproportionate number of men served in the army, particularly in the Republican Guard.
"We have a potential Iraqi solution to the problem that we didn't have 96 hours ago," Col. John Coleman, Conway's chief of staff, said in an interview Wednesday. "As long as they can continue to show positive progress toward the mission . . . we feel that we're closer to the end-state objective. The overarching aim of this [Marine] force is to basically work itself out of a job."
Although Marine commanders insisted that Conway's superiors were fully briefed about the arrangement and signed off on it, the unorthodox nature of the deal has led senior officials at the Pentagon, the U.S. military command in Iraq and the civilian occupation administration to react with skepticism. "It's Conway's thing," said one U.S. civilian official involved in the issue. "Either it works out, and he emerges as they guy who solved the Fallujah problem, or it turns into a big failure."...
[A]fter four U.S. security contractors were killed and mutilated on March 31, the Marines were ordered to shift their strategy to an all-out attack on suspected insurgent positions. On April 5, two battalions sealed off the city. Hours later, they pushed into the city backed by tanks, attack helicopters and fighter jets. Hundreds of suspected insurgents were killed in the initial incursion, Marine commanders said. But the operation had unforeseen consequences. Thousands of women and children sought to flee the city of 200,000, complicating military operations. Arab satellite television stations broadcast claims that hundreds of civilians had been killed by the Marines, fueling a surge of angry protests in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. By April 9, the Marines had declared a unilateral cease-fire to allow families to leave and local leaders to participate in peace talks....
[A]n interlocutor approached Conway with an enticing offer: A group of former Iraqi army generals was willing to assemble a force that would restore order in Fallujah. Although the commanders and other U.S. officials were dealing with several other groups of Iraqis -- tribal sheiks, religious leaders and Sunni politicians from Baghdad -- this overture piqued Conway's interest, according to a senior Marine officer. Frustrated with the ability of the city's civilian leadership to influence the insurgents, he hoped the generals might have more clout. He scheduled a meeting with them on April 22. Latif, a trim, graying man, arrived in a business suit. He was accompanied by Jassim Mohammed Saleh, a portly former major general from Fallujah who commanded an infantry division before the war. Although Conway's aides wondered whether the generals had enough wasta -- or personal connections -- to marshal the more than 1,000 troops they promised, the Marine commander and other ranking officers who participated in the gathering were impressed with what they heard. "The conversation was in strictly military terms," Coleman recalled. "These were military professionals who understood a dynamic on the ground, who spoke in a language, although in a different native tongue than ours, that was very, very similar to how we perceived the problem." Sitting across a table draped in brown camouflage fabric, the generals asked the Marines to hand over security responsibilities to them.... [S]enior officials at the White House and the Pentagon told Marine commanders to exhaust all their options before mounting another offensive, according to U.S. officials familiar with the issue....
Senior Marine officials said Conway had been authorized to reach a deal by his superiors, including Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the overall military commander in Iraq, and Gen. John P. Abizaid, the U.S. commander for the Middle East. The Marine officials said they conveyed details of the deal to both Sanchez and Abizaid. The next morning, however, internal reports of the deal startled officials with the civilian occupation authority in Baghdad.... "It caught everyone by surprise," an official with the occupation authority in Baghdad said. "Here was this Marine general making security policy, and we knew nothing about it."...
Clad in their olive-green uniforms and toting AK-47 rifles, members of the Fallujah Brigade manning checkpoints leading into the city have been drawing honks and waves this week. "We even get food and newspapers," said Maj. Majid Hamid, who is responsible for several checkpoints on the city's western fringe. "The people like to see us here." Hamid, who spent 17 years in the army and eventually rose to command an air-defense unit, said he heard a call from a mosque loudspeaker asking for people to join the brigade. He said he signed up for a simple reason: "I don't want the American soldiers to enter our city again," he said. "That's why I'm here."...
Marine commanders said they intended to test the new brigade's success in combating the insurgency in a week or two, when they plan to send a convoy through the center of the city. "We're going to see whether anything has changed," one officer said. "If not, we'll just have to go back to where we were."
It seems clear that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld are going to authorize anything at all that will quiet down the Iraq scene -- which will be key to getting Bush his first national election. I don't think it will work though.
Posted by: Alan on May 10, 2004 02:02 PMThis is absolutely the correct policy. Iraqi self policing of their own areas is paramount. Once law and order are restored, then a political process can be allowed to work. That political process may have to be backed up by force. However, in the absence of law and order there can be no political process. It was a huge strategic mistake to dismiss all the Baathists to begin.
So far in Iraq, the military has won the tactical battles but the politicians have lost most of the strategic battles. Any civilian control of Iraq will require cooperation of the police / military unless one is prepared to round up all the weapons (cannot be accomplished). There has to be a balance of power.
A Bosnia where the Serbs had all the weapons and the Muslims had none was not stable. A Bosnia where both sides are armed is more stable. Kurdistan is realtively peacful because the Kurds self-police. Why cannot the Sunnis self-police and the Shiites self police? The country has to be built from the bottom up (democratic). It cannot be imposed from the top down (autocratic).
Posted by: bakho on May 10, 2004 02:12 PMFrom all I've read (which, admittedly, is a very imperfect way of knowing what's happening on the ground), Conway probably made the right call. If he had gone the Richard Perle way and flattened the city and killed thousands of people, the damage done by the prison abuse scandal would be multiplied further. Not an ideal choice, certainly, but most likely the best under the circumstances.
Posted by: Brad Reed on May 10, 2004 02:16 PMThis situation is similiar to the surrender negotiations by General Sherman that ended the US Civil War. Sherman was very concerned about the Confederate army disintegrating into bands of partisans that would prolong the killing. Sherman gave terms that were considered too lenient by the Secretary of War and the Republican administration. Sherman thought he was acting according to Lincoln's orders (Lincoln was dead by this time). Sherman was ordered by Grant to re-negotiate. Sherman negotiated slightly less generous terms similar to Grant's terms at Appomatix. The Confederates accepted and went home without a further fight.
The tactical is only important in accomplishing strategic objectives. Sherman understood this better than any other Civil War General. The politicians were not at all happy with Sherman, but they would have been less happy in the long term had Sherman been too demanding and produced a partisan rebellion.
The Civilians in Iraq and the Pentagon may be disappointed because they see negotiation as weakness. Attacking Falloojah to punish the city is a tactical decision with no strategic objective. The military knows what tactics can accomplish and the costs. The marines know the cost of leveling Falloojah. The civilians do not. That is why the marines are in the best position to know what bargain to accept and which to reject. IF the strategic goal is to pacify the city with minimal loss of life, then the marines should be given the leeway to provide the civilians with the best options to accomplish that objective. Civilians should not be dictating tactics. Civilians should have ultimate control and veto tactics with political costs that are too high.
War cannot be micromanaged. War can only be managed. If the civilians don't understand that, then they should butt out.
Posted by: bakho on May 10, 2004 02:37 PM"Some of the Iraqi generals, including a leader of the new force, had been officers in Hussein's Republican Guard, an elite army unit dominated by Sunni Muslims and accused of human rights abuses against Shiite Muslims and Kurds."
And ran the 'rape rooms'--can't forget those, ending that practice is why the US went to war in Iraq, remember?
Posted by: Jim Lund on May 10, 2004 03:01 PMI agree with you and Conway. Time to gracefully surrender that which we can no longer withold. However both on the extreme autonomy of Latif and of Conway and the fact that Bremer was totally cut out have you read the very sharply contrasting view presented in
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/000801.html
immediately below. Has the shock and horror of the childish crusade driven Weber out of your mind (it would certainly have driven Weber out of his mind).
Anyone saying "he is there on the ground, his critics are not" at this point in the Iraqi mess is essentially saying "I've just turned off my mind, please ignore what I'm about to say". Events have proved over and over and over again that the people on the ground in Iraq are often quite profoundly clueless. This guy might not be but the fact that he's there isn't useful evidence on the subject.
The US went to war in Iraq because of WMD, not rape rooms. What is the population of Shiites and Kurds in Falloojah? a Sunni Baathist city if there was one. For sure, turning over Kurdistan and Shiastan to the Baath Sunnis would be a mistake, but I don't think anyone is thinking about doing that. Give the Sunnis local control in Sunni areas and Kurds local control in Kurdistand and the Shias can control Shiastan. Even Shia and Kurds living in Falloojah would be safer with the Sunnis running the city than with the USMC trying to blast their way in.
I don't know that anyone would suggest that Shias or Kurds could run all of Iraq without input from minority groups unless they were the Shia or Kurd version of Saddam. That said, the task is to find credible, competent, reliable leaders that can speak for the minorities and help protect their rights. Since all the Sunnis that fit that category worked in the Government under Saddam and were therefore Baath Party members, then that is where we have to turn. There are plenty of Iraqis who did what they had to do to survive Saddam. Those that opposed him openly did not live long. All those that are ideologically pure are dead. Then there are the exiles that don't seem to have much popular support and act like con men.
If the price of ideological purity is 1 million dead Iraqis, I vote for selling out. You can stand for ideals all you want, but it ain't gonna happen in Iraq, the Giant Mess-O-Potamia. The best the US can do is leave them the best we can and try to help them evolve into something better.
Posted by: bakho on May 10, 2004 05:55 PM--have you read the very sharply contrasting view presented in
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/000801.html immediately below--
I don't see the views as sharply contrasting. The earlier post is about command and control *if* you claim to be the state: that violence must be limited and directed. This post is about "indirect rule," something older and different.
Posted by: Brad DeLong on May 10, 2004 06:04 PMYes, but they're also flying Saddam's flag. That's got to be sending some chills down a few people's backs, especially Shiite and Kurdish backs.
Posted by: oldman on May 10, 2004 08:24 PMFalluja was a lost battle for the cival Pentagon cabal.
After the 4 mercenaries were killed - a strategically irrelevant issue - the Bush ordered "heads to roll". Conway got the task to get some "heads" but was only given some 2500 to 3500 Marines without their heavy weapons and no real intelligence about whos heads he should roll to get this done. Probably half of his soldiers were real fighters. so some 2000 marines against a city with 300.000 people and some 100.000 AK47. In urban fighting you do not only to sweep a housing block, you need to hold it until its over. How would this be done 24 by 7 with 2000 marines?
Impossible. One very bad alternative was to Dresden Falluja and risk Iraq wide uprising.
The solution was obvious. Declare the "terrorists" to be a "friendly force" and leave. Sanchez and Abizaid agreed and did NOT inform the civil cabal but let Conway hold a press conference right away.
This was a very serious uprising of the military leades against the civil command ind the Pentagon and CPA.
Lets give them a big "Thank you" for this one and hope for more.
Rumor has it that the Bush administration asked the Spanish to "get Muqtada dead or alive" and the Spanish refused. Supposedly that is one reason the Spanish are leaving early.
The military is not stupid. They can recognize strategic blunders when they see them. They don't always have the option of saying no.
Posted by: bakho on May 10, 2004 11:39 PMTet Mau Than
Posted by: Stirling Newberry on May 11, 2004 03:52 AMWhile we are calling in Iraq's military to restore order, perhaps we need to call in Turkey's diplomatic corp, as well. Leaving Iraq to its own devices seems a very bad idea, given the risk of factionalization and encroachment by Iraq's neighbors. Turkey's model, though not always pleasant to behold, is a big step up from US military occupation and from Saddam's system of oppression. Iraq's generals have, at least initially, displayed an ability to enforce peace. Turkey's generals do likewise. On the assumption that the generals are going to be part of the landscape of governmental power once Iraq becomes sovereign, we need to avoid leaving them in charge with only their experience under Saddam as a map for governance. Turkey has a strong interest in Iraq's future, and a mix of authoritarianism and democracy that may be the best we can hope for in Iraq. We should be getting Turkey involved. It certainly wouldn't solve the Sadr problem, but no single step will solve all of Iraq's difficulties.
Posted by: K Harris on May 11, 2004 06:37 AMTurkey has to be involved or Turkey will be at war with Kurdistan. The map of Kurdistan contains pieces of Iraq, Iran Syria and Turkey. It was not the intention of Mr. Bush to redraw the lines in Mesopotamia, but that may be the end result.
"If the price of ideological purity is 1 million dead Iraqis, I vote for selling out."
Well, the price for ridding the world of Hitler was far more than 1 million dead Germans, would you have voted to sell out back in the '40s?
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on May 11, 2004 09:55 AMA long overdue move, actually.
Engage the Republican Gaurds (by another name) to keep order, and ensure that _they_ know (and they surely do, the lessons of Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom are not lost on them) that if they fail to keep order that the Marines will be right behind them.
I'm not sure how (or if) the Left can see this as a bad idea. You try one thing, it doesn't work, so you try something else. Repeat until you have the right formula.
The alternative is, I think, to flatten any urban area to the ground (think Grozny) and no one wants that.
Posted by: Brian on May 11, 2004 10:10 AM"If the price of ideological purity is 1 million dead Iraqis, I vote for selling out."
Well, the price for ridding the world of Hitler was far more than 1 million dead Germans, would you have voted to sell out back in the '40s?
Posted by Patrick R. Sullivan at May 11, 2004 09:55 AM
mixing morale and numbers doesn't sound too good to me, either - but I guess bakho meant net loss of human life (sorry, I didn't find a less cynical way of putting it). Your example doesn't have that much bite then since in WWII there was no trade-off between defending democratic principles and avoiding a carnage on the European continent.
Posted by: konrad on May 11, 2004 11:12 AM""If the price of ideological purity is 1 million dead Iraqis, I vote for selling out."
Patrick:
"Well, the price for ridding the world of Hitler was far more than 1 million dead Germans, would you have voted to sell out back in the '40s?"
Godwin. Not to mention dishonest and/or stupid.
Posted by: Barry on May 11, 2004 11:12 AMPatrick's analogy can only be described as moronic -- the Bushites (in an uncharacteristic display of sanity) have been refraining from flattening Fallujah up to now precisely because it will make things even worse.
This is not a Vietnam-style (or 1900 Philippines-style) situation, in which we can commit wholesale slaughter without fear of the consequences because our goal is to control all of our enemy through brute force. In order to win the world war against megaterrorism, we have to try avoiding brutalizing Iraq to the point that it ignites the entire billion-strong world Moslem population against us. If we do the latter, there's always the little matter of those Pakistani A-bombs, just waiting to slip into the hands of Islamic terrorists...
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw on May 11, 2004 03:16 PMThis is an unusually cryptic comment, even by the standards of SDJ:
"Your example doesn't have that much bite then since in WWII there was no trade-off between defending democratic principles and avoiding a carnage on the European continent."
Given my talent for reading the unreadable, I'm usually not at a total loss comprehending such. But, I admit the above makes absolutely no sense no matter from what angle I look at it.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on May 11, 2004 03:25 PMIt's not really THAT hard to understand, Patrick. Since you have consistent trouble understanding the painfully obvious, see my elaboration on Konrad's point above.
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw on May 11, 2004 03:37 PMSeems to me that the on-scene commander, MajGen Conway, made a pretty good decision in raising this Fallujah brigade composed of former Iraqi Army officers and enlisted. It was a gamble yes, but turning Fallujah into a parking lot was obviously not the best solution either.
Besides, before this Iraqi Falujah force was given charge of the city, the Marine force attacking Fallujah put quite a bit of firepower on the insurgents killing hundreds of them and many non-combatants too. This lesson wasn't lost on the Fallujahian too be sure. There could still be a parking lot in their future if they won't cooperate with the Iraqi Fallujah brigade
Posted by: Lawrence on May 11, 2004 05:30 PMOf course, Lawrence, if we turn Fallujah into a "parking lot", we will lose not only Iraq, but also -- almost certainly -- the world war against Islamic Megaterrorism, too. Which is the war we REALLY can't afford to lose, of which the "war" in Iraq is only one (bungled) campaign.
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw on May 11, 2004 06:15 PMOnline Casinos Directory
Posted by: Online Casino on June 22, 2004 11:59 PMTurkey has to be involved or Turkey will be at war with Kurdistan. The map of Kurdistan contains pieces of Iraq, Iran Syria and Turkey. It was not the intention of Mr. Bush to redraw the lines in Mesopotamia, but that may be the end result.
From all I've read (which, admittedly, is a very imperfect way of knowing what's happening on the ground), Conway probably made the right call. If he had gone the Richard Perle way and flattened the city and killed thousands of people, the damage done by the prison abuse scandal would be multiplied further. Not an ideal choice, certainly, but most likely the best under the circumstances.
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