Fallujah "liberated"

A top marine commander in Fallujah says that the city has been "liberated" although U.S. forces continue to battle pockets of resistance.

I guess we'll be "liberating" Mosul next, then maybe Samara, oops, don't forget to liberate Sadr city, then, perhaps it will be time to re-liberate Fallujah.

The more we "liberate" the Iraqi people, the closer we come to that lonely helicopter pulling the last residents of the Green Zone out of Baghdad. Because the enemy seems to be mutating from what Rumsfeld likes to call "a few dead-enders" to something altogether different.

Sattler's remarks on liberating Fallujah echoed those of senior Iraqi officials late in the week, as U.S. forces on Saturday continued intense combat operations aimed at securing the last section of the city. The rebel force they were confronting was fighting with surprising discipline, organization and the trappings of a professional army, according to American commanders.

In the southernmost section of Fallujah, where a showdown still loomed, U.S. soldiers discovered an underground bunker and steel-enforced tunnels connecting a ring of houses filled with weapons, medical supplies and bunk beds.

The fighters in the area were armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and dressed in blue camouflage uniforms with full military battle gear. U.S. soldiers reported finding American Meals Ready to Eat and other equipment that the U.S. government donated earlier this year to set up a local security force, which was quickly corrupted and taken over by insurgents.

It is unnerving that, to the best of my knowledge, U.S. intelligence has no idea who these guys are, where they come from, and who trained and supplied them. Did Hussein's Revolutionary Guard ever show such ability?

The insurgents who remained were very low on food, relying on fruit and canned goods, according to witnesses. But the fighters continued to harass U.S. forces, and the Iraqi troops who were trailing them, by moving through the maze of buildings behind the advance, and even answering American psychological warfare operations.

In areas controlled by U.S. forces, loudspeakers mounted on Humvees urged that "all fighters in Fallujah should surrender, and we guarantee they will not be killed or insulted."

From a loudspeaker on a mosque still controlled by insurgents, the fighters replied: "We ask the American soldiers to surrender and we guarantee that we will kill and torture them."

It might be helpful if the marine commander defined "liberated." Because it seems to me these same mysterious forces, having slipped out of Fallujah by the score are likely setting up similar defensive positions in other Iraqi cities.

And as Wesley Clark writes in the Post today, we are beyond the point of being able to "liberate" Iraq solely by military means (If that ever was, in fact, possible).

This insurgency has continued to grow, despite U.S. military effectiveness on the ground. While Saddam Hussein's security forces may have always had a plan to resist the occupation, it was the failure of American policymakers to gain political legitimacy that enabled the insurgency to grow. And while the failure may have begun with the inability to impose order after Saddam's ouster, it was the lack of a political coterie and the tools of political development -- such as the Vietnam program of Civil Operations-Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) -- that seems to have enabled the insurgency to take root amid the U.S. presence. These are the sorts of mistakes the United States must avoid in the future, otherwise the battle of Fallujah may end up being nothing more than the "taking down" of an insurgent stronghold -- a battlefield success on the road to strategic failure.

Troops are in Fallujah because of a political failure: Large numbers of Sunnis either wouldn't, or couldn't, participate in the political process and the coming elections. Greater security in Fallujah may move citizens (whenever they return) to take part in the voting; it's too early to say. But it's certain that you can't bomb people into the polling booths.

So, we continue to "liberate" Iraqi cities. At some point in the not too distant future, George W. Bush will declare the entire nation "liberated" and begin a hasty pull-out of U.S. troops. A relieved U.S. populace will soon forget about Iraq, as the security situation in the "liberated" country will be too perilous for western journalists to operate and report on conditions.

Elsewhere in the region, concepts foreign to the current U.S. administration -- "diplomacy" and the "European Union" -- have for the time being saved Bush's bacon by convincing Iran to halt enriching uranium while talks continue.

I say this having just read James Fallows' fascinating look at the options we have for confronting Iran and their nuclear program. There are no viable options for an administration that will find it extremely difficult to negotiate with a nation they've deemed a founding member of the axis of evil club. As the piece concludes,

So this is how the war game turned out: with a finding that the next American President must, through bluff and patience, change the actions of a government whose motives he does not understand well, and over which his influence is limited. "After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers," Sam Gardiner said of his exercise. "You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work."

Unless the EU can come up with a sweet enough deal for the Iranian mullahs, they we will likely resign ourselves either to a war that will make Iraq look like that proverbial "cake walk," or to accepting an Iran with nuclear capability. Neither option is promising.