fallujah: winning the battle, losing the war

the united states’ military victory in fallujah is an example of winning the battle while going deep in the quagmire of losing the war.

here is why the pentagon believes they are on top of things in fallujah:

american marines and soldiers who fought in fallujah faced the toughest warfare possible and did magnificently, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said nov. 23.

air force gen. richard b. myers told greta van susteren on the fox news channel that the marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen did very well in the urban- warfare environment in the embattled iraqi city.

he said the troops are working well with iraqi allies. the chairman said the iraqi forces that fought against insurgents in fallujah did very well. this bodes well for the future of the country, he said.

this is how al jazeera views the recent battle of fallujah:

in the strictest terms of a tactical scorecard, the body count of casualties would appear to support that claim. an estimated (but unverified) total of 1200 fighters were reported killed so far, while the us military admits that their own forces suffered fewer than 50 battlefield fatalities.

rarely reported by the pentagon is the nearly 300 severely wounded american casualties and a similar number of lightly injured. when one factors in the lack of fighters' medical facilities, their willingness to die in battle, and the recently exposed manner in which us soldiers "dispatch" wounded iraqi prisoners the casualty figures no longer appear so heavily one-sided.

nevertheless, the discrepancy in the death count also illustrates clearly the overwhelming technological superiority enjoyed by the us forces over the lightly armed fighters -something which was never in question.

proponents of the “just war” theory usually try to qualify why a war is justified—that is, winning the peace ought to be the end-result of war.

from the point of view of the iraqis, peace means experiencing salam. salam is not just the absence of conflict. genuine peace is the presence of justice.

there is no salam in fallujah, iraq; hence, there is no real victory in this war.