www.xymphora.blogspot.com – 2004-05-04 09:42:30

www.xymphora.blogspot.com

(May 01, 2004) — The announced withdrawal of American troops from Falluja, unless it is scuppered by the neocons (and I have no doubt they are working on scuppering it), is a very important development.

It represents the first acknowledged defeat for the neocon ‘shock and awe’ mad-dog strategy of American military dealings with the rest of the world. Basically, psychos like [Michael] Ledeen and [Richard] Perle decided that the United States has the only domineering army in the world, and American foreign policy should be to use it to violently coerce the rest of the world to follow American big business interests. This would be accomplished by picking example countries like Iraq and using American military violence to completely destroy the country and terrify the population.

The massacre in Falluja is the most blatant manifestation of this policy. The neocons were prepared to kill almost every person in Falluja until any survivors were so terrified that their terror and the deaths of the rest could be used as an example to any others in Iraq or the rest of the world who might question the decisions of the American occupiers. It didn’t work.

A Civilian Resistance Is Difficult to Defeat
Again, facts have proven that an army, even the best army in the world, is useless in fighting a determined civilian resistance (Vietnam, southern Lebanon, the thirteen colonies, etc.). The only way you can ‘win’ such an encounter is if you are morally prepared to murder or incapacitate every last inhabitant (are the Americans ready for the Byzantine Empire solution of blinding every male in Iraq?).

We have seen the neocon strategy over and over again in Iraq, starting with the ‘shock and awe’ bombing of civilians, and carrying through the murder of journalists, the abuse of civilians, and the torture of prisoners.

It is laughable for the Americans to claim that the recent evidence of misuse of prisoners is an anomaly, when we have seen so much evidence of other incidents in the past. Now they claim they are going to ‘investigate’. How many investigations have been promised before? How many people have been punished? American claims of innocence won’t fly anymore. Brutality is the express and implicit policy of the Pentagon in Iraq. The soldiers who brutalize Iraqi civilians and prisoners do so because they understand that they are supposed to.

How US Generals ‘Broke Ranks’ and Opted for Peace
The withdrawal from Fallujah represents an incredible loss of control by the Pentagon in Washington over the American military. It is apparent that the American commanders on the ground in Falluja came to the conclusion that whoever was giving the orders in Washington was insane (Dr. Strangelove), and that they were no longer prepared to participate in a massacre that not only would fail in its short-term military goal, but would turn the whole country violently against the Americans (not to mention completely destroying the moral integrity of the American military by forcing soldiers to murder civilians).

They negotiated a cease-fire unknown to the Pentagon in Washington and against the express wishes of the civilian neocons in charge of the Pentagon. In fact, Falluja was being micromanaged by the White House itself.

No to put too fine a point on it, the cease-fire in Falluja was a mutiny by the American commanders in Falluja (the hero seems to be Marine Lt. Gen. James Conway). This explains why we were simultaneously hearing announcements of a cease-fire in Iraq and vehement denials from the Pentagon in Washington.

It also explains why some Americans had stopped the massacre, while others, still under the control of Washington, continued. Paul Wolfowitz said the situation was ‘confusing’, which is a very odd thing for the guy supposedly in charge to say. It was confusing to him because a cease-fire was being negotiated on the ground in Falluja behind Wolfowitz’s back.

The central command in Washington has become so bad — both incompetent and treasonous — that American soldiers in the field have to make their own cease-fires. Perhaps there is hope for the United States yet. There are conflicting accounts of just how close the new Iraqi military leader of Falluja was to Saddam Hussein, but he looks just like him!