Fallujah Revisited

Over at BolehTalk, our companion blogsite, I have blogged on several occasions about the US siege and destruction of Fallujah. I then termed Fallujah 'The Iraqi Alamo'. I am sure Americans know what the name Alamo implies in terms of nationalistic emotions, sacrifices, and the will to 'pay back' for the wrongs they had suffered.

I reckon that the wanton and excessively brutal assault on Fallujah was the US military’s greatest mistake in its campaign in Iraq. It seemed to bear the hallmark of the Israeli military doctrine, of an over-the-top Deuteronomic “10 eyes for an eye, and 10 teeth for a tooth”. It hasn’t worked for the Israelis against the Palestinians over the years, so who in their idiocy thought it would have worked for the far-less capable US military.

Today Fallujah remained “desolated” in the very meaning of that description by the Roman historian Tacitus. The claim of 'peace' has been a joke, but a dangerous one for American troops.

US Army roadblocks in Fallujah prevent Fallujans from direct access to nearby medical facilities, forcing them to take long circuitous routes; there’s no piped water and very little electricity, a situation far worse than the other affected parts of Iraq; US troops have commandeered schools for military purposes, ousting students from their sheltered classrooms into tents; the city remains 'desolated'.

The world still recalls the horrendous image of a US Marine cold bloodedly executing an already wounded, immobile and unarmed Iraqi in a mosque. Then the International Red Cross were denied access during Fallujah's moments of most dire needs.

Even now, there's no law and order in its streets save those harsh unaccountable brutalities and atrocities imposed and committed by the Iraqi National Police, which have been dominated by the US favoured Kurds, an ethnic group extremely hostile to the local Sunni Arabs; the destructions in the city remain with little fulfilment of the promised reconstructions; cholera and other diseases run rampant from lack of basic infrastructure, destroyed during the American assault - these pose continuous threats to the health of the locals; the list goes on with the utter destructions and desolations.

More than all these, the Fallujans remember the American massacre of their fallen.

Just ideal breeding grounds for anti-American insurgents.

In my accompanying piece to this posting, I will blog on what I believe to be the failures of the Americans.