US media applauds destruction of Fallujah

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Wed, 17 Nov 2004 07:45:59 -0800

US media applauds destruction of Fallujah

 

 

 

 

 

US media applauds destruction of Fallujah

By David Walsh

17 November 2004

 

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Not a single major voice has been raised in the American media against

the ongoing destruction of Fallujah. While much of the world recognizes

something horrifying has occurred, the US press does not bat an eye

over

the systematic leveling of a city of 300,000 people.

 

A journalist for the Times (London) described the scene the night the

US

onslaught began: " The districts comprising Fallujah's perimeter—where

most of the insurgents are concentrated—were already largely in ruins.

The crumbling remains of houses and shell-pocked walls reminded me of

my

home town Beirut in the 1980s at the height of Lebanon's civil war....

I

began to count out loud as the bombs tumbled to the ground with

increasingly monotonous regularity. There were 38 in the first

half-hour

alone. The bombing continued in waves until 5:15 a.m. as the American

forces softened up their targets. "

 

And now? Buildings have been destroyed by the hundreds, corpses buried

under many of them. A Christian Science Monitor reporter observes:

" Some

districts reeked from the sickening odor of rotting flesh, a stench too

powerful to be swept away by a brisk breeze coming in from the sandy

plain surrounding the city 40 miles west of Baghdad.

 

" A week of ground combat by Marines and some Iraqi troops, supported by

tanks and attack helicopters, added to the destruction in a city where

the homes and businesses for about 300,000 people are packed into an

area a little less than 2 miles wide and a little more than 2 miles

long. ... Cats and dogs scamper along streets littered with bricks,

broken glass, toppled light poles, downed power lines, twisted traffic

barriers and spent cartridges. Walls are full of bullet holes. Marines

have blown holes in walls and knocked down doors to search homes and

shops. Dead Iraqis still lay out in the open Monday. "

 

For all intents and purposes, the US military declared any male in

Fallujah and any family unlucky enough to be caught in the hail of

deadly fire legitimate targets for death. We will perhaps never know

how

many civilians have been slaughtered by US forces.

 

The chief United Nations human rights official, Louise Arbour, has

called for an investigation of abuses, including the disproportionate

use of force and the targeting of civilians. Arbour claimed that all

violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws should

be

investigated, including " the deliberate targeting of civilians,

indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured

persons and the use of human shields. " The American media either

ignores

or brushes this aside.

 

In none of the US media commentaries is there a single expression of

concern about not merely the moral, but the legal issues involved in

the

attack on Fallujah. The American military operation in the city is an

illegal act of aggression in an illegal, aggressive war.

 

As Marjorie Cohn, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law,

executive

vice president of the National Lawyers Guild and the US representative

to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists, has

noted, the attack began with an act contravening international law:

" They [uS forces] stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital,

and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances to go inside the

main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the

Geneva Conventions. "

 

Cohn continues: " Torture, inhuman treatment, and willful killing are

grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, treaties ratified by the

United States. Grave breaches of Geneva are considered war crimes under

our federal War Crimes Act of 1996. American nationals who commit war

crimes abroad can receive life in prison, or even the death penalty if

the victim dies. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, a

commander can be held liable if he knew or should have known his

inferiors were committing war crimes and he failed to prevent or stop

them. ... Bush's aggressive war against the people of Iraq promises to

kill many more American soldiers and untold numbers of Iraqis.

Nuremberg

prosecutor Justice [Robert] Jackson labeled the crime of aggression

`the

greatest menace of our times.' More than 50 years later, his words

still

ring true. "

 

There has been nothing like the attack on Fallujah since the Nazi

invasion and occupation of much of the European continent—the shelling

and bombing of Warsaw in September 1939, the terror bombing of

Rotterdam

in May 1940. All the talk about precision bombing in Iraq is dust

thrown

in the public's eyes. The purpose of the devastation in Fallujah is to

terrorize the Iraqi people and the entire population of the Middle

East.

Large numbers of people have been killed in the assault on the city.

 

Nowhere in the American media do you find a word of protest. No one

asks

for verification that the city is being held " hostage " by criminals and

" foreign terrorists. " No one questions an operation to " root out " a

relative handful of terrorists that requires razing a city to the

ground.

 

It is necessary to put this on record. In the future, people will ask:

what did you do and say while Fallujah was being destroyed? If readers

can find major newspaper or television editorials denouncing the

murderous attack, by all means, send them in to the WSWS. We have

searched in vain.

 

This is what we found.

 

The New York Times editors complain that the onslaught in Fallujah " is

not the textbook way to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign " and worry

that the city's decimation may be a " very costly victory, " because of

the hostility it will breed in the Sunni population, but never question

the morality or legality of the attack.

 

The Times' real concern is for the fraudulent elections scheduled for

January, designed to give the occupation a pseudo-democratic veneer.

" Insurgents have now stepped up their attacks in the larger city of

Ramadi, 30 miles west of Falluja, " the editors write, " and have

established a new base in the northern Iraq metropolis of Mosul. It is

critical to keep these armed fighters from disrupting the Iraqi

elections planned for January. "

 

The editors of the Washington Post too are nervous about the long-term

prospects in Iraq, but assert that " the prospective restoration of

government rule and the elimination of an open haven for terrorists [in

Fallujah] is a significant step forward, provided that rule can be

sustained and bolstered with reconstruction and participation in

upcoming national elections. " The Post transmits to its readers,

without

any proof whatsoever, the claim that " reported casualties so far have

been relatively light. "

 

Along the same lines, the Boston Globe criticizes Bush administration

policy for making the attack on Fallujah necessary, but signs on to the

operation: " Given everything that has gone wrong in the intervening

period—after all the mistakes of omission and commission made by

President Bush and his advisers—Fallujah could not be left as a

sanctuary and spawning ground for thousands of insurgents who aspire

either to restore a Saddamist police state or to impose a harsh

Islamist

theocracy. "

 

After its initial hesitation, the Globe warms to the task: " For the

taking of Fallujah to be successful, there must be enough well-trained

and reliable Iraqi security forces to keep the dispersed insurgent

bands

from filtering back in. Then other cities in the Sunni area will have

to

be cleared one at a time of Ba'athist and Islamist reactionaries. "

 

The cynical position of these " liberal " newspapers was summed up in the

stance of the Los Angeles Times, whose editors comment: " Iraqi

insurgents based in Fallouja presented U.S. military forces with two

choices, one bad and the other worse. Marines opted for the bad one

Monday, assaulting the city with the understanding that civilians as

well as fighters would be killed and Arab passions would be inflamed

far

outside Fallouja and Iraq. The worse option was to do nothing, cede the

town to the guerrillas and make it a model for other cities in Iraq. "

 

For whom is this a " worse option " ? The Iraqi people, the American

people—or the US ruling elite and its military? While carping about

this

or that tactical issue, the liberal media establishment makes clear

that

it easily prefers the colonial-style occupation of Iraq—and all that

goes with it, including the destruction of Fallujah—to its alternative,

the defeat and forced withdrawal of American forces.

 

We feel obliged to ask: is there a limit beyond which the editors of

the

Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the

Boston Globe would not find halting US military operations in Iraq the

" worse option " ? The razing of two major urban centers, five, a dozen?

Two hundred thousand dead Iraqis, half a million, one million? We would

seriously like to know.

 

The majority of the American press does not bother to go through the

ritual of expressing reservations about the political costs of the

Fallujah attack. They smell blood and seem to like the scent.

 

The San Francisco Chronicle, published in an area where antiwar

sentiment is widespread, makes no bones about its bloodlust: " The

success of the present operation will be gauged in part by how well U.

S. commanders hold down their own casualties and those of Iraqi

counterparts—and of Iraqi civilians sheltering in Fallujah—while

crushing any insurgents who stay to fight. ... The anti-guerrilla

crackdown that is supposed to accompany the emergency decree needs to

be

more successful than what the U.S. military and interim Iraqi leaders

have been able to accomplish thus far. "

 

USA Today is forthright, declaring in an editorial, " The battle must be

fought. The training of Iraqi forces delayed it. But as the U.S. and

others have learned the hard way, guerrilla wars are about more than

taking territory. Capturing Fallujah will open a new period that could

determine whether the insurgents will be protected by the populace, or

rejected in favor of peace. "

 

The Good Samaritans at the Christian Science Monitor, spiritual heirs

to

Mary Baker Eddy, whose Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

was

" the culmination of her own life-long search for a spiritual system of

healing, " bare their fangs in a particularly vile manner:

 

" The battle for Fallujah will go down in history as a textbook example

of urban warfare. The US military used the most advanced technology and

the best street-fighting tactics to hunt down the entrenched insurgents

while keeping civilian casualties to a minimum.

 

" But the message of Fallujah isn't the prowess of the United States but

its tenacity.

 

" Having failed last April to retake that small Sunni city, the US could

not again afford to appear weak to the would-be voters of Iraq. With

elections planned for late January, Iraqis had to be shown that the US

military, along with the fledgling Iraqi Army, will keep eliminating

safe sanctuaries for hostage-taking terrorists and bombmaking

insurgents. "

 

The argument that the retaking of Fallujah represents a vital step in

the " democratization " of Iraq is a common theme in the American press.

 

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorializes: " Despite its fearsome

costs—through Friday, some 18 U.S. troops and five Iraqi soldiers were

killed, along with 600 insurgent fighters—there is little doubt that

Fallujah had to be retaken. The city is the headquarters for Iraq's

Sunni Muslim minority, and without Sunni participation January's

elections could be considered illegitimate. "

 

The Toledo [Ohio] Blade: " Fallujah had to be taken away from the

resistance if the scheduled January elections are to have any

credibility. An important population center like Fallujah simply cannot

be allowed to remain outside the control of the interim government and

U.S. forces. "

 

The Modesto [California] Bee: " As the elections of a national assembly

near, U.S. and Iraqi forces confront a rebel movement that is

determined

to disrupt the voting and, more broadly, to make Iraq ungovernable.

Thus

Washington has only one realistic option: Beat back the rebel offensive

wherever it surfaces, despite the risk of increasing alienation among

Iraqi Sunnis. "

 

The Oregonian [Portland, Oregon]: " Fallujah is the center, or at least

a

center, of the armed opposition to Iraq's efforts to establish a

democratic regime. That probably means this week's attack is a

necessary

condition for any kind of election to go forward. The new government,

even with the help of the United Nations, cannot conduct free, fair

elections if rebels can control whole cities and launch murderous,

intimidating attacks from them. "

 

None of these newspapers' editors question the logic of a nationwide

election and an entire " democratic " process supposedly made possible by

the extermination of a city and the massacre of the national popular

resistance forces.

 

Certain editors go out of their way to pay tribute to the American

military.

 

Comments the Cleveland Plain Dealer, " In the annals of war, there has

never been a fighting force as capable as the Americans of waging urban

warfare with weaponry and tactics more attuned to the need to avoid

innocent loss of life. Fallujah was a citywide safe house for all

manner

of bad guys, beheaders and insurgents. It was an open taunt that

prevented political progress and future amity among the ethnic and

religious groups in Iraq. It had to be shut down. "

 

The editors of the Des Moines Register echo this sentiment, " America's

magnificently trained and equipped fighting forces are again on display

in the long-awaited offensive to retake Fallujah from the Iraqi

insurgents. There's little doubt the troops can prevail militarily. Let

us also pray that their bravery and sacrifice will be rewarded in the

larger sense of bringing enough stability to Iraq to hold elections. "

 

No doubt similar tributes were paid to the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe in

the German press of 1939-40. In reality, the " battle for Fallujah " was

entirely one-sided. US military and technical superiority over the

Iraqi

resistance is as great, if not greater, than the American army's

advantage over their Indian opponents in the 1870s and 1880s.

 

The openly right-wing press can hardly conceal its glee over " payback "

in Fallujah. The Indianapolis Star proclaimed in an editorial, " The

U.S.-led military offensive under way in Fallujah against Iraqi

insurgents was long overdue. `We are determined to clean Fallujah from

terrorists,' interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said on Monday. A

hotbed of insurgent activity for months, Fallujah and other cities

surrounding Baghdad must be cleared of resistance so the country can

proceed with elections in January. "

 

The headline of the Charleston [south Carolina] Post and Courier

editorial is quite explicit: " No option but force for Fallujah. " The

comment lays the blame for the annihilation of the city squarely on the

shoulders of those who sought to defend it from the American occupiers.

" The fanaticism of the al-Qaida-led terrorists and the obduracy of

hard-line Sunni insurgents left no other alternative to the all-out

offensive launched yesterday by a 15,000-strong force of U.S. Marines

and Army troops, backed by units of the newly formed Iraqi Army. ...

Now

it is up to the U.S. Marines and Army, who are spearheading the thrust

into Fallujah, to rid the city of its nest of vipers. "

 

The [Phoenix] Arizona Republic editorial carries the headline,

" Fallujah

must fall. " It argues that " with perhaps thousands more rebels massed

in

the city west of Baghdad, the Marines and Army must charge forward once

again. It is a hellish business, fighting street by narrow street, and

our prayers go with the young soldiers, as well as their Iraqi army

allies. ... With a Fallujah teeming with terrorists, insurgents and

fundamentalist anarchists, the planned national elections are

jeopardized. ... That means Fallujah must be freed of terrorist

control. "

 

The Boston Herald proclaims that the " Fight for Fallujah is a fight for

us all. " The tabloid's editors write: " The fight for Fallujah remained

unfinished business for far too long. It was a nest of terrorist vipers

last spring, when the charred and dismembered bodies of two American

contractors were hung from one of the bridges over the Euphrates. And

it

was allowed to continue to grow and to fester—until now. "

 

So much for the American " free press, " free only of any commitment to

democratic principles, honesty and truth.

 

See Also:

Fallujah in US hands as uprising sweeps Sunni regions of Iraq

[16 November 2004]

US media and liberal establishment: accomplices in the assault on

Fallujah

[9 November 2004]

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