Phantom Fury in Fallujah
"Phantom Fury" is the perfect name for the latest U.S.-led assault on Fallujah, but not for the reasons the marketing wizards at the Pentagon might think.
While creating the perception that the insurgents in Iraq are being defeated, Phantom Fury is likely to have the opposite effect, just like all the other, long-forgotten offensives since April 2003.
The other military offensives, with decisive-sounding names like "Operation Iron Fist," occurred at a rate of about one every two months. And, each time, the Pentagon assured us the insurgency would be crushed.
Yet with each succeeding month, the insurgency grew and became more sophisticated. U.S. and Iraqi government casualties only increased.
Iraq's history is well-known: Iraqis will fight to the death all foreign invaders, including those claiming to be liberators.
But for those who continue to believe the Bush administration's rosy assertions that things are getting better, I can assure you of this: The situation in Iraq is much worse than you think and it will deteriorate further. As a U.S. diplomat stationed in Baghdad said in the Sept. 20 Newsweek magazine, "All hell is breaking loose."
Yet, I agree with those who say Iraq is not Vietnam. In reality, Iraq is more like Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979 or Lebanon after Israel's conquest in 1982.
The Soviets fought a draining guerrilla insurgency in Afghanistan for a decade before turning tail, while Israel bogged down in Lebanon for nearly 20 years prior to its withdrawal.
The anti-Soviet Afghan insurgency (the mujahedeen) formed the nucleus that later became al-Qaeda and the Taliban, while the Lebanese resistance to Israel's occupation spawned Hezbollah. None of these organizations in Afghanistan or Lebanon existed before the Soviet or Israeli invasions.
As we saw with Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the Lebanese resistance morphed and adapted to the occupying Israeli forces. The insurgency there went through three or four incarnations before it gave rise to Hezbollah as the dominant force.
The same is happening in Iraq. The first generation or incarnation of the insurgency was primarily the remnants of the Baath Party. The second generation is characterized by Muqtada al-Sadr's militia and the what is loosely labeled as Islamists.
We have yet to see what the third and fourth generations of the Iraqi insurgency will look like, since that will depend on how long we insist on staying. The longer we stay, the more generations of the insurgency our military occupation will spawn.
Thanks to our unprovoked conquest and mismanagement of Iraq, that country is devolving into a failed state, much like Afghanistan in the 1980s and '90s, and is becoming a primary breeding ground for new terrorism. Ironically, Iraq is actually becoming the threat the Bush administration deceived us into thinking it was under Saddam Hussein.
We knew then and we know now that Iraq was not a threat to the United States before our March 2003 invasion and Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted as much on Feb. 24, 2001: "He \[Saddam Hussein\] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
I was one of many people familiar with that country who warned that a U.S.-led conquest of Iraq was a flawed strategy doomed to fail.
We weren't saying this because we liked Hussein's Baath Party and wanted to see it stay in power. On the contrary, I spent months in Iraq's prisons, tortured by Baathists, because I was a threat to its regime.
As I saw it, a U.S. invasion of Iraq - particularly one based on deliberate falsehoods - would be about as beneficial as a heart and lung transplant on a patient with stomach cancer.
The end result is that we are now creating enemies faster than we can kill them off, as Operation Phantom Fury lives up to its unfortunate name of being all fury and phantom success.
-------
The Denver Post
Ibrahim Kazerooni was a dissident in his native Iraq and fled in 1974 after being repeatedly imprisoned and tortured by the Baathist regime for his beliefs and opposition to the government. He currently is the director of the Abrahamic Initiative at St. John's Cathedral in Denver.
While creating the perception that the insurgents in Iraq are being defeated, Phantom Fury is likely to have the opposite effect, just like all the other, long-forgotten offensives since April 2003.
The other military offensives, with decisive-sounding names like "Operation Iron Fist," occurred at a rate of about one every two months. And, each time, the Pentagon assured us the insurgency would be crushed.
Yet with each succeeding month, the insurgency grew and became more sophisticated. U.S. and Iraqi government casualties only increased.
Iraq's history is well-known: Iraqis will fight to the death all foreign invaders, including those claiming to be liberators.
But for those who continue to believe the Bush administration's rosy assertions that things are getting better, I can assure you of this: The situation in Iraq is much worse than you think and it will deteriorate further. As a U.S. diplomat stationed in Baghdad said in the Sept. 20 Newsweek magazine, "All hell is breaking loose."
Yet, I agree with those who say Iraq is not Vietnam. In reality, Iraq is more like Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979 or Lebanon after Israel's conquest in 1982.
The Soviets fought a draining guerrilla insurgency in Afghanistan for a decade before turning tail, while Israel bogged down in Lebanon for nearly 20 years prior to its withdrawal.
The anti-Soviet Afghan insurgency (the mujahedeen) formed the nucleus that later became al-Qaeda and the Taliban, while the Lebanese resistance to Israel's occupation spawned Hezbollah. None of these organizations in Afghanistan or Lebanon existed before the Soviet or Israeli invasions.
As we saw with Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the Lebanese resistance morphed and adapted to the occupying Israeli forces. The insurgency there went through three or four incarnations before it gave rise to Hezbollah as the dominant force.
The same is happening in Iraq. The first generation or incarnation of the insurgency was primarily the remnants of the Baath Party. The second generation is characterized by Muqtada al-Sadr's militia and the what is loosely labeled as Islamists.
We have yet to see what the third and fourth generations of the Iraqi insurgency will look like, since that will depend on how long we insist on staying. The longer we stay, the more generations of the insurgency our military occupation will spawn.
Thanks to our unprovoked conquest and mismanagement of Iraq, that country is devolving into a failed state, much like Afghanistan in the 1980s and '90s, and is becoming a primary breeding ground for new terrorism. Ironically, Iraq is actually becoming the threat the Bush administration deceived us into thinking it was under Saddam Hussein.
We knew then and we know now that Iraq was not a threat to the United States before our March 2003 invasion and Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted as much on Feb. 24, 2001: "He \[Saddam Hussein\] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
I was one of many people familiar with that country who warned that a U.S.-led conquest of Iraq was a flawed strategy doomed to fail.
We weren't saying this because we liked Hussein's Baath Party and wanted to see it stay in power. On the contrary, I spent months in Iraq's prisons, tortured by Baathists, because I was a threat to its regime.
As I saw it, a U.S. invasion of Iraq - particularly one based on deliberate falsehoods - would be about as beneficial as a heart and lung transplant on a patient with stomach cancer.
The end result is that we are now creating enemies faster than we can kill them off, as Operation Phantom Fury lives up to its unfortunate name of being all fury and phantom success.
-------
The Denver Post
Ibrahim Kazerooni was a dissident in his native Iraq and fled in 1974 after being repeatedly imprisoned and tortured by the Baathist regime for his beliefs and opposition to the government. He currently is the director of the Abrahamic Initiative at St. John's Cathedral in Denver.
posted by R7 | 11/17/2004 11:21:00 AM
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