Four months after the April assault, Fallujah has been joined by a growing number of Iraqi cities effectively under the control of insurgents, where American ground forces stay away and U.S. attacks are largely limited to air operations. Inside those cities, Iraqi officials have been executed for collaborating with U.S. forces.
Broken Pledge
While a military-political catastrophe on one level, the aborted assault on Fallujah also represents another case of politicians in the White House second-guessing military commanders on the ground, a violation of a repeated Bush campaign pledge from Election 2000 that he would not micromanage military operations.
Overruling military judgments occurred, too, in the days before the Iraq invasion when Bush’s civilian advisers denigrated warnings from uniformed officers that a larger U.S. force would be needed for both the invasion and the occupation. Army Gen. Eric Shinseki foresaw the need for several hundred thousand soldiers.
Instead, Bush’s civilian officials predicted flower-strewn welcomes for U.S. troops and trimming their numbers back to 30,000 within months. Since the invasion, U.S. troop levels of about 135,000 have proven inadequate to maintain security around the California-sized country where more than 1,000 American soldiers have died.
Fallujah was another example of Bush and his civilian advisers thinking they knew better than the military commanders on the ground. By overruling the Marine commander in Fallujah twice in April, Bush managed to make the United States look first reckless and then feckless, as U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians died in a hasty assault that was then abruptly abandoned.
Still, Bush continues to succeed in presenting his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, as a flip-flopper who lacks the requisite decisiveness to be commander-in-chief.
Robert Parry's new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, is now available for purchase from the publisher by going to Consortiumnews.com's Home Page and clicking on the new book.
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