Short Stories, Long Odds

So here in America the media is calling what Allawi declared a “State of Emergency”; the rest of the world is calling it what it is: martial law. Now, this is kind of moot right now in the thrashed world, but with elections coming up, it gets a little weird.

Today Allawi declared a state of emergency for 60 days. I don’t know the exact day of the scheduled elections in Iraq, but 60 days from today puts them at least in the second week of January.

The martial law declaration gives Allawi a lot of extra powers, and they aren’t fully known. The President of Iraq, Ghazi al-Yawar, has spoken out publicly against the assault on Fallujah. The American military has been given full license to do “whatever it takes” to win the city. It is also worth noting that American military forces seem to now be under Iyad Allawi’s command, who is acting against the will of much of his government.

The situation was very similar in Samarra, and after a largely bloody battle with losses on both sides, the city was declared taken and the battle a victory. We left, and insurgents flooded back into the city. That’s apparent from the massive attacks which occurred this weekend and killed a whole lot of people.

A senior military spokesman jusst said on CNN that “you can’t allow people who kill women and children to get away with it, that’s just evil.” A Colonel, in a motivational speech earlier today, said that “The enemy has a face. He is Satan. We are going to destroy him. ”

We are at a point in our country’s history where a man wins the presidency on morals and values and yet the country barely bats an eye at war based on lies where lots of people have died and many more will die in the weeks, months, and years to come.

I’m listening to some call-in opinions about how Fallujah will go. One man says “This will break the back of the insurgency.” A woman says “There won’t be anyone to rise up after this because all of the insurgents will be dead! The only thing to inflame them after this will be a funeral pyre!”

Do you see how ridiculous the American perception is? Another woman was more astute: “This may work for a while, if we’re lucky, and we may put down the insurgency for a short time. But they will reorganize, and find new leaders if they need them, and this will happen over and over and over again.”

Mark my words - this is not the last time we’ll hear about an assault on Fallujah. Just like trouble has cropped up again in Samarra, nothing is going to solve the problem in Fallujah unless they carpetbomb it and then stay there forever. I don’t like the idea at all, but if we run through it, claim it as ours, and then leave, its going to happen again. If nothing else, the battles we have picked are extraordinarily difficult just to manage, let alone win.