Fallujah, again & again

Kerry, according to the LA Times, is “framing the White House contest as a choice between hope and fear”. Guess which one is which.

Zarqawi has changed the name of his organization from Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad to Tanzim Qaedat al Jihad fi Bilad al Rafidain (Qaeda Organization for Jihad in Iraq).

How many of you were thinking “People’s Front of Judea?”

A few days ago I wrote a post which I called “Fallujah, again,” my point being that long before Fallujah became a symbol of Iraqi intransigence in the minds of American political and military rulers (a role it also took on for the Iraqi resistance), the crushing of which was central to the US mission, indeed long before most Americans had heard of the place, military ham-handedness had ensured that Americans would always be hated in Fallujah. I was trying to remind y’all of how in April 2003 US soldiers shot up two crowds of protesters, and any positive mission was irretrievably lost, leaving only conquest and subjugation.

I didn’t realize how necessary my reminder was until I read this LA Times article, quite a long one entitled “Why America Has Waged a Losing Battle on Fallouja.” Actually, before you read that (or if you don’t intend to), look at this sidebar timeline. Everything before the 4 US contractors were killed is ignored, giving the impression that Americans are the victims in all this and that the Fallujans brought on themselves the onslaught that is coming. The article isn’t quite as bad as the timeline, and is worth reading, but it glances over the school protest in 2 sentences in an 8,000-word article, and this near-amnesia about the events of 2003 allow it to buy into the demonization of Zarqawi and talk about the need to “root out insurgents,” as if it’s just “outside agitators” behind the Sunni uprising.

These are the most significant posts in this blog from the “lost year” of American operations in Fallujah:
4/29/03
5/3/03
6/8/03
6/15/03
9/14/03