[lbo-talk] Juan Cole: Destroying Fallujah to save it

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sat Mar 12 23:59:23 PST 2005


http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/fallujah-tent-city-awaits-compensation.html

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Fallujah, Tent City, Awaits Compensation

<snip>

Readers often write in for an update on Fallujah. I am sorry to

say that there is no Fallujah to update. The city appears to be in

ruins and perhaps uninhabitable in the near future. Of 300,000

residents, only about 8 or 9,000 seem to have returned, and apparently

some of those are living in tents above the ruins of their homes. The

rest of the Fallujans are scattered in refugee camps of hastily

erected tents at several sites, including one near Habbaniyyah, or are

staying with relatives in other cities, including Baghdad.

The scale of this human tragedy-- the dispossession and displacement

of 300,000 persons-- is hard to imagine. Unlike the victims of the

tsunami who were left homeless, moreover, the Fallujans have witnessed

no outpouring of world sympathy. While there were undeniably bad

characters in the city, most residents had done nothing wrong and did

not deserve to be made object lessons--which was the point Rumsfeld

was making with this assault. He hoped to convince Ramadi and Mosul to

fall quiet lest the same thing happen to them. He failed, since the

second Fallujah campaign threw the Sunni Arab heartland into much more

chaos than ever before. People forget how quiet Mosul had been. And,

the campaign was the death knell for proper Sunni participation in the

Jan. 30 elections (Sunnis, with 20 percent of the population, have

only 6 seats in the 275 member parliament).

However much a cliche it might be to say it, the US military really

did destroy Fallujah to save it.

posted by Juan @ 3/13/2005 06:17:00 AM



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