The Killing of Fallujah

President Bush falsely claims that the bourgeois elections in this country have given him a "mandate" to ruthlessly pursue his agenda, including "fighting and winning the war on terror," a war which is in reality an ongoing and unbounded war for greater empire that has absolutely nothing to do with liberating anyone. Now the people of Fallujah, a city of 250,000 to 300,000 in the Sunni center of Iraq, some 35 miles west of Baghdad will experience the horrors of this so-called "mandate."

These are nothing less than massive new war crimes in the making--crimes which could lead to the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and perhaps even the destruction of much of the city itself. Anyone who opposes the the war and the unjust, immoral and illegal invasion of Iraq needs to find ways to speak out and resist these coming atrocities!

Fallujah is one stronghold of a growing Iraqi resistance to the U.S. occupation, a resistance which the Christian Science Monitor (10/29) describes as the "spreading footprint and increasing sophistication of guerrilla cells across Iraq." It is estimated that there are several thousand resistance fighters now in the city. Fallujah has also become a symbol in Iraq--and across the Middle East--of the Iraqi people's refusal to bow down to the American invaders.

In Iraq there has been mass anger, distrust, and a growing armed opposition to the U.S occupation. This resistance has created enormous problems for the U.S. imperialists not only in Iraq, but across the region and globally. It has thrown a very serious monkey wrench into plans to turn Iraq into a U.S. neocolony and a platform for strengthening the U.S. grip on the entire region. And it also threatens to disrupt the whole U.S. war on the world--a war aimed at restructuring global political, economic and military relations to deepen and extend U.S. hegemony.

So the U.S. rulers hope that conquering Fallujah will deal a decisive defeat to the Iraqi insurgency and begin a process of finally crushing the anti-occupation resistance. This is seen as crucial to prepare for the Iraqi elections in January 2005, which are in turn a crucial step for the U.S. in attempting to stabilize its occupation of Iraq by forming a new Iraqi government and the semblance of Iraqi rule (even as the U.S. remains fully in charge).

Fallujah has been in the U.S. crosshairs since last March, when the killing of four U.S. military contractors provoked a fierce three-week battle for control of the city. At that time, after at least 600, and probably closer to 1,000 Iraqis, along with 100 American forces, were killed, the U.S. backed off a full-scale assault and basically ceded control of Fallujah to insurgent forces.

As the anti-occupation insurgency has spread across Iraq and gained momentum, powerful voices in the U.S. establishment have summed up that it was a big mistake not to wage an all-out battle for Fallujah last April. One reason that the U.S. did not wage such a battle at the time was that it was election season in the U.S. and the Bush administration did not want to launch a bloody assault and call attention to the fact that their unjust occupation was being rejected by many thousands of Iraqis who were willing to die rather than submit.

One article headlined, "Election win unties Bush's hands in Iraq," quoted a senior Iraqi Defense Ministry official who requested anonymity who said: "We had to stop some operations until the (U.S.) elections were over. The Iraqi government requested support from the American side in the past, but the Americans were reluctant to launch military operations because they were worried about American public opinion. Now, their hands are free." (Knight Ridder, 11/4)

Fallujah is already being pounded from the air and by artillery, including on the central city market. U.S. officials admit they have very little intelligence on the insurgency, meaning many bombs are falling indiscriminately and there will be many civilian casualties.

U.S. planes reportedly dropped leaflets urging women and children to leave Fallujah --another indication that much of the town may be bombed--or leveled. By some estimates, 80 percent of the residents of the city have fled, but this is unclear. For one, U.S. forces are moving to cut off access to the city, so it is far from clear whether people are being allowed to leave. And even if 80 percent have left, there would still be 50,000 to 60,000 people left in Fallujah.

Meanwhile, a call by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to avoid a military confrontation was angrily dismissed by U.S. officials, and an offer of negotiations by a number of Sunni Muslim leaders with ties to the resistance has been ignored.

One White House official told liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that Bush will "be a lot more aggressive in Iraq now. He'll raze Fallujah if he has to. He feels that the election results endorsed his version of the war."

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http://rwor.org/a/1258/iraq-fallujah-occupation.htm