Marine Officers see risk in planned force reduction in Fallujah
The essential point of this article is pretty much what has been predicted around the lefty blogosphere since the Fallujah bloodletting show began...pointless excercize in destruction accomplishing exactly nothing.
After blasting the living shit out of an entire city for more than a week, killing and maiming thousands of enemy soldiers, women, children, old people, and unarmed non-combatants (not to mention wounded and helpless insurgents lying on the floor)...it turns out that if the Marines follow through on their current gameplan, which is to remove most of the combat troops from Fallujah and head back to their bases around Ramadi, Samarrah, Tikrit, Mosul, and etc...
Well, guess what?
The insurgents flow right back into the vacuum, and the whole bloody cycle starts all over again...except this time the insurgents will have a wonderful cache of new recruiting videos.
Oh, and since a large portion of the military's "maneuver force" is now engaged in Fallujah, the insurgents have had a free hand in about 10 other cities...which will require more bloodshed and more chasing around...which means that instead of solving anything by destroying Fallujah, the US has simply aggravated the problem that was once pretty much confined to a limited region.
It seems to me that the most accurate analogy is that of "scratching poison ivy" in which the ameliorative action actually makes the entire problem much worse - spreads the toxin to make more rash spots, and encourages infection...
What a fucking disaster.