The Washington Post has a
detailed story on what's going on in Fallujah. It quotes a Marine as saying:
We are not using artillery or big guns. . . . We don't want collateral damage. . . . The way to win the war on terror is with your boots on deck.
It is completely transparent now that the presence of the Americans, Brits, and Poles in Iraq is exactly like that of the French in Algeria or the Israelis in Palestine. How can American soldiers and Marines fight against people who are obviously just trying to defend themselves against an unjust occupation? Evidently, part of the answer is that they are being told by their commanders that they are fighting the war on terrorism, not carrying out the brutal suppression of a people that has never done anything against America, as part of the neocon imperialist project.
Ordinary Americans are now learning that the occupation of Iraq and the war on terrorism are two different things, but that news isn't getting to American soldiers in Iraq. Someone from the mainstream media -- perhaps an "embedded journalist" -- should do a story about this, and Democratic leaders should start raising the issue.
This is worse than Vietnam, in that in Vietnam, the case could at least be made that America was defending the South Vietnamese against the North Vietnamese. But in Iraq, America, Britain, and Poland are defending Iraq from the Iraqis.
And I hear nothing about planned anti-war protests in the US.