The warriors

Daily Kos Staff

Monday November 08, 2004 · 6:25 PM PST

2004/11/08 · 18:25

We'll take Fallujah. Most of the insurgents will melt away in the face of the far superior American force. Then the US will be forced either to pull back, ceding the city back to these same insurgents, or we'll garrison the city making our troops car bomb magnets.

And to be clear, those insurgents in Fallujah are thugs. There should be no sorrow spared for them (they make the Taliban look moderate). Problem is, we've created those monsters, and there's no way to beat them.

Update: To those of you who object to my calling Falluhah's defenders "thugs":

Several people in Jolan said that the foreign fighters—Saudis, Tunisians, Moroccans, Yemenis, and Lebanese, directed by Syrian militants—had been crucial to the defense of the neighborhood. The groups of mujahideen who hung around mosques included men who looked to me like Arabs from the Gulf. Most of them were dark, with angular features, and they had long, well-groomed beards. Their dishdashas were short, in the Wahhabi style, ending a little below their knees. Friends of mine who had been held by mujahideen told me they had heard men speaking with accents from the Gulf, Syria, and North Africa.

The foreign mujahideen still in Jolan imposed strict Islamic codes of behavior on the neighborhood. They harassed Iraqis who smoked cigarettes or drank water using their left hand, which is considered impure. They banned alcohol, Western films, makeup, hairdressers, “behaving like women”—i.e., homosexuality—and even dominoes in the coffeehouses. Men found publicly drunk had been flogged, and I was told of a dozen men who had been beaten and imprisoned for selling drugs.

Pentagon propaganda? No, the New Yorker (endorsed by Juan Cole).

The warriors

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