washingtonpost.com
Key General Criticizes April Attack In Fallujah
Abrupt Withdrawal Called Vacillation
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 13, 2004; Page A17
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Sept. 12 -- The outgoing U.S. Marine Corps general in charge of western Iraq said Sunday he opposed a Marine assault on militants in the volatile city of Fallujah in April and the subsequent decision to withdraw from the city and turn over control to a security force of former Iraqi soldiers.
The comments by Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, made shortly after he relinquished command of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force on Sunday, amounted to a stinging broadside against top U.S. military and civilian leaders who ordered the Fallujah invasion and withdrawal. His statements also provided the most detailed explanation -- and justification -- of Marine actions in Fallujah this spring, which have been widely criticized for increasing insurgent activity in the city and turning it into a "no-go" zone for U.S. troops.
Conway arrived in Iraq in March pledging to accelerate reconstruction projects as a way to subdue Anbar province, dominated by Sunni Muslims. But on March 31 he was confronted in Fallujah with the killing of four U.S. security contractors, whose bodies were mutilated or burned by a celebrating mob. Conway said he resisted calls for revenge, and instead advocated targeted operations and continued engagement with municipal leaders.
"We felt like we had a method that we wanted to apply to Fallujah: that we ought to probably let the situation settle before we appeared to be attacking out of revenge," he said in an interview with four journalists after the change-of-command ceremony. "Would our system have been better? Would we have been able to bring over the people of Fallujah with our methods? You'll never know that for sure, but at the time we certainly thought so."
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"We follow our orders," Conway said. "We had our say, and we understood the rationale, and we saluted smartly, and we went about the attack."
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"When you order elements of a Marine division to attack a city, you really need to understand what the consequences of that are going to be and not perhaps vacillate in the middle of something like that," he said. "Once you commit, you got to stay committed."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16309-2004Sep12?language=printerSalon
Turning point
A journalist who was embedded with the U.S. Marines in Fallujah explains how the Bush White House lost the key battle of the Iraq war.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By David J. Morris
Sept. 16, 2004
The mainstream press has largely overlooked the fact that in the case of Fallujah, the White House unnecessarily injected itself into the military's tactical decision-making process in Iraq, ignored the informed opinions of ground commanders, and in effect micromanaged the battle. According to many observers, the seemingly contradictory U.S. military actions over the course of the siege were largely the result of the wishy-washy directives being issued by the Bush administration and its failure to appreciate the implications of sending in a large Marine force to seize a notoriously hostile town.
To both outside observers and former high-placed officials, including former U.S. Central Command chief Anthony Zinni and historian Robert Kaplan, it appeared as if the Bush administration had ordered the punitive campaign out of anger and then lost nerve when Arab outrage over civilian casualties rose to a fever pitch. Says Kaplan, who was embedded with the Marines during the opening stages of the battle and who later wrote about it for the Atlantic Monthly, "It's fine to send in the Marines. It's fine to have a cease-fire, but you can't do both. What this amounts to is ... foreign policy incoherence."
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The restraint on the part of the Marines on the ground is in line with Conway's instructions to his subordinate commanders at the time. I spoke with Conway at a Marine base in California before he departed for Iraq, and he spoke passionately about his finely wrought ideals of cooperation with Iraqis and hopes of establishing youth soccer leagues throughout western Iraq. He explained with pride that a plan was in the works to bring a delegation from the Congressional Black Caucus to speak to Sunni tribal leaders about legislative coalition building for minority groups in a democracy. All of this stands in stark contrast to what unfolded once the Marines crossed the Rubicon and into the dark heart of Fallujah.
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Conway's exculpatory comments Sunday highlight the extent to which the White House was "joysticking" events on the ground (in contradiction to the often celebrated post-Vietnam tradition of keeping the Beltway out of the commander's tent). Given the inestimable benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the White House's draconian response to the March 31 killing of the contractors was a complete disaster. What remains obscure is the rationale behind the Bush administration's ill-advised policy and its uncharacteristic willingness to flatly overrule on-scene commanders such as Conway.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/16/fallujah/
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