http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/5093906.html~snip~
Washington Post reporter Jackie Spinner crafted an elegantly horrific lead sentence for her Tuesday story from Iraq: In Fallujah, she wrote, "Even the dogs have started to die, their corpses strewn among twisted metal and shattered concrete in a city that looks like it forgot to breathe."
A phrase from Vietnam comes to mind: We have destroyed the city in order to save it. We truly had no choice. But to what end? To force insurgents out of Fallujah for a month or two at most, as American forces did in an October operation in Samarra? To stimulate insurgent offensives in Mosul and elsewhere in an endless Whack-A-Mole exercise? To further poison the hearts and minds of Sunni Fallujah against the American occupation and against participation in the nascent political process the United States seeks to kindle in Iraq?
In Washington, Fallujah is painted as a success of the corner-turning kind. The United States has now turned so many corners in Iraq it is back where it started. The week-long Fallujah operation alone cost the United States as many soldiers killed as in the first five weeks of this entire war.
In any insurgency, there comes a tipping point beyond which recovery is almost impossible. The Iraq insurgency reached that point months ago. The insurgents now have the critical mass, the mobility and the communications to stage large raids almost anywhere they desire. And every time they do, the U.S. response puts in greater jeopardy the essential effort to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population.
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