REPORT: LOSING HEARTS AND MINDS IN FALLUJAH

An alleged classified US intelligence report (leaked through Wikileaks) detailing military perceptions of the 2004 battle of Fallujah has hit the mass media. There are doubts, of course, about the report's veracity. I, for one, hope it is true--the analysis demonstrates awareness of how we are losing the information war in Iraq.

Some insights from the report:

• The decision to order a direct assault after the killing of the Blackwater contractors prevented the military from clearing civilians from the area, ensuring a battlefield ripe for collateral damage.
   
• Insurgents effectively controlled the information coming out of Fallujah. Al Jazeera--the only news agency allowed inside the town--aired footage of dead and injured civilians, directly comparing the US attack to Israeli actions against the Palestinians. International news agencies, lacking their own presence, relied on Al Jazeera footage.
   
• The footage, in concert with the Abu Ghraib photos, significantly degraded Iraqi and regional perceptions of US forces.
  

• The nascent Iraqi government was not able to offer political support of the operation.  

We all know the end result. Facing unfavorable publicity and a lack of Iraqi governmental support, the military ceased their assault and turned the town over to a militia that let the insurgents continue their operations. In sum total, the insurgents scored a massive propaganda victory, demonstrated to the Iraqi people that they could stand up to the American occupiers, and undermined cooperation and trust between Coalition forces and the Iraqi government.

The 2004 battle of Fallujah itself is a textbook case of how insurgents can defeat an conventional adversary. Commit an act of terrorism (the Blackwater killings) that gets your opponent to crack down. Widely publicize the operation's negative effects on the civilian population. Then melt back into the population, and repeat.

Comments

[Moz]

Commit an act of terrorism

if the blackwater killings were terrorism rather than a response to the invasion, then a great deal of what the US and their contractors of done must also count as terrorism. Unless you buy the US line that states and their agents cannot, by definition, commit terrorism. I'd appreciate a little consistency on this, as you're otherwise often quite balanced.