Well, something had to be done about Fallujah, I guess, though I don’t think we’ve made the situation any better overall. Once we count up all the deaths, if they are counted honestly, I think we’re going to find that the toll on civilians was very high. The city itself has been fairly well destroyed, and the local population has been terrorized. In a land were tribal and clan relationships are the basis of the social structure, you can be sure that every home demolished and every woman and child killed will spawn another round of hatred for the U.S. and for our troops still on the ground.
With heavy fighting now underway in other Sunni strongholds such as in Mosul and Baquba, it’s clear that while we have destroyed some insurgent nests and taken some of their weapons, it hasn’t been enough to stop the insurgency, or even seriously slow it down.

American commanders say they expected that the fight for Falluja, coinciding with the end of the holy month of Ramadan, would set off a surge in violence across the country. But the scope and size of the attacks in Mosul last Thursday stunned American officers who were scrambling Sunday to regain the initiative.

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