Fallujah

Could we please stop patting ourselves on the back about our great success in Fallujah? I can't believe how much news there is about this major offensive without anyone mentioning what I think is the central issue in the story, which is that is was a failure before we even started. The reason I say this is because we announced our intentions ahead of time, thereby letting thousands of people flee the city. Also, our reason du juor for being in Iraq in the first place is to liberate the Iraqi people. So I say we failed before we started because we either let insurgents escape the city before the offensive began or we kept innocent people in the city and killed them, and probably a lot of both. I don't see any way that one or the other didn't happen. If we had some accurate way to distinguish between innocent civilians and insurgents, then there doesn't seem to be any reason to have destroyed the city like we did in the first place. And if we can't distinguish them, then we are definitely letting insurgents go free or keeping innocent people in, and most likely both.

Also, it seems obvious to me that the failure will have consequences in the future because every insurgent that was let go will be able to cause trouble elsewhere, and also for every innocent person that was killed, wounded, or left homeless, there are many new potential insurgents, who may not have had any Anti-American feelings, but do now that their home has been destroyed or their family member or friend injured or killed. And finally, how can we claim to be liberating people if we are killing them and destroying their homes? This doesn't seem very well thought out to me. After we get done blowing stuff up and killing people, anyone left gets to be free. As much as I love my freedom, this method for spreading it just doesn't seem very attractive.

I'm no military commander, and I don't know the best way to finish what we started over there, but there has to be someone intelligent in the chain of command in the military who can come with a better way, because the way we're doing it now really sucks.