Make Mine Guinness, Gents

On the Northern Alliance Radio Network on May 1, I bet the Elder, Rocket Man, Captain Ed and JB Doubtless a beer that Fallujah would be secured by June 1.

Without a Stalingrad-style bloodbath.

Without a frantic, politically-motivated battle that would waste American lives to no useful purpose.

Without wanting in any way to trivialize the efforts and sacrifice of the Marines who are doing the actual work, it looks as if I may just collect soon.

Tell you what: I'll donate the prize (assuming I collect - and I do) to the first four USMC vets back from Fallujah that I run across. More as details warrant.

Marine General Conway's strategy - co-opting former Republican Guards, including apparently many who had in fact recently fought against us, aroused gasps of bemused horror on the part of conservatives, and giggles of misplaced joy on the part of moonbats - but in retrospect, may have made perfect sense, and for reasons that I used to know (but had forgotten).

As with many despots, Hussein recruited his most elite (meaning "trusted" rather than "militarily competent") forces from areas that he was fairly sure he could trust. "Republican Guard" units were mostly recruited from Sunni regions of Iraq, while the formations that watched over the Guard, the "Special Republican Guard", were primarily recruited from Tikrit, Hussein's hometown and the hotbed of his Ba'ath Party support.

So a hugely disproportionate number of men in hardcore-Sunni areas like Fallujah would be both Ba'athist and Republican Guard; they would also be men with the most military training and experience, and the sort of esprit de corps lacking from most of Hussein's old military.

The results? As of April 19, according to the WaPo (Via Belmont Club):

Although Marine commanders insisted that Conway's superiors were fully briefed about the arrangement and signed off on it, the unorthodox nature of the deal has led senior officials at the Pentagon, the U.S. military command in Iraq and the civilian occupation administration to react with skepticism. "It's Conway's thing," said one U.S. civilian official involved in the issue. "Either it works out, and he emerges as they guy who solved the Fallujah problem, or it turns into a big failure." ...

Marine commanders said they intended to test the new brigade's success in combating the insurgency in a week or two, when they plan to send a convoy through the center of the city. "We're going to see whether anything has changed," one officer said. "If not, we'll just have to go back to where we were."

And today? Says the Telegraph, with emphasis mine:

US marines have entered the Iraqi city of Fallujah for the first time in more than a month, according to witnesses. Soldiers drove armored vehicles to the mayor's office in the city center without incident. They were accompanied by Iraqi security forces, who will eventually take over security, witnesses said.

Just one convoy? Yep.

Sure - give it a few weeks for the city to be totally, officially secured. But it's going to happen.

Further proof that while the openly-partisan press can take a tempest from the Abu Ghraib teapot and use it to fabricate a crisis here at home, over in Iraq itself the military issue is in no significant long-term doubt.

As the Frater say, we have to deserve victory. The leathernecks who are doing the lifting in Fallujah certainly do. It's the folks at home I'm worried about.

As usual, read the whole Belmont Club piece.

Posted by Mitch at May 11, 2004 05:14 AM