Fallujah Follow-On

Last November, the US Army and Marines took the town of Fallujah, thus depriving Zarqawi of an important base to organize and operate terror cells. Most civilians fled before the battle began, meaning the opposition was well-armed terrorists who didn't follow the rules of war. Michael Ledeen quoted an Army officer who was there:

In Fallujah, the enemy had a military-type planning system...Some of the fighters were wearing body armor and Kevlar, just like we do. Soldiers took fire from heavy machine guns (.50 cal) and came across the dead bodies of fighters from Chechnya, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Afghanistan, and so on. No, this was not just a city of pi**ed off Iraqis, mad at the Coalition for forcing Saddam out of power. It was a city full of people from all over the Middle East whose sole mission in life was to kill Americans. Problem for them is that they were in the wrong city in November 2004.

We killed about 1600 terrorists and captured nearly as many--by going house to house--risking our troops to spare civilians and infrastructure. Though the city already had crumbled under Saddam, Fallujah was further damaged.

The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force was front and center in last fall's battle. Now, they've swapped swords for solutions, says Michael Fumento and are:

[E]extending power lines and laying water and sewage pipes at a steady pace. Rubble and explosives — some left over from the fighting and some freshly laid by the insurgents — is being removed. Schoolhouses and hospitals are being fixed and erected. . .

As I traveled through the slowly repopulating city — about half of the original 250,000 are believed to have returned — I saw awesome scenes of destruction. But I also saw thriving markets, stores selling candy and ice cream, and scores of children delighted to see Americans. I did more waving than the beauty queen in the 4th of July parade and the kids squealed with delight when I took their picture.

Williams and the 5th CAG is in charge of rebuilding the city in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers. He shows the value of drawing on a rich pool of reservists in that prior to be being called up he worked for General Electric, installing new power plants throughout the U.S.

Restoring and expanding access to electricity is top priority here, more so than access to running water because Iraqis pump water up from the mains to tanks on their roof. No electricity, no working pumps.

Williams and his counterpart at the Corp of Engineers, Maj. Daniel Hibner, don’t have the simple goal of restoring prewar Iraq. “The baseline is crappy so why go back to that?” says Williams. “We did do some damage but the repairs are taking these people far beyond where they were.”

Before last fall's battle, the anti-war left argued killing terrorists aided Al Qaeda recruiting. This was always absurd; the WSJ mocked the meme as "the Obi-Wan Kenobi school of international relations: Strike him down, and he'll only become more powerful."

Back here on planet Earth, killing terrorists . . . kills terrorists. Which is supported by the vast majority of Iraqis. Assisting Iraqis rebuilding their country -- as in Japan and Europe after World War II -- is good PR. It's also the right thing to do; the American Way.