AFTER FALLUJAH

Now, with the battle for Fallujah over, is a good time for reflection as to what it means for the future of the Iraq war. The battle appears to have been a successful application of the Powell Doctrine insofar as overwhelming force resulted in victory over what was left of the city’s insurgents. When huge American tanks couldn’t get through the narrow alleyways between the buildings, they just blasted the buildings to rubble and rumbled through. Air and ground strikes leveled buildings where snipers had been hiding.

But there are some buts: Not much but rubble is left of the city. The promised reconstruction will be a formidable task, if it is possible at all. The al-Jazeera news service, which blankets the Arab world, was able to televise pictures of wounded civilians despite the U.S. seizure of Fallujah’s general hospital before the attack began. Some injured civilians made their way to hospitals in Baghdad, and the stumps of destroyed minarets provided evidence that the American forces had attacked religious sites. Such scenes served to further inflame Arabs in Iraq and abroad, even though the mosques had often been used by the insurgency as ammunition dumps.

While the six-day battle was raging, fresh violence broke out elsewhere. Insurgents seized police stations and took over much of Mosul, requiring diversion of U.S. units. Samarra, considered pacified a month ago, saw new insurgent attacks. Ramadi was the scene of renewed insurgency, partly by rebel fighters who had gone there from Fallujah, 30 miles down the road.

Iraqi soldiers and police, the chief basis for U.S. hopes that Iraq can soon police itself and become a beacon of freedom and democracy for the entire Middle East, often ran away from the fighting and at best were merely brought along to lead the way into captured mosques rather than engaging in combat. The U.S. commanding general in Mosul was quoted in press reports as calling the performance of Iraqi policemen there “very disappointing.”

Significantly, the battle for Fallujah drew denunciation from religious leaders of both the Sunni and Shiite communities, drawing together those traditional enemies. Both groups are threatening to boycott the national elections promised for January.

A new Army guide to counterinsurgency warfare contains a warning that prolonged American leadership in such efforts tends to arouse resentment in the host country’s population. This hazard has motivated the Bush administration to recruit and train large numbers of Iraqi soldiers and policemen so as to “Iraqicize” the present war. Much depends on the skill and reliability of these new Iraqi troops, who, after all, are being expected to fire at their own people.

The wreckage of Fallujah recalls the words of a U.S. colonel in the Vietnam War who said, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Just as the battle for Fallujah is really not yet over, the war for Iraq is far from over. A looming question is whether armed suppression of the insurgency is heading toward victory or making new recruits for the insurgency.