October 2005

The Struggle for Fallujah: An Insider's Account

In April 2004, the White House called off an assault by U.S. Marines on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, where four American contractors had been gruesomely murdered earlier that month by insurgents. Following the U.S. military withdrawal, radical Islamists successfully seized control of the city, which became a safe haven from which to launch terrorist attacks across Iraq. Seven months later, the Marines returned to Fallujah with a mandate to wrest it back from the insurgency. At an October 12 event, F.J “Bing” West discussed his account of the battle for Fallujah.

F. J. “Bing” West
GAMA Corporation

I went to General Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis in 2003 and requested to spend a year with one of his platoons so as to observe the role it played in the war. This experience taught me an enormous amount, for all of my former hypotheses went out the window as I became an investigator on the ground. During my three years with seventeen different battalions, I interviewed 700 individuals and established personal relationships with not only the soldiers but the “enemy.”

My book, No True Glory, strives to explain the struggle of both the Americans and the insurgents over the period of several battles. I was fortunate enough to have access to the complete chain of authority, although I spoke to neither President George W. Bush nor General John Abizaid. My intention was to show what happened in Fallujah at both the strategic and tactical level.

Based on my experiences, I have come up with three conclusions. First, I can confidently argue that the Sunni-based insurgency is now led by Islamic jihadists. The best analogy that can be made would be, for example, if you seized Richmond in a shock-and-awe campaign in 1862--no one would reasonably expect the city to acquiesce in Union occupation and agree that Civil War was over. Second, at the strategic level, I observed that the United States had mistakenly established two different chains of command, resulting in an inability of the different departments to communicate and execute similar strategies. For example, Ambassador Paul Bremer was in charge of the Iraqi Security Forces while CentCom was responsible for the nation’s day-to-day security. Third and last, I concluded that our nation is more preoccupied with the negative, such as the Abu Ghraib affairs, rather than the positive, such as the valor of our soldiers. I find it disturbing that ninety-one senators voted to implement regulations, arguing that our soldiers were running amok, when in reality the majority of our men are placing themselves in harm’s way every day.

Those who want to kill Americans fall into the jihadist camp. They are not nationalists who are fighting for a cause, and I believe that this is indicated by the “Allah Akbar” call which is sounded prior to every firefight. The marines do not respect these jihadist firefighters or “knuckleheads,” and find that they are recruited by the local imam who lures them with food, water, and messages of hate. The imams--not the Baathists--are in charge. In fact, the most powerful person in Iraq is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has frightened and murdered so many that he has assumed the notoriety of Saddam Hussein.

We will and must continue to fight these jihadists in a death struggle until they see the light. Unfortunately they believe in the righteousness of their cause and will continue to fight until we defeat them. The country discusses this issue extensively at the policy level, and I hope that I have shed some light on the nature of the fighting at the operational and tactical levels. In April, U.S. Marines were fighting on the street as gangs; in November, they were cleaning out houses room by room. Policymakers must take into consideration the very nature of the battle.

AEI research assistant Melissa A. Wisner prepared this summary.