November 15, 2004

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: Fallujah

Barely has Fallujah been retaken from the hands of the Sunni insurgents and Islamist terrorists by American and Iraqi forces than the majority of print and electronic media has "clucked" at that success. To them, it seems no victory is ever a real victory.

But let's be clear, Fallujah was a real victory. The military killed large numbers of the enemy, deprived the anti-democratic forces in Iraq of a safe haven and did so with fewer casualties (including civilian) than anyone expected. They also put an end to the view - widely shared in Iraq and the Arab world - that U.S. forces did not have the stomach to undertake the toughest of military operations.

Is all of this sufficient? Of course not. Fallujah will need to be pacified and the damage to it repaired. Sunnis who have been sitting on the fence with respect to the new government will need to know that that the only way forward for them is participating in Iraq's democratic experiment. Nor will the insurgency go away just because its main base of operations has been taken away. Successful counterinsurgencies require time and plenty of manpower. Washington, and the Pentagon in particular, have to understand that there will be no quick fixes.

That said, unless and until Fallujah had been taken, progress in remaking Iraq was virtually impossible. It was a strategic mistake not to deal with the problem of Fallujah last spring, but the administration, to its credit, has corrected that mistake - and in so doing, has cleared a major obstacle to moving forward in Iraq.