Cool! Hardt and Negri have a new book out. Whom are you going to trust: Fallujah civilians who risked their lives to escape, witnesses such as Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, hospital doctors, Amnesty International, top United Nations human-rights official Louise Arbour, the International Committee of the Red Cross; or the Pentagon and US-installed Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi?
On the humanitarian front, Fallujah is a tragedy. The city has virtually been reduced to rubble. Remaining residents, the Red Cross confirms, are eating roots and burying the dead in their gardens. There's no medicine in the hospitals to help anybody. The wounded are left to die in the streets - their remains to be consumed by packs of stray dogs. As Iraqresistance.net, a Europe-wide collective, puts it, "World governments, international organizations, nobody raises a finger to stop the killing." The global reaction is apathy.
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On the military front, roughly 3,000 urban guerrillas with mortars, Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades have resisted more than 12,000 marines supported by F-16s, AC-130 gunships, Cobra and Apache helicopters, an array of missiles, 500-pound and 2,000-pound bombs, tanks and Bradleys. Sources in Baghdad close to the resistance tell Asia Times Online that at least 200 marines are dead, and more than 800 wounded. The Pentagon - exercising total media blackout - will only admit to about 50 dead and 350 wounded. Allawi and his cabinet are spinning more than 1,600 "insurgents" dead; the resistance so far only admits to a little more than 100.
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In Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (Penguin Press, New York, 2004), Tony Negri and Michael Hardt, discussing counterinsurgencies, point out how "guerrilla forces cannot survive without the support of the population and a superior knowledge of the social and physical terrain". They could be describing the guerrillas in the Sunni triangle. "Guerrillas force the dominant military power to live in a state of perpetual paranoia." In asymmetrical wars like Vietnam and Iraq, US counterinsurgency tactics must not only lead to a military victory but to control of the enemy with "social, political, ideological and psychological weapons". There's ample evidence these tactics are failing in Iraq.
Asia Times