At dusk the mortar rounds started dropping and the firing increased. It was dark when Zembiec and Stoddard withdrew their two companies, having lost one Marine. They hoped the residents would say to the insurgents, We don’t want trouble—start a fight somewhere else.
Initial reports, however, suggested the opposite. Radio intercepts indicated several wounded fighters were taken to the hospital. Iraqi medical workers warned Western journalists to stay away from the hospitals because the grieving families were armed and seeking revenge. The response to the sweep was not resentment of the insurgents. Instead, it was defiance of the Americans.
_____
For the next few days, to avoid inflaming the situation, the Marines concentrated on patrolling the edges of the city, while opening negotiations with LtCol Suleiman to conduct joint operations. But on March 31, less than a week later, the four American contractors from Blackwater Security drove down Highway 10 and were ambushed in the heart of the town. Watching TV in a mess hall outside Fallujah, Capt Zembiec said, “They can’t do that to Americans!”
Over 2,500 years ago in
The Iliad,
Homer laid down the basic rule of war. Achilles knew that it was wrong to drag behind his chariot the body of his arch-enemy Hector. Mutilation would have signaled that the vanquished deserved no dignity and that the victor was bound by no rules. To dismember Hector would have been to treat all Trojans as animals, without rights, and someday another tribe would treat Greeks in that manner. Unless soldiers abided by rules, Homer told us, civilization could not progress.
But no matter what the moral proscription was, murderous mobs would commit outrages, as witness the lynchings in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. LtGen Conway regretted the deaths of the four errant American contractors. The MEF had the photos, names, and addresses of the perpetrators and was determined to arrest or kill them. The Marines, though, planned nothing dramatic or sudden. In Fallujah they had seven months to gain control of two miles of homes, apartment buildings, storefronts, boulevards, and alleys. After a week of skirmishes, the division had adjusted its expectations, taking into account the depth of the xenophobia, the influence of the extremist clerics, and the smoldering resentments of American firepower.
“The best we can hope for in Fallujah is not to lose. Not to have an emotional jihad uprising because of something we do or to let it foster as an insurgent base,” said Col Dunford, the division’s chief of staff. “Americans will never be welcome there.”
The division wanted to reduce the insurgency to a tolerable level of violence, install capable Iraqi security forces, and restore Fallujah to its rightful place as an obscure backwater far from the headlines. After that, the local police and soldiers could fight it out with the extremists for the next decade.
Washington, however, thought that was the wrong approach. The mutilation was no longer a battlefield crime but a symbol of America’s humiliation and a challenge to the American occupation.
“What makes you come here, Bush, and mess with the people of Fallujah?” the mob had chanted as they dragged the bodies through the streets.
Under a headline reading “Reminder of Mogadishu: Acts of Hatred, Hints of Doubt,” the
New York Times
correspondent in Baghdad wrote that “there are hints that American generals are not as sure as they were only weeks ago that they have turned the corner in the conflict.” When Somali tribesmen in 1993 dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu, President Clinton had withdrawn the U.S. forces. In 2004 the stakes were too high for the Americans to pull out of Iraq. President Bush believed that American soldiers had liberated the Iraqi people.
“Where is Bush?” a boy had yelled, pointing at a charred corpse. “Let him come here and see this!”
President Bush did see the mutilation. The response to the sickening images was emotional and aggressive. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen Abizaid decided that the Marine plan to respond in measured steps ignored the international impact of the event. A city could not be allowed to lurch out of control.
That sentiment was shared by Ambassador Bremer. Seeing the pictures on television, Bremer called General Sanchez into his office.
“I encourage a vigorous attack,” Bremer said. Sanchez agreed. He too was dissatisfied with the tempered Marine approach.
The Marines at the tip of the spear didn’t understand why they were being ordered to launch—without careful thought—an attack on a city of 280,000 people. Those who incited the mob had been passersby, not insurgent leaders. In any case, before they attacked, key Iraqi officials and allies had to be informed and brought on board. And once the Marines seized the city, someone had to administer municipal services—electricity, water, traffic movement. That meant insuring Iraqis supported the attack. The strategic groundwork hadn’t been prepared.
The CPA diplomats in the province aligned with the Marines, sending e-mails to Baghdad urging a focused approach. Let the special operations forces deal with the ringleaders, they urged. They received back an e-mail note saying “the cat was out of the bag.”
BrigGen Kimmitt, the deputy director of operations for the JTF and the spokesman for the Coalition’s military, spoke to the press on April 1. “U.S. troops will go in,” he promised. “It’s going to be deliberate; it will be precise: and it will be overwhelming.”
Fallujah, the heart of the insurgency and the symbol of resistance in Iraq, was about to feel the overwhelming force of America.
_____
On April 2 the MEF ordered checkpoints and a cordon set up around the city. Only food and medical supplies were allowed in, and the only military-age males allowed out were those accompanying families. Bulldozers began throwing up a berm of dirt around the city, which measured roughly five kilometers on a side. LtCol Olson met with the city council, thanking them for returning the bodies and asking for a written denunciation of the lynching. Show the world where you stand, he urged; do not align with murderers. The sheikhs and imams rejected Olson’s request, issuing instead a bland statement that opposed mutilation but not the killing of Americans.
On April 3 the MEF sent the division the JTF-written order directing offensive operations against the city of Fallujah. The CPA had prepared a public affairs plan in support of the offensive, although it didn’t address the Arab press. Bremer and Sanchez shared the plan with the CPA diplomats in Anbar, who agreed it seemed reasonable.
General Conway directed his MEF staff to lay out the overall concept and specify the key tasks to be performed by the air wing, the logistics support team, and the division. As the ground commander, Mattis would direct the battle.
Officers of all services are trained how to compile and coordinate an operational plan for battle, specifying the mission, forces, and tasks. Op plans run for dozens of pages and include numerous appendices spelling out who, what, when, where, and why. An op plan is a regimented document that provides a specific blueprint for combat.
In Washington, however, there was no comparable strategic plan for Fallujah. The JTF order didn’t specify what the seizure of the city was intended to accomplish. There was no strategic document laying out the mission as set forth by Gen Abizaid, its intent as articulated by Secretary Rumsfeld, the CIA’s projection of opposition at the strategic level, the CPA’s consultations with the Iraqi Governing Council, or the State Department’s coordination with allies. The anticipated phases and timelines of the strategic campaign—warning the population, consulting with allies, gaining Iraqi agreement, preparing the press, briefing the Congress, marshaling the forces, timelines for seizing the city, reestablishing a city government—were not laid out.
_____
On April 4, Fallujah was dominating international headlines because all major news outlets had rushed reporters and video crews there after the administration’s vow of an overwhelming response. But the fighting was threatening to sweep far beyond Fallujah.
A week earlier Ambassador Bremer had shut down the incendiary newspaper
Hawza,
controlled by the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr. For a year Sadr, the twenty-eight-year-old son of a revered imam killed in 1993 on Saddam’s orders, had been preaching sedition in the slums of Sadr City on the east side of Baghdad. He railed against the Americans as infidel invaders and branded as traitors all Iraqis who were cooperating with the Coalition.
After an Iraqi court secretly indicted Sadr for the murder of a rival cleric, the CPA wanted to arrest him but could not act without the power of the JTF. The JTF refused, agreeing instead with the Shiite clerics who argued that an arrest would provoke violence. The Shiite clerics claimed they could marginalize Sadr. But left unchecked for a year and funded by Iran, he had gained control over an ever-growing militia of impoverished Shiite youths throughout the south. His populist movement had spread from Sadr City to the poorest sections of major Shiite cities.
After shutting down Sadr’s newspaper on April 2, Bremer ordered the arrest of Sadr’s top aide, Mustafa al Yaccoubi. The next day Sadr called for rebellion. His militia, called the Mahdi Army, took to the streets.
“Terrorize your enemy!” Sadr shouted on Al Jazeera television.
Thousands of excited, impoverished Shiite youths armed with AKs and RPGs poured into the streets in Kufa, Karbala, Najaf, Nasariya, Kut, and Basra. The Iraqi police in the Shiite cities, like the police in the Sunni cities, fled to their homes. The multinational division assigned by the JTF to the normally peaceful Shiite cities fell apart. The Bulgarian battalion in Karbala took shelter in its base and called for American soldiers. The Ukranian battalion in the city of Kut came under siege and cracked. The Spanish soldiers in Najaf abandoned the streets. Sadr’s militia—street gangs, actually—was taking over city after city without a serious battle.
The speed, breadth, and depth of the rebellion took American officials by surprise. The fall of Saddam’s regime had removed the yoke of oppression from the necks of the majority Shiites; yet the Shiite leaders had tolerated the rise of a demagogue who urged attacks on the Americans who had brought them freedom. If the Americans withdrew, the Sunnis would easily dominate the Shiites; yet when Sadr’s armed mobs rampaged through the streets, no Shiite leaders emerged to restore order. Instead they wrung their hands, called for dialogue, and left the fighting to the Americans.
The consequence of having broken the chain of command in two was that each half exercised its authority to launch a major action. On April 1, General Abizaid moved against the Sunni city of Fallujah. On April 2, Ambassador Bremer moved against the Shiite supporters of Sadr. Within a day, these two separate operations provoked a chain reaction of Sunni and Shiite rebellions across western and southern Iraq.
_____
Sadr’s uprising in eastern Baghdad and in the Shiite cities to the south did not seem connected to the Sunni city of Fallujah to the west. The JTF sent no order to hold off against Fallujah. So on April 4, the Marines proceeded to marshal their forces and cut off the city, knowing full well that urban combat would be a mess for all concerned. Conway was convinced that the forthcoming assault would further inflame an already embittered population and fuel support for the insurgents. Mattis knew that once his Marines had fought their way down Fallujah’s long streets, neither they, nor the surviving insurgents, nor the innocent civilians would be in a forgiving mood. Taking Fallujah by raw force meant subduing a hostile city and declaring terms of obedience. Given his mission, Mattis crafted four objectives: arrest the perpetrators, clean out the foreign fighters, remove all heavy weapons from the city, and reopen Highway 10 for military traffic.
The MEF sent the JTF order to the division, which sent it to Regimental Combat Team 1, commanded by Colonel John Toolan. Raised in Brooklyn, Toolan had a stern, angular face and an air of calm reserve. An informal man with the Irish gift of gab, if he found a conversation interesting, he’d pursue it. When he ran behind schedule, his staff would say, “We’re on Toolan time.” He was also an experienced tactician, having commanded the regiment on the march to Baghdad.
The plan worked out by the division, called Operation Vigilant Resolve, was simple and direct. The 1st Recon Battalion would act as a screening force to the south, while Battalion 2/1 pushed in from the northwest and Battalion 1/5 moved up from the southeast.
It would take a day for Toolan to get those forces into position. He used that time to demand that the city elders turn over the ring-leaders of the mob. For a year the elders had complained for hours at a stretch about American misconduct, poor crops, neglect from Baghdad, the high price of seeds, Shiite plots, poor water, contracts not delivered, erratic electric power, favoritism toward the wrong tribes—issuing great rivers of words. The final message was always the same: send money and stay out of town; “outsiders” were causing all the trouble.
Well, Toolan told Mattis, the sheikhs couldn’t blame the mutilation on “outsiders.” As the city elders listened to the bulldozers and tanks clanking around the outskirts of the city, maybe they would take the sensible route and deliver the criminals.
Hunkered down in the city was a hard core of about twenty insurgent leaders. A mixture of former Baathists, army officers, criminals, jihadists, and terrorists, these hard men believed that causing American casualties would have the same results as in Vietnam and Somalia. They controlled about six hundred tough fighters, plus a thousand part-timers who would grab a weapon to defend the city or Islam or whatever someone told an impoverished, impressionable teenager to defend.
The two chief weapons of the insurgents were the AK-47 automatic rifle and the rocket-propelled grenade. There were literally millions of AKs in Iraq; the Russian rifle was brilliant in the simplicity of its design, with a short barrel and a jam-resistant mechanism, firing the sturdy 7.62 cartridge in lethal bursts. Even a child could pick up a light AK and in seconds figure out how to load, clean, and fire it. Saddam’s factories had churned out AKs as if they were cigarettes. You could rub mud, dirt, or sand all over an AK, dip it into a muddy puddle, shake it a time or two, and still blaze away. Saddam’s workers were sloppy in filling powder into cartridges, and often the rifle would misfire. But with good bullets, the AK was a deadly weapon.