CTV Television, Inc. - CANADA AM April 28, 2004 07:15:30 - 07:19:50 EST
American Military Running Out of Options in Iraq: Expert
ANCHOR: Seamus O'Regan
GUEST: Tim Brown, GlobalSecurity.org
O'REGAN: Tim Brown is a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org. He joins us now from Washington with more on the developments in Iraq.
Good morning, Mr. Brown.
BROWN: Good morning, Seamus. How are you?
O'REGAN: I'm fine. Tell me, do you think that war in Fallujah is inevitable?
BROWN: Well, the United States doesn't really have any real good options here. Basically, as a result of the atrocities on those contractors recently, the United States had to do something. And so, the idea of limited strikes against clear insurgent targets or concentrations of insurgents carrying weapons I think is basically the best they can do.
And the problem is that any military response is going to be perceived by the Arab world on those Arab television networks, as you saw, completely differently than the way we see it here. Because of the commentary, the context there is that basically any use of force by the US military is perceived to be an attack against innocent civilians, no matter what the target is. And so, really there are no good options.
O'REGAN: There are those who say there is a lot riding on this, that this is really a symbol of what could happen in the rest of Iraq. Would it be safe to say that the US forces there, the Marines, have no choice?
BROWN: Well, the problem is that basically from the US military standpoint they can't allow people with RPGs and hand grenades to take over and hijack the entire country just one city at a time. And so, they have to make a stand somewhere. And basically, Fallujah has been a source of these roadside bombings, ambushes and the like for months. Basically, there are former regime elements that have been holed up there who are using it as a base of operations.
And so, if you can't take limited actions against very small, distinct targets then there is really nothing else they can do. And the other problem is that there is a limit on how much they can escalate. The original plans for dealing with Fallujah were to cordon and search the entire city block by block, which is about six square miles, something like that. And over the weekend the Bush administration has scaled those plans back to just these limited strikes. And even these limited strikes are being perceived by the Arab world and the Iraqis completely differently than we see them here.
O'REGAN: Mr. Brown, looking back on how things could have been done differently, I mean the Marines are in control of the situation now, or trying to get control of the situation now. The Army had it before that. Some Marine leaders are saying that the way that the Army handled it before caused Fallujah to fester, that they had a siege of the city but they didn't infiltrate the city, and therefore a lot of this pent-up frustration was allowed to fester and now boil. Do you think that might be the case?
BROWN: Well, if you really want to go back to the roots of this, it goes back to right after the major hostilities were still ramping up last year. There was a shooting incident in which some Iraqis in Fallujah were seen with weapons, or brandished weapons. So, several of them were shot. And the entire city was in an uproar a year ago.
And so, basically because of a few friendly-fire incidents and possible excessive use of force a long time ago, there has sort of been a pent-up, seething resentment. And there is really no, I mean we can't turn our back on the city and just allow committed insurgents to use it as a base. On the other hand, we have to minimize civilian casualties.
And no matter how the US military operates they're going to be perceived by certain elements in the Arab world as deliberately killing civilians, which of course makes no sense. Why would the US military deliberately kill civilians? All it does is just alienate everybody.
So that's not what's going on. But we're not dealing with rationality here. It's basically a very emotional situation.
O'REGAN: Indeed. Thank you very much, Mr. Brown, for your analysis this morning. We appreciate it.
BROWN: Thank you.
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