The Sound of Peace

A pacified Iraqi village.

Operation "Iron Fist", an assault on the Iraqi village of Sadah has been underway for a few days. 1000 marines cut off a village of 2000 people, bombed it and are now sweeping (just like in Vietnam) the village in search of 'insurgents' who, surprisingly, are nowhere to be found, again.

Since there are only 2,000 inhabitants of Sadah on a good day (it is a tiny border settlement near Syria northwest of Baghdad), the Marines have a certain advantage. You figure half of Sadah is women. Some further proportion is boys too young to fight and old men. Could they muster 300 local fighters (would all of them be in the guerrilla movement)? And how many foreign jihadis could live in a town of 2,000? Would you guess 50? So have we thrown 1,000 Marines at between 50 and 300 local fighters, who are poorly armed and lack real organization? Meanwhile entire districts of Baghdad, a city of 5 or 6 million, are controlled by the guerrillas. Wouldn't they be a bigger priority, since 95 percent of the violence in Iraq is plotted out by Iraqis?

This operation strikes me as odd. Perhaps they think a high-value target like Zarqawi is there, and the thousand Marines are to make sure that he does not escape?
Personally, I'm not sure Zarqawi exists, so I'd be reluctant to send a thousand Marines after him and to majorly inconvenience (and from the video on Aljazeerah, partially flatten) poor little Sadah.

Juan Cole

Well of course. The casualty shy US would never actually assault a well defended target with infantry without flattening it first, despite the fact that it would kill fewer Iraqis and probably deny any actual insurgents the many days of warning a sustained bombing campaign provides. Some of them might get killed, what do you think this is, a war?

The New York times reports that in an effort to placate an angry crowd a US colonel said:

"Some of you are concerned about the attack helicopters and mortar fire, I will tell you this: those are the sounds of peace."

The silence of the grave.