Say Anything Blog

U.S. Forces in Fallujah are handing over operations to one of Saddam's former generals in an attempt to bring peace to the city.

From Reuters:

Some of the U.S. troops battling guerrillas in the Sunni bastion pulled back and, in a reversal of Washington's refusal to deal with members of Saddam's regime, former general Jasim Mohamed Saleh said he would lead a force to restore order.

"We have now begun forming a new emergency military force," Saleh told Reuters, saying Falluja "rejected" the U.S. presence in the month-long standoff.

But U.S. commanders said they were still in charge in the city, some 50 km west of Baghdad and in the heart of the so-called "Sunni Triangle" that has been a hotbed of guerrilla attacks against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

"We are certainly not withdrawing from Falluja. Nothing could be further from the truth," U.S. spokesman Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told a Baghdad news conference as Marines and their armored vehicles pulled back from siege positions.

This feels like giving in. I know we're not technically pulling out of the city, but why are we turning things over to anybody else? No Iraqi force could possibly be better suited to handle any military action than our own soldiers, so the hand-over to Iraqi troops must be an attempt to appease the rowdies in Fallujah.

Appeasement is not what we should be doing right now. Pulling back and softening our approach is exactly what these people want us to do. If anything, we should be fighting harder and sending in more troops to show them that we will never give up as long as there is unrest in that region.