Missing the point about the wedding party massacre

IN THE NEWS
Re. the sad events in Mark al-Deeb...

Of course, the first question everyone asked was, "Who made the mistake?" A better question would be, "Why were US troops calling in air support?"

It's natural to want to know, as soon as possible, if someone made an unspeakable error in Makr al-Deeb. As usual, we can't trust the first reports, so none of us should jump to conclusions. Speculation that the wedding party was somehow an insurgent ruse--such as Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis' comment, "How many people go into the middle of the desert 10 miles from the Syrian border to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?"--seem equally unjustified, however. Blame, however, only addresses this one incident. The use of close air support might point to a larger and sadly familiar problem.

Everyone from Iraqi witnesses to the troops themselves agree on the following timeline:

• A US force of approximately 40 soldiers landed by helicopter.


• The troops believed that they had come under fire. Obviously, what remains to be determined is whether someone was actually shooting at them, or if the gunfire was part of a victory celebration that's common in Iraq (despite the Coalition Provisional Authority's efforts to ban them).


• The US commander for this operation then called in air support.


• Both airplanes and helicopters arrived to blast the buildings. Iraqis also report that the helicopter gunships strafed people in the wedding party.


• The casualties now total 42 dead and 9 wounded, including 14 children and, in an equally grisly touch, the bride and groom at the wedding.

How could this happen? The intelligence about the village being an insurgent safe house and supply base may or may not have been faulty. While US forces did find weapons at the site, it's hard to say, in such a heavily armed country as Iraq, whether that's conclusive evidence or not. (The bedouins who live in this area are often at odds with their neighbors, particularly since they smuggle livestock across the border with Syria.) Again, it's too early to say.

Two things we can say for sure:

• There are not enough troops in Iraq. Close air support is fated to kill innocent bystanders, whether or not Makr al-Deeb was an insurgent base. However, close air support is what an operational commander will use when there isn't enough manpower to do the job without it. "Better to send a bullet than a man," as the saying goes--particularly when there aren't enough men and women to seize a suspected insurgent hideout.


• Many in the chain of command still treat the average Iraqi with immediate and often unjustified suspicion. Maj. General Mattis also mused that, since the dead at Mark al-Deeb included "more than two dozen military-age males," we should be suspicious of who they really were. "Let's not be naive," Mattis concluded.

The first point directly contributes to the second. The fewer troops we have--and the more inexperienced they are in the local language and culture--the lower the chances they'll have successfully distinguishing possible friends from foes. And, of course, it doesn't help to have a general making comments like Mattis'.

Of course, whoever is to blame for Mark al-Deeb--the commander who called in air support, the Fates, the person who provided the tip about the alleged safehouse--we can also be sure about one more point: this event hurt our efforts in Iraq even further.

Comments

[Oscar]

According to the Army, there was no mistake. Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell from here what happened, but the location of the incident makes Kimmitt's statements at least plausible. One of the biggest problems with this was, of which Iraq is an important campaign, is that the media have gotten inside the Public's OODA loop, and it is driving us bananas.

[Kingdaddy]

Unless the wedding video is an amazingly sophisticated fake, there are some ready explanations for why the wedding was for real. (See this account for more details.) I think it's a mistake for CENTCOM to be flatly denying any possibility of a mistake at this point. The answer, "We're of course investigating this incident, but it's too early to leap to conclusions," would have been enough. Kimmit and Mattis' comments are just completely off the mark, unless there's some huge, looming fact that hasn't been made public yet.

[Kingdaddy]

Crap, the link didn't get posted. Here it is:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040524/wl_nm/iraq_dc_55