Richard A. Oppel Jr.
Adam Banotai was a 21-year-old sergeant and squad leader in the Marine Corps during the 2004 invasion of Falluja, a restive insurgent-held city in Iraq. His unit — which had seven of 17 men wounded by shrapnel or bullets in the first days of the invasion — seized control of the government center early in the campaign.
So when Sunni insurgents, some with allegiances to Al Qaeda, retook the city this month and raised their black insurgent flag over buildings where he and his men fought, he was transfixed, disbelieving and appalled.
“I texted a couple of friends,” said Mr. Banotai, now a firefighter and registered nurse in Pennsylvania. “Everyone was in disbelief.”
“I don’t think anyone had the grand illusion that Falluja or Ramadi was going to turn into Disneyland, but none of us thought it was going to fall back to a jihadist insurgency,” he said. “It made me sick to my stomach to have that thrown in our face, everything we fought for so blatantly taken away.”
The bloody mission to wrest Falluja from insurgents in November 2004 meant more to the Marines than almost any other battle in the 12 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many consider it the corps’ biggest and most iconic fight since Vietnam, with nearly 100 Marines and soldiers killed in action and hundreds more wounded.
For many veterans of that battle — most now working in jobs long removed from combat — watching insurgents running roughshod through the streets they once fought to secure, often in brutal close-quarters combat, has shaken their faith in what their mission achieved.
Some now blame President Obama for not pushing harder to keep some troops in Iraq to maintain the stability. Others express anger at George W. Bush for getting them into a war that they now view as dubious in purpose and even more doubtful in its accomplishments. But either way, the fall of the city to insurgents has set off within the tight-knit community of active and former Marines a wrenching reassessment of a battle that in many ways defined their role in the war.
“This is just the beginning of the reckoning and accounting,” said Kael Weston, a former State Department political adviser who worked with the Marines for nearly three years in Falluja and the surrounding Anbar Province, and later with Marines in Afghanistan.
Mr. Weston, who is now writing a book but remains in close contact with scores of the men he served with, said Marines across the globe had been frenetically sharing their feelings about the new battle for Falluja via email, text and Facebook.
“The news went viral in the worst way,” he said. “This has been a gut punch to the morale of the Marine Corps and painful for a lot of families who are saying, ‘I thought my son died for a reason.’ ”
I will never vote for a Democrat for anything for as long as I live, so help me God.
If the congress and the white house have been infiltrated with the intention of bringing the USA down, how would they do it? Compare that to what is going on now, and they are the same.
and at the end the MARINES WHERE HELD TO A NEW ROE,
so to protect the enemy’s lives, which learn that if they are caught they just have to put down their weapon
and even caught shooting, wont be shut at,
is in it right?
you spare them and today they won,
what kind of war is that,
Like Vietnam, the hard fought victory won by our military is thrown away by politicians and bureaucrats.
the more things change – the more they stay the same!
Secretary Gates was quite clear; President Obama claims to support the troops, but he doesn’t support their missions. WTH? How do you support the troops WITHOUT supporting the mission you sent them to complete?
Obama’s mission was never to defeat the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, but to try to win through diplomacy, granting concession after concession with the whole “hearts and minds” philosophy. It will not work. I repeat, it will not work. You cannot win the hearts and minds of people who have been raised to hate you and want only your death. The only way to win against those kinds of enemies is to destroy them, completely. Eisenhower knew this; Patton knew this; Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman knew this.
I do not believe there is any force on the face of the earth that can defeat our American military save one: the Democrats in Washington, D.C.
Obama made statements of his beliefs about Iraq.
Here are some big ones proven wrong by time:
Words, nothing but words.
The reality?
Al-Qaeda, through its Iraqi branch, now controls more territory than ever in the Middle East.
Western Iraq is in sectarian conflict, and violence at the highest level since before the U.S. surge.
On January 3, extremists affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq declared an Islamic state over Iraq’s Anbar province.
Instead of fighting using the military Prime Minister Maliki asked the civilians of Fallujah to fight off the terrorists on their own.
WHY TELL THE ENEMY THAT THE TROOPS ARE LEAVING?
REALLY A BIG MISS,
Obama, didn’t want to be president to the people of this country, he ran and won hoping to be king. Perhaps he will someday, be king that is, if Lucifer shares his chair.
@ilovebeeswarzone: #34
It’s called obama’s war.
Supposedly, rather than negotiate a SOFA agreement that was amenable to both sides, our Demander In Chief apparently gave them what amounted to a diktat and refused to negotiate and then just left. He seems to do that a lot. It’s his way or the highway every time, no negotiation unless he has the weaker hand then it is negotiate forever (Iran).
@ilovebeeswarzone: #7
Not if you want THEM to win.
@retire05:
Of course with the strong support of the Dims around the country, now is the time for the Vets to pipe in and tell us how much they support BHO and his CinC role. Your turn RW.
@Redteam: #12
A more appropriate question would be something like, “If your son, daughter, mother, father, brother, or sister were going over to Iraq, Afghanistan, or other area around the world where there are American casualties, would you be proud that they were under obama’s command, and would you feel secure that your leader has their best interest at heart? Keep in mind that it took your leader three months or more to approve the 30,000 troop surge in Afghanistan, then took several more months to get them and their supplies over there.
@Smorgasbord: You got it, that’s the right question. How about it Dims?
Smorgasbord
hi,
with a new year, come the slush right back where it was send,
when it was built that house omit to put some slush stopper,
so to not have that dirty slush reach a face,
because it can pinch the target hard enough to injure forever,
especialy when more come from all four sides, the person is unable to fight it all, and the result of it all is the reciever ask himself, why did they do that to me, he has no clue,
bye
CROSSPATCH
HE blame the Republicans for the shut down, which he did himself,
because he didn’t want to negotiate on his OBAMACARE,