The Lesson of Samarra

"U.S. Sees Lesson for Insurgents in an Iraq Battle," is the headline of a New York Times news report on Tuesday. Detailing the violent ambush in the Iraqi town of Samarra over the weekend, the first sentence of the article reads, "American commanders vowed Monday that the killing of as many as 54 insurgents in this central Iraqi town would serve as a lesson to those fighting the United States."

But what, exactly, are those "lessons?" The answer to that question spells more bad news for both Iraq and the U.S. occupation.

It is still unclear as to what actually happened in Samarra. The military brass' story is that dozens of Hussein-allied fedayeen pseudo-ninjas were picked off with surgical precision in a pair of wild gunfights fought on crowded city streets. Angry Iraqi witnesses and medical personnel, however, claim that innocent civilians were caught in the crossfire. But it doesn't matter which of the two wildly divergent versions of what happened in this particular Biblical town on this particular day is closer to the truth.

For all who plan to mount an armed resistance to the occupation, for whatever reason, the lesson remains the same: Force the U.S. military to fight on crowded streets. The inevitable result will be dead civilians and a surge in anger and alienation among the populace.

The narrow Anglo coalition that sort of runs Iraq now has failed to heed this lesson, one it should have learned in Vietnam, and again in Somalia. Instead, they are again speaking the language of body counts and "winning" the battle, the same mindset that so confused America 40 years ago. "They attacked, and they were killed," said Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Samarra insurgents. "So I think it will be instructive to them."

The U.S. military's reports claimed that 54 guerrillas were killed, but did not mention if any of these might have been civilians. But that's nothing new. Nobody talks about the many innocent Iraqis who have been killed since the invasion, most of whom die in fog-of-war encounters that go uninvestigated by any official beyond the lower echelons of the military. Nobody talks about the nightly raids conducted by U.S. troops who don't speak the language and who are, after all, soldiers and not policemen. Nobody talks about how the death of a single child can turn an entire clan completely and irrevocably against the United States, even if they don't give a hang about Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda or anything else beyond making a living and raising a family.

To say so is hardly melodramatic. Life in the so-called Sunni Triangle, which stretches west and north from Baghdad, has been reduced the basic elements of human nature: survival, greed, rage, love. It is no different in other urban war zones around the world, from Liberia to Somalia to the West Bank.

Vivienne Walt, of the San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service, who has been doing excellent reporting since the start of the war, reports:

At the hospital, several patients said they were injured when a shell, apparently fired from an attack helicopter, struck a mosque at about 5 p.m., when residents were converging for evening prayers.

In the corner bed of one ward lay Ali al-Tashi, a 9-year-old boy who had gone to the mosque Sunday night to pray with his father. Heavily bandaged, the boy sobbed in pain and confusion. His older brother, Grimian, 17, clutched his hand and tried to comfort him.

"He still does not know that our father has been killed," Grimian said. "All our brothers and sisters and our mother have gone up north, to Irbil, to bury him."

Let me be clear, since it is so easy to be falsely labeled as a soldier-hating "Jane Fonda" by the cable news loudmouths: I make no judgment about the soldiers who fought for their lives in Samarra. I trust they did their best to avoid killing civilians. They are paid and trained to be soldiers and they are doing their best. It is their commander-in-chief who is guilty of criminal negligence for ignoring a century's worth of history and sending them into a vale of tears.