Fallujah, November 2004Days after the last American troops --- although not necessarily the last American private forces --- left Iraq, a wave of bombings in the capital Baghdad yesterday left 72 dead. In what is being viewed as a sectarian attack against the city's Shi'a population, the violence threatens to destabilise an already fractious government and send the country into further turmoil.
There have been many markers of atrocity in Iraq's recent history. As ever, it has been civilians who have suffered, perhaps none more so than the residents of Fallujah.
US Marine Ross Caputi, in a brave and emotive article in The Guardian, pens a confession that the Pentagon remains unwilling to make: American troops were the aggressors, not the defenders, in the assault on Fallujah. Caputi also highlights that chemicals in the weapons used by US forces may have caused cancers and birth defects, leaving the people of Fallujah to fight a protracted and unprovoked struggle for their health and well-being as American troops withdraw to US soil.
It has been seven years since the end of the second siege of Fallujah --- the US assault that left the city in ruins, killed thousands of civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands more; the assault that poisoned a generation, plaguing the people who live there with cancers and their children with birth defects.
It has been seven years and the lies that justified the assault still perpetuate false beliefs about what we did.
The US veterans who fought there still do not understand who they fought against, or what they were fighting for.
I know, because I am one of those American veterans. In the eyes of many of the people I "served" with, the people of Fallujah remain dehumanised and their resistance fighters are still believed to be terrorists. But unlike most of my counterparts, I understand that I was the aggressor, and that the resistance fighters in Fallujah were defending their city.
It is also the seventh anniversary of the deaths of two close friends of mine, Travis Desiato and Bradley Faircloth, who were killed in the siege. Their deaths were not heroic or glorious. Their deaths were tragic, but not unjust.
How can I begrudge the resistance in Fallujah for killing my friends, when I know that I would have done the same thing if I were in their place? How can I blame them when we were the aggressors?
It could have been me instead of Travis or Brad. I carried a radio on my back that dropped the bombs that killed civilians and reduced Fallujah to rubble. If I were a Fallujan, I would have killed anyone like me. I would have had no choice. The fate of my city and my family would have depended on it. I would have killed the foreign invaders.Travis and Brad are both victims and perpetrators. They were killed and they killed others because of a political agenda in which they were just pawns. They were the iron fist of American empire, and an expendable loss in the eyes of their leaders.
I do not see any contradiction in feeling sympathy for the dead US Marines and soldiers and at the same time feeling sympathy for the Fallujans who fell to their guns. The contradiction lies in believing that we were liberators, when in fact we oppressed the freedoms and wishes of Fallujans. The contradiction lies in believing that we were heroes, when the definition of "hero" bares no relation to our actions in Fallujah.
What we did to Fallujah cannot be undone, and I see no point in attacking the people in my former unit. What I want to attack are the lies and false beliefs. I want to destroy the prejudices that prevented us from putting ourselves in the other's shoes and asking ourselves what we would have done if a foreign army invaded our country and laid siege to our city.