Was Fallujah worth the loss?

U.S. veterans lament fall of Fallujah
Associated press

SAN DIEGO  •  Shirley Parrello knows that her youngest son believed in his mission in Iraq. But as she watches Iraqi government forces try to retake the hard-won city of Fallujah from al-Qaida-linked fighters, she can’t help wondering if it was worth Marine Lance Cpl. Brian Parrello’s sacrifice.

“I’m starting to feel that his death was in vain,” his mother, of West Milford, N.J., said of her 19-year-old son, who died in an explosion there on Jan. 1, 2005. “I’m hoping that I’m wrong. But things aren’t looking good over there right now.”

The 2004 image of two charred American bodies hanging from a bridge as a jubilant crowd pelted them with shoes seared the city’s name into the American psyche. The brutal house-to-house battle to tame the Iraqi insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad cemented its place in U.S. military history.

But while many are disheartened at Fallujah’s recent fall to Islamist forces, others try to place it in the context of Iraq’s history of internal struggle since the ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. And they don’t see the reversal as permanent.

“I’m very disappointed right now, very frustrated,” says retired Marine Col. Mike Shupp, who commanded the regimental combat team that secured the city in late 2004. “But this is part of this long war, and this is just another fight, another battle in this long struggle against terrorism and oppression.”

Former Marine Lance Cpl. Garrett Anderson’s unit lost 51 members in the city. When he considers whether the fighting was in vain, it turns his stomach.

“As a war fighter and Marine veteran of that battle, I feel that our job was to destroy our enemy. That was accomplished at the time and is why our dead will never be in vain. We won the day and the battle,” said the 28-year-old, who now studies filmmaking in Portland, Ore. “If Marines were in that city today there would be dead Qaida all over the streets again, but the reality is this is only the beginning of something most people who have been paying attention since the war began knew was going to end this way.”

On Tuesday, the site duffelblog.com posted a satirical column about two former Marines raising $1,300 on Kickstarter to go back and retake the city in time for the battle’s tenth anniversary.

“We paid for that city and we’re keeping it!” one fictional commenter tells the site.

The piece had more than 30,000 Facebook likes by Wednesday. read more here