Falluja: Ends Justifies the Means?

This is an excellent article I found in Editor and Publisher Magazine regarding the battle in Falluja, and the aftermath of its destruction. It can't be underemphasized that we took an ends justifies the means approach to Falluja, and the results are an untold number of civilian dead, a physically destroyed city, and now where to begin to rebuild Falluja.

 
Here is the link to the article

...and several quotes from the article:

Landscape After Battle
How the press pictures the aftermath of the Battle of Fallujah may set the stage for assaults on other inflamed Iraqi cities. Did we really have to destroy much of the city to save it? "Even the dogs have started to die," one reporter observes.

By Greg Mitchell

NEW YORK (November 16, 2004) -- How the press portrays the aftermath of the Battle of Fallujah may determine what happens next in Iraq. In the days ahead, therefore, the media must look carefully at both the strategic benefits and the human toll of the offensive.

While the issues are endlessly complex, they boil down to the simple, age-old question: Does the end justify the means? It will be fascinating, though possibly quite sad, to see how this plays out in the press in the coming days.

A glorious victory to some may look like Bush's Guernica to others. In a report from the city for The New York Times, Robert F. Worth on Wednesday described Fallujah as "this post-apocalyptic wasteland" and "like a film that is set sometime on the other side of Armageddon."

...Here are many troubling angles to this story. For example, U.S. officials have long claimed that foreign jihadists had assembled in force in Fallujah and were helping to spearhead the revolt. Yet in today's USA Today we learn that of more than 1,000 insurgents captured there in the past week, only about 20 are foreigners.

...It is not yet known with any certainty how many civilians might have been killed in the city, how many of those who fled have become gravely ill in ramshackle refugee camps, how much of Fallujah has been wrecked, and how long it will take to get the water running, lights on, and rubble cleared. Almost forgotten is the fact that the United States dropped tons of bombs to soften up the city in the weeks before the assault -- and before most of the residents escaped.