Australian Academic Accuses US and Aussie Forces of Committing War Crimes in Fallujah

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The Australian academic Chris Doran in his article on Online Opinion on August 3, 2008, accuses and condemns the Coalition forces in their attack on Fallujah on November 2004 of breaching the Geneva Conventions and of committing war crimes. But in his passionate condemnation he disregards the fact that wars are not fought by holding the sword in one hand and the Ten Commandments in the other. An ineradicable law of war is that its prolongation increases its brutality in 'geometrical' proportions and hence its casualties in civilians and the military.

The action in Fallujah had the strategic goal to shorten the war. Fallujah was a hornet's nest of foreign and local jihadists who were not only manufacturing the lethal car bombs but also sending their suicidal fanatic warriors in other cities of Iraq. The collateral civilian casualties, not in the huge overblown fictional figures presented by the writer of the article, were inevitable in a war that the enemy uses civilians, and, indeed, members of his own family and relatives as a shield. And the question arises who is the real moral culprit and war criminal in such a case. It's obvious however, that Doran in the heat of his pacifist hate of all wars, whether justified or not, has no propensity to even deal with this question, least of all answer it.