On Mosques and Missiles

The US Marines, attacking into Fallujah, called in an air strike on a mosque, knocking down an outer wall and allowing them access. The proper term is called "breaching" and it is common to train for just this scenario in MOUT exercises. What is not commonly trained is attacking a house of worship, which is a protected site under Article 52 of the Geneva Convention. I don't know whether the Marines currently in Fallujah underwent extensive MOUT training prior to deployment, but I'm sure they know two things about MOUT and about winning any battle. You must take the fight directly to the enemy without hesitation and with extreme violence, and you cannot let the enemy put you on the defensive during your attack.
Let us assume that the Marines understood the building to be a mosque. This is not a given in the area, many mosques look like ordinary houses or buildings and are only considered mosques because the locals use it as a place of worship. Think of the store-front churches in many rural towns located right beside the local 7-Eleven. The muslims who were firing on the Marines from the mosque were desecrating their own place of worship. It was not the Marines who did the desecration. The Marines had every right to attack into the mosque to deny the enemy that asset. If there were women and children in the mosque at that time, it was incumbent upon the muslim fighters to do one of several things; surrender in order to keep the women and children safe, leave the mosque and fight from another building, of which there were hundreds in the area, in order to keep the women and children safe, or ask for a cease fire in order to evacuate the women and children, then continue the fight from the mosque. The muslim men chose none of these options, and the end result is that a mosque was partially destroyed, and there were wounded and killed enemy as well as civilians, as far the reports go.
Can we, as a military force in the region, survive the resulting firestorm sure to be ignited by those (Americans and others) sympathetic with returning Iraq to a despotic dictatorship, islamic or not? The answer is clearly we must. If we are to allow the enemy to use mosques with impunity, then every mosque in the region will become a center for killing both coalition forces as well as Iraqis sympathetic with establishing order in their country. This is not something that we can afford to let happen. If we get bad press for attacking into mosques that have become mini-fortresses, we have to accept that while trying to minimize the damage through diplomatic or other means. There is no acceptable way to restrain the military in order to minimize the PR damage. The fight must be taken to the enemy wherever they are, the fight must utilize every weapon at our disposal (i.e. we shouldn't be sending tear gas into the mosque to clear it that way), and it must be violent. Our soldiers and marines know the Laws of Warfare, and they will not attack a mosque without taking fire from the mosque first. But they also need to know that when they do attack, they have the full support of the military chain of command behind them as long as they act IAW the Laws of Warfare. Second-guessing in the middle of a firefight whether you will face an unjust court-martial later on because of some politically inspired Monday morning quarterbacking in the Hague will only get more of our side killed.
Update: There is a web page that purports to show the mosque in Falluja where the Marines breeched a wall using a laser guided bomb. If this isn't the mosque in question, then it's one that looks exactly like what was described on our side. From the pictures (scroll down to the bottom) show that the Marines could very clearly see that the compound contained a mosque, as the minaret is both tall and easily recognized as such. However, the photograph also shows that the breech did not harm the mosque, and that the Marines, in attacking the mosque, did not do any additional damage to the actual building, save maybe a busted in door or two that would not be visible.

Comments

[Justin]

Sir,

Thank you very much for your website. Until recently I was following 1Lt. Jason Van Steinwick's "Iraq Now" site, which was very well done. Since he returned stateside I have been looking for another eyewitness account of the events in Iraq and I believe I've found it.

Justin

[Diggs]

Justin, thanks for the compliment, but I must warn you, I'm assigned as a staff officer for now, I'm not in the middle of the fight. That's why I have time to do this.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to keep everyone entertained, it's sure is fun for me!

[SleepyInSeattle]

I've also added this blog to the sites I visit daily. Found it through a link on InstaPudit (I believe) for "The Press Will Get It Wrong, Again". That was good stuff, along with the rest of the site. Learning quite a bit here, thanks a lot!