Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
If the U.S. wants to capture or kill Iraqi insurgents, local residents ask, why is it providing advance notice of its attacks?
Nov 21, 2003 | On the first night of "Operation Iron Hammer," the continual and thundering boom of the American bombing sent me and my housemates up onto our roof to try to figure out what the hell was going on. The bass repetition of the sound clearly distinguished the bombings from the occasional mortars launched by the Iraqi "resistance" that we'd heard at night in recent weeks. There was no doubt: These bombs were big, they were plentiful, and they were truly frightening. A group of us leaned against the roof's low wall, peered into the dark and guessed vaguely at the intended target. Around the neighborhood, silhouettes of Iraqis on their own roofs stood out against the night sky. One housemate -- a guy who was in Baghdad throughout the war -- likened the sounds to the "shock and awe" blanketing of the city during those days. After about 15 minutes, the noise ended and we went back inside to watch the news on television.
Since that first night, the Bush administration has been touting "Operation Iron Hammer" as its response to the stepped-up violence against American soldiers in Iraq. It's a means of squashing the Baathist "dead-enders" (as the president has come to refer to them) with a strong show of American assault technology. The administration seems to revel in heavy-handed branding of military action, imbuing all operations with a tough-talking grandiosity. I often try to picture the room in which young members of the administration sit around and pitch potential labels for these operations. Or, no, perhaps it's a single insomniac general with creative writing aspirations and a very big thesaurus. One thing is certain -- there are no historians or fact-checkers working the job. If there were, they would have politely advised the president that "Iron Hammer" already has a claim to fame. In 1943 and again in 1945, Hitler developed Plan Iron Hammer to wipe out Soviet electrical capacity by attacking the country's main turbine stations. In both cases, Iron Hammer failed completely.
On Wednesday, I went out with my driver and translator to see the results of the bombing around Baghdad. Though the operation continued to make enormous noise over the course of a few nights (in addition to the bombing, we can hear the stuttering sound made by the helicopter gunships as they strafe their targets) there was surprisingly little talk or information about what all that firepower had done. But then, I had been in bed for five days with the flu and hadn't been out in the city at all. Still, even television and newspaper coverage that I woozily accessed was emphasizing the action in cities outside of Baghdad, with slight coverage of any destruction in Baghdad itself.
We drove to the Dora neighborhood, directly across the Tigris from the Jadriya neighborhood where I live. As we crossed a bridge linking the two neighborhoods, I saw a long line of cars snaking back from a gas station up ahead. Electrical towers have been falling down in the north -- a result of high winds, outdated construction, and saboteurs. The diminished power impedes production at the oil refinery. Hence the long lines, and the long, long waits. Men sit in their cars or get out to chat in groups on the road's shoulder. When the line moves, they help each other push their cars a few meters forward, leaving the engines off to save benzene (the word always used for gasoline here). I haven't seen lines like that since the summer and it's a depressing sight. Power shortages also mean that the main Baghdad grid has been down more than usual, leaving much of the city without electricity for half-day or daylong stretches. The house I live in has a dumpster-size generator that picks up most of the slack in those cases. But the majority of Iraqis in Baghdad can't afford such a luxury.
We flagged an Iraqi police officer to ask about the bomb sites. He pointed us toward a dirt track next to the benzene station. The track wound past some makeshift brick and metal shacks and led to a huge dirt plain. In the distance, a couple of half-destroyed bunkers sagged ground-ward like shot elephants. It felt strange to find such a wide-open space in the middle of Baghdad. Usually, a space like that would at least contain trash heaps or improvised soccer fields. But when we stopped to speak to some men who lived in a few poor, ad hoc houses on the edge of the open area, they explained that it had been a military compound, occupied by Iraqis before the war and Americans right after. The Americans left it sometime in July and, though a few dwellings ringed the perimeter, it remained essentially barren.
The men showed me where, the night before, bombs had landed on and around the empty bunkers, leaving armchair-size holes, and scattering chunks of dry earth, bricks and rebar. For the past three days, the men said, American convoys had been showing up in the afternoons to tell the men to leave overnight and sleep near the benzene station. They would be bombing, the soldiers said. Military exercises. On the first two nights, nothing happened. So, on the third night, the families stayed in their homes rather than sleep in the open, in the cold. (Temperatures have dropped with dramatic suddenness over the last week. In the house at night we're wearing sweaters and using heavy blankets. Even during the day, the air has a distinct chill and the sun, an unrelentingly fierce presence all summer, feels like little more than a stage prop.)
That third night -- the night before I spoke to the men -- the helicopters came.
Get Salon in your mailbox!