Bruce Rolston writes about Fallujah:

Comic Book Guy jokes aside, this could well be a brilliant move on the Marines’ part, but only if you ascribe to one key assumption … that the resistance in Fallujah is largely non-political, tribal, and localist, as we’ve argued here all along. Then it’s brilliant. It gives the tribesmen still fighting the Marines an exit strategy and enough of a victory to go home with, while isolating any remaining foreign/diehard nationalist elements, whose numbers are, I’ve been arguing, probably pretty minimal, from their covering population. Now, if you believe there’s an actual coordinated nationalist, reactionary, Sunni-based resistance in Fallujah, one sponsored and aided by foreigners to boot, it’s insane.

The argument that the resistance in Fallujah was as Rolston argues that it is always made the most sense to me. It’s worth remembering that we got off to a bad start in Fallujah as soon as the occupation began, when a bunch of civilians were killed by US troops after a demonstration got out of hand.