Posted on 12/16/2006 4:55:13 AM PST by drellberg
While Vietnam was before my time, there was apparently a great fixation on the enemy body count. McNamara and company had a very mathematical approach to warfighting, along the lines of what you're thinking. Without delving into the merits and weaknesses of this approach, let me point out why the number, whatever it is, is irrelevant.
Assuming that Iraq is part of the Global War on Terror, what you have is a place where we gain and lose ground in that fight.
The up side is dead terrorists. Lots of them. Aside from that bonus, it sends a message that we're willing to fight. Deterrence demands a credible will to fight, or the enemy won't take your power seriously. While our results are mixed, the bottom line is that one terrorist attack prompted us to overthrow the governments of two nations, and start a worldwide hunt for terrorists. Our will to fight is only another attack away, and it's good our enemies realize that.
The down side is a little murkier. We kill a lot of terrorists in Iraq, but as terrorist levels in Iraq sink, they rise everywhere else in the Islamic world. This contributes to propaganda efforts to recruit not only to foreign fighters and suicide bombers. It also radicalizes communities, mosques, and large segments of Islamic society. Not only do they gain propaganda material, but the methods of how to fight us effectively are now circulating the world in the form of AQ training manuals, websites, and experienced instructors.
So, the number of jihadists we kill in Iraq, whether it's 5,000, 50,000, or 500,000, is a statistically insignificant number compared to the number of Muslims worldwide. Thinking of jihadists like they're hidden infantry units that must be lured out of hiding and into the open is a misconception. Jihadists are a social phenomenon that exists on the body of the Islamic world. We could kill every last jihadist tomorrow, but there could be a new million jihadists next year. What Islam is, in contact with our modern world, makes this possible.
This isn't to say that we can't defeat Islamic jihadists. Far from it. Islam has some crippling internal weaknesses that make it very uncompetitive, and we're holding some very staggering advantages over it. It's just not vulnerable in the same way as the enemies we're used to fighting. Sheer body counts won't defeat it. Not on the scale we're willing to effect, at any rate.
Hundreds of thousands? You have a very small imagination. Hitler and Stalin killed millions each and would have killed millions more. You're talking about hundreds of thousands? That's peanuts in historical terms. Hundreds of thousands isn't even enough to get out of bed for.
Just imagine this: France invades the US (use your imagination). The democrats like this and welcome French troops with open arms. Conservatives begin an insurgency against the French. How long before the French wear the insurgency down? Do you not think that Americans could produce an unlimited supply of young men and women ready to kill the French invader? I think that we could and would.
Now what makes you think the insurgency in Iraq is going to be any different? As long as we live- we will always be outsiders in Iraq and there will always be a radical element ready to kill us.
Now, addressing the defeatism in your post... Again, you lack imagination and think in small terms. Nuke the Iraqis. All of 'em. And the Iranians. And the Saudis. And the Pakistanis for good measure...
Don't think on a small scale. That is where the fundamentalist crazies have us beat. They think in terms of generations and centuries. We think in terms of commercial breaks and two year election cycles. We get bored with anything that takes too long and then we quit.
Think BIG. Big mushroom clouds. Big changes.
As long as we fight on the scale of the terrorists, we will not win. They will not run out of bullets or bodies.
Dear drellberg,
You're assuming that we're already killing all the terrorists in Iraq that we possibly could, given unlimited resources.
What seems to be happening, though, is that as we shift troops from one area to another, we efficiently kill large numbers of terrorists in the new area, but there are so many additional terrorists running around, that they're also able to re-take at least partial control in the areas that we leave.
This, of course, has the effect of subjecting the civilian populace not otherwise engaged in terrorist activities themselves to shifting control of their territory. The folks against whom we're fighting aren't exactly playing by the rules, and it is likely that they're visiting retribution on those civilians in an area who cooperated with the US military during the days or weeks that the US military was in control of the area.
This sort of thing likely makes us Americans unpopular in the parts of Iraq where this is happening. It likely also weakens the resolve of ordinary Iraqis in this area to oppose the terrorists.
In that Iraq seems to have become a sink for terrorists, and not just from Iran, it may be that we could easily raise the toll from 3,000 per month to 6,000 or even 30,000 per month, given sufficient military resources on the ground. There are nearly a billion Muslims worldwide, and it seems that a clear majority of them would like to kill all of us. Iraq could easily absorb a half-million of the scum EACH YEAR and leave plenty of Muslim terrorist wannabes at home in bed around the Middle East and the world.
Thus, "Go Big" may be the right strategy. Who knows how many more scum we might exterminate monthly given an extra 25,000 or 50,000 troops on the ground?
And let's face it. No matter WHAT happens in 2007, 2008, or beyond, whether we stick it out to win, or whether the Democrats take power and turn tail and run, every terrorist killed today is a terrorist who cannot kill us tomorrow.
Let's put up some really big numbers. Not 500,000, but more like 5 million, or more. I think numbers like that might get the attention of the vermin against whom we fight.
sitetest
Exactly right. This is a certainty now, given that the "theory" that America will run from a fight is now a theorem made so by the treasonous actions of the BSM and power hungry dims. As long as these two elements in our society are allowed to add comfort to the enemy in time of war, the enemy will outlast us. Our only hope of a united front in the war is for an attack to occur during a dim Presidency.
I dont about numbers but it has been going on for 1400 years. As long as we keep sending them hundreds of millions of dollars for oil it will keep going on.
BTW, Rodney King just got arrested again. Send him to Iraq to just malinger around. Let him get those people all worked up.
There is a reason Iraq has been called Allah's Waiting Room.
Not even taking into account all the ones who are killing one another.
Thanks for a bit of positive in a mostly negative week.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23950
There is nothing in Baghdad that 35 megatons won't cure. We have chosen a more 'humane' route in which we trade more of our precious lives for Iraqis. We have also chosen where the battlefield is going to be. We do not have an army, in the larger sense, capable of fighting in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, but, one superbly crafted for the open spaces of Iraq. Granted, it has become an urban battle field where fire and
maneuver are limited. The notion, that, attacking in Afghanistan, or worse, not doing anything, would not have created more terrorists is ludicrous. The success of 9/11 had them streaming in. The slime stream media representation that a few American and dozens of Iraqi civilians killed a day without a single mention of enemy causalities is poisoning the measure of success. The era of body count was ended by the media as being unreliable. Maybe, the Slimes could sponsor a DNA match, so that, two ears could equal two bodies. A major success, like, Zarqawi, is denigrated as overkill and loss of innocent life. Iraq is central to where the war on terror should be fought.
("The Real Iraq Body Count"), here: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23950
This is based on some interesting info out of Iraqi morgues. You see, they actually separate people into categories, "Civilians" and "other." Guess who the "other" are?
I think that 5900 announcement was for Nancy P who asserted she was sad because there was no Al Queda in Iraq about the same time that AQ boasted they were 12,000 strong.
I never want to liken war to a game or sports contest, but that said, I can't tell you how many times I have been engaged in a competition and been ready to quit, thinking I was just about whipped, when suddenly my opponent threw in the towel. It seems he was "more whipped." Only I couldn't know that.
We have more invested in human suffering in these two countries than we will ever have in Iraq, but the MSM will not discuss this, nor will a liberal!!!!!!!
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because they have to perpetuate the fallacy that war is not the answer. To the liberal war can only bring death and suffering. What they are afraid to admit is that winning a war and defeating the enemy leads to lasting peace.
They wont compare it to real wars because they want it to be a "situation to be solved" as Nancy P said. Heck they have an intel chair who has not seen the need to learn about Shiite/Sunni. They live in a theoretical bubble where plans and exit strategies rule and there is no blood. But we let them get away with this bs by ignoring the fact that their results are never evaluated in their precious, noble sounding programs and wars on poverty and the like.
Thank you to everyone who has responded. All very insightful. Some responses, most of which are to clarify my position rather than disagree with others ...
1. "McNamara and company had a very mathematical approach to warfighting, along the lines of what you're thinking."
Please don't get the impression that I'm in favor of a strict mathematical approach. Not being very close to the action, I merely want to have some quantifiable sense of what is happening. One problem with the way this war is represented to the American people, I think, is that we never have any sense at all of the damage we inflict on the enemy.
2. "We kill a lot of terrorists in Iraq, but as terrorist levels in Iraq sink, they rise everywhere else in the Islamic world. ... So, the number of jihadists we kill in Iraq ... is a statistically insignificant number compared to the number of Muslims worldwide. Thinking of jihadists like they're hidden infantry units that must be lured out of hiding and into the open is a misconception."
I see your point, and to some extent concede it. Indeed, there is a lot to be said for what you are saying. Still ... I think the truth lies somewhere inbetween. By any measure, 500,000 dead is a lot, and orders of magnitude more than the MSM is portraying. Part of the jihadists' enthusiasm for taking up arms depends upon the prospects for success vs. dying. If my mathematical numbers are correct or even close to being correct, the average jihadist in Iraq has a very, very short life expectancy. I suspect that the average jihadist entering Iraq has no idea that he may have a better than 80% chance of dying within six months.
3. "Islam has some crippling internal weaknesses that make it very uncompetitive, and we're holding some very staggering advantages over it."
Agreed. 100%. We need to hear and read more about these.
4. "Islam is just not vulnerable in the same way as the enemies we're used to fighting. Sheer body counts won't defeat it. Not on the scale we're willing to effect, at any rate."
Again, I don't disagree. I don't want to create the impression that body counts alone will defeat radical Islam. I still maintain, I think despite the consensus of other respondents, that 500,000 dead will be a factor in their ultimate defeat.
It has been going on all along and continues to be the strategy from the 20,000 foot overview level.
Lay out the bait in Iraq and zap 'em when they come in. Thereby consolidating all fronts in the war on terror to one.
Indeed it would. But can you hear the screams from the MSM? Even they would take up the Bush/Hitler banner at that point.
Thus, "Go Big" may be the right strategy. Who knows how many more scum we might exterminate monthly given an extra 25,000 or 50,000 troops on the ground?
With respect to you both, there is another component of this struggle that must be dealt with in order to achieve "victory", and it is precisely this component which the West is so obviously afraid and unwilling to confront: the well-known gang of "sovereign nations" which act as the financiers, suppliers and support structure of "worldwide terrorism".
There have always been and will always be fanatic individuals and small groups who resort to terrorist tactics to gain their ends. There is also no way to completely defend against this type of threat, and no way to completely eliminate it. In the big picture, however, these types of terrorists are not a threat to national or civilizational survival.
The "terrorist threat" we are currently battling, however, is a different sort of animal. It is a creature, a tool and a proxy weapon of certain easily-identifiable nation-states, respected members of the United Nations (sorry, couldn't resist a little dark humor!) who are using their terrorist proxies to wage war on us while pretending to be completely uninvolved. Without the resources and assistance provided to the various terrorist groups by these nation-states, the so-called worldwide terrorist threat would wither away. There would of course still be acts of terrorist violence, but they would no longer be an existential threat to Western civilization.
Our collective denial, cowardice and refusal to acknowledge this reality and deal with it is what is destroying us. As one of our insightful FRiends here has noted:
"You can kill all the orcs you want but ya gotta take the ring to Mordor to end it permanently. Everything else is just biding time." - FReeper epluribus_2
No.
There is a reason the DOD doesn't tell us about kills.
Sun Tzu - "When you are strong, act like you are weak"
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