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December 16, 2003

Samarra Revisited

With this morning's report that U.S. forces killed eleven insurgents in a battle in Samarra, it would appear that we're well on our way to returning to the Vietnam era of body counts. (Or maybe just in Samarra.) The initial reports don't really make clear precisely what happened, and it's certainly possible that the American forces actually killed eleven insurgents. But that leaves open the question of why we should be reporting battles in terms of the number of enemy killed.

The war in Iraq is not going to be won through the attrition of enemy forces. We can maintain the phenomonal kill ratios of the battle of Mogadishu, but it won't make our chances of winning the war any better. While there aren't an unlimited number of insurgents, there are enough that we're unlikely to be able to win simply by killing them all. The battle for Iraq is a contest of wills. The will of the American people to stick to the mission in the face of Iraqi resistance against the will of the Iraqis willing to fight to get us out. If we can tolerate the fighting long enough to rebuild Iraq and turn it over to a more democratic Iraqi government, than we will win. If the enemy can kill enough Americans to force us out before then, we will lose.

This makes casualty reports of limited (or no) value to our cause. Most Americans aren't going to care how many Iraqis we kill, just how many Americans they kill. The news of one dead soldier is more important to most Americans than the news of 100 dead Iraqis. This morning's report isn't going to increase public support for the mission, because few Americans see our mission as killing Iraqis, and with good reason. Further, when used as a metric of success, body counts are very easy to inflate. There's an old Army saw that says that one NVA plus two bloodstains plus one water buffalo equals 37 KIA, mocking the Vietnam-era fascination with body counts. The continuing examination of the battle of Samarra demonstrates how easily U.S. credibility can be undermined by body count reports; even if the original figure of 54 dead insurgents is correct, the lack of evidence will continue to undermine the credibility of everyone involved in that fight. The more body counts are released, the more often that will become a problem, even without any intentional body count inflation.

U.S. forces in Iraq should stop handing out enemy casualty figures. The enemy will know when we've given him a pasting, and the removal of the focus on kill ratios and body counts will encourage more focus on the metrics that can help us win the war in Iraq, like the number of people will access to potable water and electricity.

Posted at December 16, 2003 05:52 AM

Andrew Olmsted

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Comments

Gotta say this was amusing:

In Tikrit, about 700 people rallied in the center of town Monday chanting "Saddam is in our hearts, Saddam is in our blood." U.S. soldiers and Iraqi policemen yelled back: "Saddam is in our jail."

Did you know his people are in bondage?

Posted by: Gary Farber at December 16, 2003 06:11 AM

I'm sorry, Andrew. You are quite wrong. All most people know about Iraq is what they see on TV or read in the paper. The media is NOT publicizing the good works we are doing in Iraq. All the public hears on a daily basis is how many Americans die or are wounded. This is exactly what happened with Vietnam.

It is vital that American casualties be reported as part of the entire picture, which also includes the massive losses that our military routinely inflict on the terrorists. I urged Central Command for several months to change their reporting policy and I was delighted when they did.

American public opinion cannot be allowed to be shaped by one-sided reporting. It is vital to our mission in Iraq that Americans see that these losses are not in vain, that the enemy is being punished. If the story is only about American losses, public opinion will slowly but surely swing and we will be forced to retreat yet again from a hard won military victory.

I've been blogging the good news from Iraq from the very beginning. I get my information straight from CentCom, CJTF7, and the CPA. I rarely see the same information in the on-line media.

Remember that this same media has yet to figure out that the food and medicine shortages before the Liberation were soley due to Saddam not spending the money that he could under the UN programs. They continue to blame the US sanctions, even though the sanctions explicitly allowed the Tikrit thugs to buy food and medicine.

Posted by: Chuck at December 17, 2003 01:18 PM

I'm all in favor of publicizing good news, but I don't think enemy casualty figures are a good way to do that. First of all, we may get them wrong (as it certainly appears we did in Samarra the first time), leading to the implication that we're lying to try and make ourselves look better. I don't believe that's the case, but I know that assessing enemy casualties is an exercise in probabilities at best, and you're going to make mistakes.

The notion that the American people are going to somehow become more likely to support operations in Iraq if we publicize enemy deaths flies in the face of our experience in Vietnam. American forces inflicted devastating losses on the Viet Cong and the NVA, but all the average citizen at home cared about was how many Americans had died. The same was true in Mogadishu, where we inflicted 20:1 or better casualty ratios, but still withdrew. What evidence do you have that publicizing enemy casualties will be any more effective today than thirty years ago?

If we're going to trumpet good news (and we certainly should), then we should talk about progress towards democracy and the reconstruction of Iraq's infrastructure. Talk of casualties is useless at best and counterproductive at worst.

Posted by: Andrew at December 17, 2003 01:32 PM

No Andrew, it is important to give the enemy casualites for precisely the reasons Chuck gave. I was talking to a coworker a few weeks ago and he wondered why the troops were staying in Iraq if all the were doing was drive around and get shot at.

This from a guy who spent a year with the 2nd Div on the Korean DMZ. It is critical for people to know that the troops are actually winning these fights. Giving American casualty numbers without the Iraqi casualty number gives the impression that we are taking casualties but they are not.

You know this is not true if you think about it, but most people don't think about it.

Posted by: John Dunshee at December 22, 2003 10:23 AM