Attrition in Iraq

There is a tension in warblogger rhetoric between the wish to emphasize the great sacrifices that soldiers are making in Iraq and the desire to deride those who worry about the casualties. The former leads them to emphasize the hellish nature of battling guerilla forces in urban settings, but the latter demands they argue that fatality rates are trivial compared to Vietnam or other much larger wars.

I think the tension is almost entirely resolved through the nation/soldier distinction. The US as a whole has not made many sacrifices vis-a-vis Iraq when compared to Vietnam or WWII. The individual soldiers on the other hand are in very tough situations.

The praise-the-troops mantra is “evenly used”?

“tension” err I think the only tension is trying to understand what planet he’s on.

Should I be more tense when I drive a car now because it has better safety features than a car in 1945 – meaning that I can expect to be die less often (and suffer minor injuries more often)? Or should I evaluate the risk of driving based on yesterday’s reality.

The second point is that even if you take the 3,500 figure then its still classified as a “small war” on per capita terms (using the british definition for post war wars which equates it to about 600).

According to the Lancet study 30,000 US troops are being killed every week, and two million have so far been injured. So it’s a lot worse than we thought.

Giles, I admire your brave unconcern towards casualties suffered by an army in which you yourself do not serve.

Giles, I take no pleasure in British or American casualties, and I do serve (part-time) in the British Army.

The word you’re looking for, by the way, is ‘humiliation’.

right Dan so you don’t serve do you err so can you point out the “bravely” you’re displaying.

There is a tension in warblogger rhetoric between the wish to emphasize the great sacrifices that soldiers are making in Iraq and the desire to deride those who worry about the casualties.

Personally, as one of the despised ‘warbloggers’, I see no tension.

I think we can (and must) be aware of the sacrifices our military are making, be aware of the sometimes hellish conditions they endure, and recognize the nature of the contribution they are making.

This doesn’t mean we throw up our hands and shriek “My God… it’s not worth it!”

That’s certainly not what they’re saying. Why do we constantly predict defeat, shrink from what they do not fear: all the while safe in our homes, just because we’re too timid to listen to a recital of what others face?

One can face the truth squarely and still steel the will to do what must be done.

It used to be called called a stiff upper lip.

We ought to be damned uncomfortable about what they are doing over there – we ought to be uncomfortable each and every time we go to war. I don’t want my husband over there if the American public is to be wrapped in cotton wool. But I surely don’t want them to wimp out either because they have weak stomachs.

I just want them to recognize the cost and think carefully.

No tension: just recognition. And reasonable people can, and obviously do, disagree about this war.

I’m for it. I will always be. I respect your right to disagree: that’s what my husband is willing to die for, even if you don’t agree.

And why not try something truly radical: an intellectual exercise, if you are capable of such, yabonn? At least the polite pretense of respect for an opposing viewpoint? I violently disagree with yours, but I can reason my way to it even if I think it mistaken. I don’t call you a “peace nut”.

Labels are a poor substitute for reasoned arguments.

Umm. This is getting too personal. Can we step back a minute?

The title of the post is “attrition.” In the post, the words “casualties” and “combat deaths” are used. These are three very different measures.

All deaths are casualties, of course. But not all casualties are attrition. Attrition is the permanent loss of soldiers from operational effectiveness. Some casualties can return to combat; others can’t. Those who can’t, from whatever reason, reduce the combat power of the forces deployed: attrition.

As far as I can tell, we are suffering approximately two combat deaths a day in Iraq. But we are suffering something more than 40 casualties a day and attriting (if there’s such a verb) around 30 a day. Of those 30, two are combat deaths, approximately eight are wounded in combat sufficiently seriously that they cannot return to duty, the remaining 20 (or so) are incapacitated from noncombat causes–death, injury or illness–to the extent that they can no longer fight.

The fundamental attrition question is whether it is sufficient in the long term to hamper the operational effectiveness of the joint force. If it is not, then, no matter what individual tragedies it might encompass, it will have no effect on the war. Right now, I don’t think we know. Recruitment, retention, rotation schedules all affect deployed combat power much more than attrition yet has. Attrition works in the long term and the year and a half we’ve been engaged in Iraq isn’t yet long enough to see its effect.

At least the polite pretense of respect for an opposing viewpoint? I violently disagree with yours, but I can reason my way to it even if I think it mistaken. I don’t call you a “peace nut”.

There’s two things.

First, i can answer about the warbloggers as a whole : no, i don’t respect their point of view, i think they are war nuts too, and again quite a few other unkind names.

If someone finds a word summing up that fetid mix of the blind jingoism, wilfull ignorance of the consequences of war, hiding behind the flag and mental masturbation (the last marlboro man thing is just _weird_ you know?) i’m sure i’d use it here.

If there are reasonable people that the no-wmd, bush lies etc exodus left in the pro war camp, i havn’t seen them.

Then, there’s your specific point of view, answering kieran’s one, not mine, that there’s no tension between our the heroes in irak. I think you’re wrong and kieran’s right.

You may try all you like to do the “they are heroes when i wave them under your nose so you stop to throw up your hands and shriek, liberal softie, but safe enough so that there’s no need to worry after all” dance, it’s just ridiculous.

My point, btw, was rather that the tension is not among warblogger only, and stems from the two consensuses of the reelection : worship the troops (the heroes bit), and stay in irak (the everything’s ok bit). M’kay, it’s an updated point.

I have a nephew-in-law in the Army who’s currently in Iraq. It seems that there’s about a one-in-ten chance he’ll come back dead or damaged. He’s a noncom with a combat specialty, which may enhance his chances in the grim lottery of battle.

Even better are the odds that he’ll have killed people who probably didn’t need killing, or some who, had we not invaded, would have felt no need to pick up a gun.

We won’t know the cost of the war until all our soldiers come home, one way or another.

Liars and cowards like Giles, who try to ‘argue’ about Iraq with such disgusting lines as ‘I admire the pleasure you take in casualties’ are going to be stomped on, as Giles was, from now on. But it’s good to hear from rational and honest supporters of the war, like Cassandra or Seb Holsclaw.

The best point so far is Jam’s: ‘Recruitment, retention, rotation schedules all affect deployed combat power much more than attrition yet has. Attrition works in the long term…’
Jam, by my reckoning the US has the equivalent of 2 and a half to 3 of its 10 Army Divisions and 1 Marine Division.(Calculations are a little difficult because they’ve got two formed Army Divisions out there plus all sorts of other units.) This means that the US Army is already, without any reinforcements going in, at the point where one third of its combat force is in Iraq, one third is recovering and retraining after an Iraq tour, and one third is preparing for an Iraq tour. Either things get better soon, and fewer US troops have to go out there, or the US hits a crisis in manning levels: by my reckoning, in late 2005 or early 2006, when senior NCOs will have done two or three combat tours of Iraq and will start resigning in large numbers. This happened in 1967 in Vietnam, even before ’68’s Tet Offensive, and was a big part of the diminished effectiveness of the US Army. As anyone with military service knows, good senior NCOs have a disproportionate effect on discipline, training and morale.

Ajay- the US Army (not the USMC) has required its soldiers to serve minimum 12 month combat tours, and has frequently extended these tours to 14 or 15 months at very little notice. They have also deployed large numbers of ‘formed units’ of reservists- where the quality of leadership and training simply is unlikely to be as good as in units led by regulars. The British Army has tours of (usually) four months and deploys reservists in regular units- both of which should mean much higher morale rates among British troops. Death rates for November among UK troops were 5 dead out of a deployed strength of approx. 10,000; the Americans have lost coming up for 130 out of approx. 140,000 deployed, so last month they suffered double our fatality rate. There are problems for the British forces: firstly the medical care in the UK armed forces is nowhere near as good as that for US armed forces, and the squaddies know it; secondly a lot of basic issued kit is rubbish; thirdly the pressure of Iraq, plus the continuing Northern Ireland committment, plus committments elsewhere all mean that the British Army, amazingly, has recently been moving troops from operational posting to operational posting without giving the men rest and retraining. 1 Para, for example, served back-to-back tours of Afghanistan, emergency fire-fighting duty and Iraq. Madness.

– Please accept a virtual handshake from me to you, Cassandra, dan hardie, and bad jim. Lucid comments.

The topic of the original post is a good one to responsibly discuss on-and-off throughout any military campaign. It may not be resolved but it keeps us all honest — on all sides of the decision to go to war and to stay.

>> The focus on how “light” casualties have been so far rather than on what those casualties signify serves to rationalize the continued conduct of the war and prevents us as a nation from confronting the realities of conditions in Iraq.

– I think that the leadership has not shied away from the prospect of a hard sustained fight. On the contrary.

– The battle in Fallujah has provided ample opportunity for the Iraqis and the Coalition to grasp the extremely dangerous realities of fighting an enemy who is determined, willing to fight and to die, and hides among civilians, white flags, and the wounded. Saying as much does not lead to the straw man “everything is okay” that has been suggested in this thread.

>> That the insurgency is nonetheless growing more effective in the face of heavier losses ….

– By what measure has the offensive of the islamo totalitarians grown more effective?

>> Attrition works in the long term and the year and a half we’ve been engaged in Iraq isn’t yet long enough to see its effect.

– By this measure of attrition the enemy’s losses in Fallujah (casualties and captives) and in their looses due to the increased tempo of our combat operations across the north will cause deep erosion of the enemy’s operational effectiveness. They are expriencing the inescapable tension of confronting a determined enemy (us – the Iraqi and Coaliton forces) that has taken the fight into their teeth.

– They will also face a growing Iraqi fighting force, a sovereign Iraq, and a duly elected government. The indications strongly suggest that while our victory is not ensured, the enemy’s prospects (political, diplomatic, miltiary, even economic) have darkened.

>> As anyone with military service knows, good senior NCOs have a disproportionate effect on discipline, training and morale.

– This is also the case for the enemy. To stay in the field they need trained recruits to replace their heavy losses and that requires sanctuaries for training and orientation; but they also need to support those foot soldiers with lines of communication AND leadership. As we cut their supply routes, infiltrate their ranks, and demolish their caches, attrition will become very asymmetrical. If they do not submit their retreat will become the only viable option. The foreign islamists might hope to fight another day. The locals might go with them, but I suspect many will seek terms with the Iraqi authorities.

Dan: UK tours are six months, not four, in my experience. Otherwise good points – a quick google, incidentally, shows that the Army had 132 men killed in NI in 1969-72. Which means Iraq is roughly as bad in absolute terms. (However, troop numbers in Iraq are about 10,000; in NI they went from 3,000 in 1969 to 21,000 in 1972.)

Beef: please, please don’t tell me that you are hoping to beat the insurgents by cutting off their supply routes. The historical irony would be just too great to bear. Next you’ll be pointing to their body counts and saying that they can’t possibly go on fighting for much longer.

On your other points: I would say that the insurgents’ success could be measured by asking: “Are Iraq’s armed forces ready to take the strain themselves?” They suffered up to 50% desertion before Fallujah. I’d call that a no.
“Are the numbers of successful attacks against US troops falling?” No.

Has the leadership (I assume you mean the US leadership) shied away from the prospect of a hard sustained fight? Yes, of course they have. They did in Fallujah in April.

And finally, where are all the guerrillas who were supposed to be in Fallujah? Why was resistance so light? Because they had all left, months before. What’s an Iraqi guerrilla? A man with an organisation and an AK. Neither are difficult to find.

Rob,
Your claim to historical accuracy is quite a stretch. You claim the US was almost always losing Vietnam? Maybe in Howard Zen’s version, but in reality the US *was* always winning. After Tet the Vietcong were destroyed as a coherent entity. They didn’t participate in any major combat after that. After the US pulled out the S. Vietnamese successfully repulsed the North in a major campaign. It wasn’t until the US Congress cut funds to supply the South and Russian/Chinese continued supplying the North that the South fell. So yes, even after the US left, the war was “won”. (This is not a defense of the US military commanders who sould have been hung).

“Western powers can’t fight a full on war of attrition against a guerilla force”

Afghanistan, Phillipenes, S. Africa, and Vietnam just to get you started. The day after Tet the North was putting together a peace delegation but scratched it after they saw the US’s reaction. The day after the 18 US casulties in Somalia the warlords were putting together a peace delegation but scratched it when they sa the US’s reaction. It is hard to find soldiers willing to die by the dozen for every casulity they inflict back. Iraq is learning that now.

[ad hominem pointed at your historical prowess deleted]

Jet

I don’t know anything about the Phillipines, so I can’t say anything about that, and I have no idea what you’re talking about with South Africa – unless you mean the Boer War (1899-1902), which you may have a point about, but I know very little about, apart from that it contained the first recorded use of concentration camps – but as far as Afghanistan and Vietnam go, I can’t understand what you’re getting at. Did or did not Vietnam end up a united country under the control of the North? Did or did not the Russians leave Afghanistan? In both cases, it looks like the guerillas won. As for the claim that Americans were winning throughout the war in Vietnam, I frankly find that bizarre: they were almost certainly killing more people than the other side – it’s quite difficult to tell how many people the Americans killed in Vietnam, because of the extensive use of heavy bombing, and impossible to tell how many of these were combatants – but they weren’t necessarily the right people, and killing people isn’t the only thing you have to do to win a war like that in Vietnam. You have to do the hearts and minds stuff, and not only were the Americans fairly bad at that all by itself, indiscriminate bombing campaigns and allying themselves with the autocratic and exploitative upper-class really didn’t help either.

I also think that it’s disputable that the Vietcong were finished as an effective fighting force after Tet: although they did suffer vastly disproportionate casualties and were never able to attempt anything on quite the same scale again, they managed to tighten their grip on the countryside outside Saigon after that, making it extremely dangerous for the Americans to leave their heavily fortified bases except in heavily armoured convoys. They were also able, in conjunction with the NVA to tie down and inflict incredibly heavy casualties on individual American units on occasion, as I think they managed to do in the Central Highlands more than once. I don’t have a copy of ‘Bright Shining Lie’ to hand, because I borrowed it from someone, which means I can’t give precise details, but you really should read it. And I have no idea who Howard Zen is (there seems to a Howard Zinn who has written a People’s History of America, but I’d never heard of him until I looked him up on Amazon): Neil Sheehan wrote ‘Bright Shining Lie’ after doing a number of tours of Vietnam as what we would now call an embedded journalist. The parallels look both obvious and ominous to me: I’m just waiting for someone to say ‘we had to destroy the village in order to save it’.

Dsquared

One of the interesting parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, as I understand it, is that the Vietcong weren’t actually that badly-equipped, because they ended up stealing huge numbers of the weapons given by the Americans to the South Vietnamese army, which was unwilling to engage them and tended to flee quite a lot of the time, leaving their weapons behind (particularly when ambushed in isolated groups and so on). This suggests that arming the Iraqi army might not actually be a very good idea, if their desertion rate is as high as has been suggested: the weapons you give them will end up in the hands of the people who you’re fighting. For example, by the time the first American soldier died in combat in Vietnam, in the very early sixties, the Vietcong were shooting at American helicopters with American heavy machine guns.

‘no soldiers killed in action in ’70’, obviously, not ’79: typo.

I think the Catholics even initially welcomed the British troops (although that may cast doubt on whether the Unionists were happy about them being there initially)…

Juan Cole relays what looks to me like good news (although that may merely reflect my low expectations):

“This election, for me, will be the happiest moment in my life, because it means we will end the occupation,” said Ahmad al-Asadi, who sells mobile phones from a little store alongside the Kadhimiya mosque, a Shiite shrine. That’s how Shiite leaders are pitching the vote: as a chance to end America’s military presence in Iraq peacefully, through the ballot box.

Says Cole: “It does seem likely that if the US beats down the Baathists enough to permanently defang them, the Shiites are likely simply to toss the Americans out after they take power (assuming that there is a real election, and Allawi is not simply installed as a US puppet [again]).”

A predominantly Shiite regime may be the best outcome we can expect. Has Bush learned enough in Franklin’s “dear school” (i.e., bitter experience) to be sensible and bow out gracefully?

Since guerrilla war is about intelligence and driving a wedge between the population and the guerrillas, there is a fair chance that a regime which enjoys real legitimacy can restore order fairly quickly once the occupation is ended. At all events, it is hard to see a more promising path.

Of course if the new regime can’t get along with other ethnic groups then the civil war will go on, with or without American involvement.

“You did read the end of the lesson where it said the Boers lost, right?”

Actually Jet, I didn’t stop there. I continued to the bit where Boer Commandant General Louis Botha became premier of the Union of South Africa. “In effect, the Boers now ruled not only their original states but the British territories of Natal and the Cape as well, and had taken the first steps towards imposing apartheid throughout South Africa.”

That’s from Niall Ferguson’s Empire, which is well worth adding to your shopping-basket. (I too live but to serve, at least until it’s time to go to the pub.) As he says: “the final outcome was anything but unconditional surrender.”

In any case, even in the narrow sense that Britain can be said to have won, they had to herd people into concentration camps to do it. Nobody disputes that guerrillas can be beaten by sheer brutality; but as the South African case demonstrates, that kind of military victory can easily lead to political defeat.

Where’s the Beef,

I admit, no-one may have ever actually said ‘we had to destroy the village to save it’, but so far as I can see – and this isn’t just based on repeated viewings of Apocalypse Now, Oliver Stone’s Vietnam trilogy, and the host of American liberal romanticizations of Vietnam as unnecessary violence and stupidity – it is not far from the attitude which seems to have typified the American attitude in Vietnam. Strategy was driven by an understanding of war which required the grinding of the enemy to death by use of the superior technology and firepower of the American Army, apparently based on War World II in Europe in particular. This meant heavy bombing, and attempting to draw the enemy into out and out confrontations in which they could be crushed. When the Vietcong failed to cooperate by melting back into a population which associated them with the nationalist struggle against the Japanese and the French after conducting ambushes, disrupting supply lines, and generally causing trouble, the Americans just bombed the shit out of everyone, which tended not to kill the VC, because they often bombed the wrong place, and to really piss off the population at large. In the end, they lost: the VC were more prepared and, in some ways, able to sustain causalties in this kind of war. I suppose the point is you can do attrition two ways: attrition like Verdun, where you aim to bleed the army of another state dry by forcing it into hugely expensive out and out confrontations, or attrition like the Vietcong did, where you cost the other side men and materiel by disrupting their supply lines, keeping them under a state of stress with unpredictable but frequent small ambushes, and making it difficult for them to interact with the population. Thinking you can fight the second war like you would fight the first war is the mistake the Americans made in Vietnam, and that’s why they lost.

The point is that the war in Iraq is now like the war in Vietnam: the invasion may have been about destroying large concentrations of Saddam’s relatively immobile and heavily armoured troops, where they didn’t melt away, but now it’s about dealing with people who are effectively indistinguishable from the population at large, operate by laying some roadside bombs, taking a few potshots and moving on, or luring Coalition troops into situations in which they can be ambushed, and don’t need to defend fixed positions, because they can just melt back into the population. Grinding them is not going to work: it’s too indiscriminate.

Note that the Americans thought they could cut off the VC’s supplies in Vietnam, but despite dropping more bombs on Laos, one of the main supply lines, than were dropped in the whole of the second world war, they failed. Also, see the earlier point I made about arming the Iraqi army: if the desertion rate is anything like 50%, the Americans are arming the insurgents. Also, I wouldn’t be so sanguine about the move to disband them in the first place: there are three possibilities for what happened to their guns, that the Coalition got them, that they took them with them, or that they just left them behind. Even if the Coalition got most of them, Saddam had a huge army, and some of them must have fallen into the hands of the insurgents, and I’m not sure I trust the Coalition to have kept a proper eye on them.

As for the ominious parallels, the crowing about Falluja looks exactly like ‘we had to destroy the village to save it’ to me.

In a way, I wish that the world was as simple as I think you see it: it would make so much so easier if we could just invade tyrannies and install democracy, rule of law, some modicum of social justice and so on. The problem is it’s not.

rob, I don’t think my view of what is going on in Iraq is simple. But we agree that the fighting has been, and will continue to be, brutal and very difficult on many different levels. Not just for us, but for the enemy.

This is not a war of attrition in the simple sense. And there are new approaches being used by the enemy who adapts to our new methods. Both sides will learn. From what I can tell, the bad guys are very much fighting old battles and being heavily punished. Not just in fatalities and casualties but also in captives. About half of those accounted for thusfar have surrendered. That’s much worse news for the islamo totalitarians than the early bad news about desertions among the Iraqi recruits fighting at our side. That low for us won’t be repeated — we’ll see if I’m wrong about that. But I do think the enemy will repeatedly face this sort of loss as long as we press on relentlessly. There is a huge cost to all this and the sooner we pacify the Triangle, the better. Already our efforts have given renewed hope for those risking their lives in the coming elections — those who will campaign and those who will vote.

>> Me: Maintaining a high tempo in our operatons

>> Uncle Kvetch: This week’s winner of the “Best New Euphemism for ‘Killing as Many People as Possible’” Award.

Heh. On the surface, that’s kinda funny and worth a chuckle.

On the other hand the quip plays on a lack of understanding of the comprehensive term, high tempo of military operations, which also includes capturing enemy combattants, pursuing the enemy to force retreat, relentless interdiction of supply and escape routes, destruction of munition caches and fortifications, and other actions that counter the enemy’s capability to regroup, rearm, reinforce. Yes, the enemy who stays to fight also faces high risk of being killed during high tempo operations. We stay busy with a purpose and they stay on the defensive with desperation while their operational effectiveness erodes. There should be no problem with using this term in description of what is currently underway in Iraq.

relentless, pacification, brutal, high tempo – all these are the terms of a Verdun style approach, of grinding.

What Rob said.

I would only add that Where’s the Beef is writing about Iraq as if there were only two parties involved: us, and the “bad guys.” (At the risk of starting a whole ‘nother tangent, I would point out that “islamo totalitarians” is a highly misleading blanket term for the insurgents in Iraq.)

Unfortunately, the fact that “high tempo operations” and “pacification” will inevitably produce still more death & misery for the civilian population caught in the crossfire is curiously left out of the equation.

The US is going out of its way to find a compromise between US casulties and civilian casulties.

Jet, just curious: do you have any evidence whatsoever for this, apart from the say-so of the Pentagon?

>> Grinding won’t win the Coalition this war. To claim that it will is to misunderstand what’s going on.

– And I did not make that claim.

Earlier someone had said that my description was too simple and yet above is an over-simplification of my comments. The topic of the original post is attrition and I have addressed that aspect of the war effort. There are other very important aspects, of course.

I may be mistaken, but it seems this quibble about terms is irrelevant to the agreement that the fight is brutal and is being fought at high tempo (on the various fronts I’ve described). We all wish it was just a walk in the park. Even if not one US soldier was on Iraqi soil, it would not be a walk in the park for the Iraqis who are fighting the islamists who want to re-install totalitarian rule. And it would not be a walk in the park for the rest of the region, nor for the West, during such a struggle in Iraq. The fact is the fight does have good guys and bad guys. There may be multiple parties, but one side is definitely attacking the pro-democracy forces.

Let’s not get too distracted by the standard terms of warefare that I’ve used. If someone wants to start a new thread on that topic, I’ll comment if I find I’ve something more to contribute.

For instance, pacification is not just about subduing the enemy fighters by killing them, as someone suggested earlier. It is also about securing ground for the civilian population to conduct its political, economic, and social life. It is correct to examine what is being done by the Iraqis and Coalition apart from the direct military offensive and defensive measures. The tactics and overall strategy of the enemy is clearly aimed at tyranny, not peace and democracy. Our counter measures have to go beyond shooting back at snipers and mass bombers.

The term, insurgents, is correct technically in an analysis of warfare. If you accept that, then, why the reluctance to be consistent with the terminology that applies to counter-insurgency?

The enemy, as I’ve described them, are the islamist foreigners and the Baathist remnants, the islamo totalitarians. They are for installing totalitarian rule. In Syria, as in Saddam’s regime, the Baathists are willing to make concessions to the islamists on ideology but are just as committed to ruling Iraq with iron-fists. Perhaps for the Baathists more than the Islamists, the fight is primarily about self-preservation. That goes back to my point about attrition and the pressure to either retreat or to come to terms with the Iraqi authorities.

Since the Baathists and the Islamists have made common cause against Iraq and Coalition, they are the enemy.

Fallujah demonstrated the importance of calving-off other elements who have gravitated to, or have been corralled into, the enemy’s position of relative strength. So to return to the concept of pacification, the good guys have to counter with more than bullets and bombs. Sometimes that may mean pushing undesirable elements into the no-man’s land — or into the arms of the enemy. Eventually that’s for the Iraqi government to figure out and that may be the primariy reason that the assault on Fallujah was delayed. They’re campaigning for election while fighting a war, aferall. They can’t stop and do just one or the other.

>> The US is going out of its way to find a compromise between US casulties and civilian casulties.

The Iraqi and Coaliton forces routinely place themselves at greater risk by seeking to minimize civilian casualties. The evacuation of and subsequent action in Fallujah is a large recent example, but this goes on day-in and day-out. Meanwhile the tactics of the enemy are intended to exploit this humanitarian approach. While it may not be a scientific sampling, one could checkout the first person accounts of combatants to get an idea of the price in casualties that is being paid on account of military priorities that are very different than that of the enemy. Yes, I know, that’s more “bady guy, good guy” stuff.

I won’t quibble with what I think are some quibble-worthy assertions in your latest comment.

so, assuming that Fallujah has been an example of how not to counter an insurgency in Iraq, have you an example of what would work or has worked in Iraq or elsewhere?

Jet claims the Phillipines in the fifties, and the British, about the same time, suppressed an insurgency in Malayasia by playing on ethnic tension between ethnic Chinese and ethnic Malays. There’s also umpteen examples of using reprisals, starvation and general extreme nastiness: the Germans in occupied Europe, in Greece after WWII, and all over Latin America all the bloody time, just for starters. But I assume you don’t think that’s acceptable, and also it requires being prepared to do that more or less indefinitely, which would rather undermine the claim that Iraqis are better off without Saddam (indeed, Saddam is probably quite a good example of these counter-insurgency tactics). Also, alright, ‘presumably shooting anything that moves’ is quibble-able with, but I think the rest of the description is fairly uncontentious.

Sorry about the repeat posts: a message came up saying the first had failed, and it didn’t reappear when I refreshed.

My last comment was rejected for “questionable content” whatever that is. So I’ll respond to the latest fo Rob’s. Uncle Kvetch will just have to be satisfied with “the US isn’t using B-52’s” and “using history as a baseline, he’ll lose”.

Rob in your counter-arguement I missed the point where you refuted the brilliant strategy of the installation of a liberal democracy. All of the choices involved a large amount of suffering of those invovled. We can quible over which choice involved the most suffering. But only one choice invovled a bright shiny future.

Me thinks you are rooting for the wrong choice. We all get to die some day, why not for a brighter future? Isn’t it our purpose to pave the way for those ahead? And since it was argueabley in the US’s interest to press the issue, it got pressed.

I wonder if those who argued against the work in post-war Japan felt any shame over their efforts in their later years? I bet they argued that leaving Japan’s government alone would have been better in the long run as it had more social justice. Or some such excuse ;)