April 22, 2004
How Do You Measure Progress?
How do you measure how well things are going in Iraq? The press (and others) seem to be measuring progress by the inverse of the body count -- if coalition deaths are down, the situation is improving, and if coalition deaths are up, the situation is deteriorating. But is that a good way to measure progress?
In WW2, American casualties increased every year of the war, and had we not dropped a couple of A-bombs on the Japenese, they would have been higher in 1946 than in 1945. Yet clearly the darkest time for us was 1942 and by 1945 it was pretty clear we were going to win. Using KIA as a proxy for progress would have provided an opposite view to reality. In Kosovo, not one US service person was KIA (at the cost of about 1000 civilian KIAs), yet the situation is as bad there as ever, and peacekeepers will be occupying Kosovo after the coalition leaves a rebuilt Iraq.
There seems to be a feeling that progress needs to monotonically increase all the time. The reality in war is that the other guy is trying his best too, and so you have set backs, you have fits and starts, you win some and you lose some. You have to understand that and maintain some perspective. Generally, you have a much better grasp of your own problems, shortcomings, and failures than you do of the enemies, and so a natural pessimism can develop.
There is a myth that Americans won't tolerate casualites. This is false. What Americans won't tolerate is casualties without purpose. What casualties measure is the cost, not the progress. And while the cost is very tangible in a situation like Iraq, the progess is far more nebulous, and far more difficult to determine. Yet for an citizenry to make informed decisions about whether a war is worth it, they have to have a reasonable idea of both costs and the progress. And in Iraq, the press has let us down. The consistent message from non-press in Iraq is that progress is being made.
There are several possibilities why the press doesn't report on the progress -- the bias that only news is bad news, the bias towards immediacy and short time horizons which means that the press does a wonderful job on telling us about the events of the day but can't tell us the events that take a week or a month to play out, the bias of the press itself against the war, and the perception that the job of the press is to challange the "official" story and the corresponding desire not to be a "cheerleader". I have a feeling that all of these play their own parts in shaping the reporting from Iraq.
Posted by Kevin Murphy at April 22, 2004 12:39 PM | War On TerrorOkay, I'll take up your challenge, knowing that I won't get it right the first time. How should we measure progress in war?
I'll take my cue from those textbooks that showed the progress of the Second World War. 1942 was the "High Tide of Axis Expansion", where most of Europe and Asia was colored to show Nazi and Japanese control. By the end of 1943 we were "Turning the Tide", and by 1945 the war maps only showed small circles around central Germany and Japan.
The measure of progress is this: Area and people under our control (or at least friendly to us). The country of Iraq is 437,072 square kilometers, with a population of 25 million (source: CIA World Fact Book 2003). Before Operation Iraqi Freedom our progress in the war was zero, because Saddam Hussein held all of Iraq. Three weeks later, much of the central population corridor of Iraq was under coalition control. Note that sparsely-populated land can be a valuable military asset, as Napoleon learned to his dismay while marching to and from Moscow.
In the Iraqi War we are concerned with two phases of control: 1. we want to take control away from Hussein and any other dictators (Moqtada al-Sadr) that arise in his place, and 2. hand control over to a democratic Iraqi government, and then go home. So progress in the Iraq War should be measured as control/sovereignty according to phases 1 and 2.
As of April 26, 2004 the insurgents control Fallujah and Najaf. The rest of Iraq is under coalition control. Fallujah has about 250,000 inhabitants, or about 1% of the population of Iraq. Let's just say that Najaf is the same size. If we assume that "coalition control" is halfway to the final goal of Iraqi sovereignty, then we are 48% of the way to our final goal in terms of population. It's probably 49% in terms of land area. No matter what the handover on June 30 actually looks like, our progress will take another jump on that day.
If there are more uprisings in other places of Iraq (and we lose control), we will lose progress. In that case it will be the insurgents who are making progress.
Journalists who report on American soldier deaths (719 so far) are measuring the COST of the war, not the progress. Politicians and citizens wonder if the progress in war is worth the cost. For Iwo Jima, it was. For Allied troops at The Somme in 1916, it was not.
I suggest that in this war the cost should also include civilian deaths. It is a cost to us when Iraqi non-combatant civilians are killed, and our military tries hard to avoid that. This cost is not just political - Americans genuinely mourn and grieve at the sight of Iraqi civilians who are suffering and dying because they were caught in the fighting. Al-Qaeda spokesman Abu Duhan al Afghani was correct when he said after the Madrid bombings: "You love life...". We Americans do love life, and not just that of our own people.
And that's why the progress gained is worth the cost paid. American lives will be somewhat better when progress stands at 100%. Iraqi lives will be a LOT better! And Iraq's neighbors will no longer have to live in fear.
If we're considering civilian casualties as part of the cost, then we need to include civilians who would have been killed under Saddam but who aren't under the coalition. Those deaths number in the thousands per year, and so the cost of the war is less than the old so called peace. Yes, I know that Americans are dying who otherwise wouldn't, but is an American life worth more somehow than an Iraqi life? I don't think so.
Posted by: Kevin Murphy at April 28, 2004 07:58 AM"Yet for an citizenry to make informed decisions about whether a war is worth it, they have to have a reasonable idea of both costs and the progress. And in Iraq, the press has let us down."
Very well spoken. Times are indeed strange when you can get a better idea of what is going on in Iraq from a (pardon the language) fucking internet art magazine than you can from traditional media outlets.
Posted by: Mark at April 28, 2004 08:30 AM
