June 6, 2005
The Post Is Like A Box Of ...
The St. Louis Post Dispatch ("stupid is as stupid does") runs a stupid article on the war in Iraq that asks the question "Are we losing because US casualities are increasing?" and unsurprisingly only interviews people who say yes or maybe.
The premise is stupid and if you think but a moment you can figure it for yourself. In the spirit of science, perform this Gedankenexperiment: A war starts and ends. The casualites for one side starts at zero before the war, increases, and then decreases to zero at the end of the war. Does this describe the winner or the loser? It describes both, doesn't it? So when casualties were increasing did this mean one side was losing? You can't tell, can you. And it's not just a thought experiment, but it's the reality of war -- look at US casualty figures from WWII and you'll discover that they increase dramatically year after year until 1945 - and had US soldiers not been saved by the deus ex machina of the A-bomb from invading Japan, they would have been highest of all in 1945. So using one side's casualty figures as a proxy for who's winning is both theoretically and practically an error.
But even if you think the figures indicate who's winning or losing, isn't there something(s) missing from the story? Like shouldn't we use numbers for coalition forces, not just US? And shouldn't we include Iraqi figures as well? Wouldn't that give a more complete picture? And shouldn't we compare the two side's casualty figures? I mean if you think these figures have meaning, shouldn't you be comparing the two sides?
You'd also have to know what kind of stratagies the two sides have picked. Are we fighting a battle (or battles) of attrition, maneuver, position, what? What kind of strategy is the enemy fighting? If their goal is to kill enough Americans to cause war fatigue at home, isn't reporting only American casualties the stupid thing to do? If you run articles that only mention or highlight failure are you really being objective, cynical, or stupid? Is there any mention in this article of the comparitive strategies and what they would mean when looking at casualty figures? This is it:
"While Americans are hoping that the training of Iraqi forces will mean the end of a major U.S. presence, Abenheim says the plan harks back to a failed strategy in America's last major war."It does suggest Vietnamization," he said, speaking of the U.S. policy during the Vietnam War to train the South Vietnamese to protect their own country so American soldiers could slide into the background. "
More stupidity. The failed policy in Vietnam was Americanization - the policy persued by Kennedy and especially Johnson along with a strategy of attrition picked by Westmorland. Those were the strategies that failed and in so doing so turned so many people against the war. Vietnamization and positional warfare were successes under Nixon and Abrams. South Vietnam fell because when invaded for a second time after the peace treaty was signed, the US cut off not only all aid, but any purchases of weapons and ammunition as well. The penultimate tragedy of Vietnam was this very real stab in the back of an ally. (The ultimate tragedy is the floodgates of death and misery that were opened on South Vietnam following its occupation by the tyrannical communists of the North).
To further prove the writers don't understand what they're writing about, they back up the assertion that iraqification is a losing strategy with a quote by a wounded guardsmen:
""It doesn't matter how many troops you have there or what they do, you are never going to beat an insurgency like that," said Oversmith, now a police officer in Smithville."In their view, they think they are being conquered. If they think they are being conquered, they'll fight for years and years. Look how long the Vietnamese fought."
Gee, you'd think putting in place a democratically elected government commanding Iraqi troops that do the day to day policing and fighting would be the way to eliminate that conquered feeling.
And an earlier quote is also priceless:
"The evidence to date suggests that U.S. military officers don't really understand the sources of the insurgency or how to blunt its effects," he said. "For example, every day we hear stories of suicide bombers killing innocent Iraqis, but we have no detailed insight into the recruiting mechanisms or the training to produce suicide bombers in such large numbers."
But the article doesn't consider the effect of the suicide bombings on the Iraqi people, and how they view war, and how it has soured a lot of onetime supporters and fence sitters on the so called insurgency. Can anyone cite an actual successful suicide bombing campaign? The only suicide bombing that worked was against Spain and it took only one attack; the ones against Russia and Israel have been failures. Oh, it's been successful in capturing media attention and killing innocents, but that's about it.
One of the things I do wonder about, and which isn't covered in the article, is what is taking so long in standing up a viable Iraqi military. We're seeing it now, but what took so long? And then I harken back to WWII (again), and I guess I shouldn't be surprised. In Europe, it was clear that the decisive blow would be an invasion of France and then on to Germany, yet the first step was to secure North Africa where 13 long months after entry the American Army suffered a stinging defeat at Kasserine Pass. After North Africa, the next stepping stone was Sicily, then Italy where Allied forces would be bogged down for the rest of the war. It wasn't for 2 and a half years after the US entered the war that France was invaded and the war was really taken to the Germans (and American casualties really mounted). The new Iraqi army in a little over 2 years has begun the decisive battles for Iraq - not bad by American historical standards.
The most appalling thing about this appalling article is that it is so American centric. I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Right now, successfully replacing a murdering, terrorist supporting dictator with a half way decent, reasonably representative government in Iraq is critical to the US, but it is with no exaggeration a matter of life and death for Iraqis. For decades, they haven't held their own futures in their own hands. Right now, they do. We can support them to the best of our abilities, but ultimately, what Iraq becomes is up to the Iraqis.
