| More than 19,000 militants have been killed in fighting with coalition forces since the insurgency began more than four years ago, according to military statistics released for the first time. The statistics show that 4,882 militants were killed in clashes with coalition forces this year, a 25% increase over all of last year. |
The requestin' party seems to have some doubts about the Party numbers, however, although scarcely the ones that occur first to the Muses and me:
| Last year, Gen. John Abizaid, then commander of military forces in the region, estimated the Sunni insurgency to be 10,000 to 20,000 fighters. He said the Shiite militia members were in the "low thousands." The U.S. military hasn't publicly provided any recent estimates. There are 25,000 detainees in U.S. military custody in Iraq, according to the military. The numbers of enemy killed and detained would exceed the estimate given last year of the size of the insurgency. |
What will Wombschool World make of that information? Assuming certain WW journalism customers recall who Gen. Abizaid was, they no doubt reflect that he was a jerk, whereas Dr. Gen. Petraaus of Princeton and West Point is a dab hand at invasion and occupation. I suppose their faith in their new Surgent General may be strengthened, for is he not aware that coonskins plus kidnap victims cannot possibly add up to more than the size of the insurgency before the insurgency is exterminated?
We don't profess to know at first hand what Rio Limbaugh thinks or wants, exactly, when it does text rather than bellowin's and pictures, but it does appear that Mr. (or very likely Neocomrade) Jim Michaels thinks the base folks out that way ideologically would be interested in this curious analytical paragraph [1] that he provides. Perhaps he fancies his customers reasonin' "OK, we've killed 19K -- or put 44K out of business one way or another -- but how many more alligators are still out there in the swamp?" If so, I fear he overestimates his wombscholars' interest in precise details about Peaceful Freedumbia. The latter rather incline to the view "THEY ALL hate Wunnerful US," a perspective from which the unknown quantity to be divided by 19K (or 44K) is so immense that it would be silly to play at calculation of it.
But perhaps JM fancies alternatively that what his wombscholars really want to guess at is not "the size of the insurgency" but the projected length of the Kiddie Krusade? That would be a rather different reasonin', not because it is any more calculable from the data available, but because it suggests that defeatism may be settin' in on Wombschool World, or at least the bratty impatience of "Daddy, are we there yet?" [2]
Turning to the sort of calculation that we'd naturally make ourselves, Mr. Bones, we find that it is not completely alien to the mindset of J. Michaels. Nevertheless, he does not think of it before his very last paragraph and then only in a restricted historical context:
| The deadliest month for militants was August 2004 when thousands of militia fighters loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr clashed with American forces in Najaf in southern Iraq. That month, 1,623 militants were killed. The U.S. military lost 53 troops in fighting during the same time. |
'Tis a cinch to recur to one's calculator and discover that 1623 divided by 53 comes to 30.623. So far, so good, but if one then divides 19,000 by 30 and gets 634, well, perhaps that is not quite so satisfactory an outcome. Rather than relapse into PowerPoint and Cloudcuckooland altogether, though, Mr. Bones, let us observe in mere prose that it is not difficult to understand why Boy and Party might wish to be at war eternally with the Rev. Señorito al-Sadr and his juvenile delinquents, rather than with the actual Forces of Immoderation that still shoot at GOP operatives (and GOP collaborators, and others) in the former Iraq as of September 2007.
Now as to ‘exaggeration’, sir, why 30.623 would certainly qualify as an exaggerated quantity in a certain sense, would it not? But you are to mark that Big Party Management did not single out August 2004 for special attention, it was Mr. (or Neocomrade) J. Michaels of GOPToday who did that. Here again, one naturally wonders what the objective of the analytical exercise was. On Wombschool World, I daresay Muqtadá al-Sadr is a better remembered name than John Abizaid. Do you suppose, Mr. Bones, that the text readers of Rio Limbaugh are nostalgic for the good old days of 30.623 -- at any rate, that JM might rationally estimate that they are? Or if not that, what?
One could guess, but it would probably be better advised to guess about the GOP/DOD complex, which has compiled a certain track record in the former Iraq to work from, rather than worry about one isolated J. Michaels, whom we never heard of before just now and probably will never hear of again. Why is Big Party Management so scrupulously careful to eschew ‘exaggeration' when it comes to countin' their coonskins?
| The statistics, provided at USA TODAY's request, were retrieved from a coalition database that tracks "significant acts." Militants are identified in the database because they are linked to "hostile action," said Capt. Michael Greenberger, a Freedom of Information Act officer in Baghdad. There is no way to independently verify the data. "The information in the database is only as good as the information entered into it by operators on the ground at the time," Greenberger said. "Follow-up information to make corrections is done whenever possible." The U.S. military rarely discusses the numbers of enemy dead, fearful of raising parallels with the Vietnam War when the U.S. military's reliance on "body counts" led to allegations of inflated figures because of political pressure to show results. Today, U.S. commanders consider the number of enemy deaths a poor measure of progress in an insurgency and say there is no pressure to exaggerate. "The big difference is the command climate in Vietnam encouraged inflation," said T.X. Hammes, a retired Marine colonel and insurgency expert. "The general command climate (in Iraq) is: 'Don't exaggerate.' " The military's new counterinsurgency manual emphasizes political and economic solutions to eliminate the conditions that breed militants. Those actions are considered more decisive than combat. "You can't kill them all," Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of the American division responsible for northern Iraq, said in a recent interview. |
"Because coonskin countin' would remind people of Secretary MacNamara's War" is a plausible suggestion, even though it seems to have originated here with the aforesaid isolated J. Michaels. Still, what sort of a Big Manager would say such a thing for direct quotation? To explain one's corporation's advertisment strategy in the public prints would be counterproductive in general, nothing a proper HVS MBA would ever dream of doing, even if such a ploy would not, as in the present case, so alarmingly resemble the Elizabethan cure for toothache that requires one to circumambulate a churchyard three times and never once think of a fox's tail. "We don't want to talk to you about it because it might remind you of Vietnam" would be a prize absurdity even by Rancho Crawford stumblebum standards. [3]
Neocomrade Col. Hammes on "command climate" is mildly interesting, although he seems to be proposin' a basically Saigonocentric explanation as well: if the Green Zone Officers Club does not think it advisable to count their coonskins in public for any reason other than that it might remind us all of the late M. V. Nabókov's "So. Vietnam," there is no hint what further considerations enter into the policy of unexaggeration. [4]
Neocomrade Gen. Mixon does not mention the dread V-word at all, but he, too, looks to be Saigonocentric at bottom. Any successful revival of Petraeo-MacNamaran counterinsurgency dogma in general -- regardless of the degree of DOD/GOP Success and Victory achieved in the former Iraq specifically -- seems bound to require that West Point and Princeton revisit Indochina in the spirit of St. Bernard Lewis, ever askin' themselves "What Went Wrong?" However it would be no help at all to have the other ranks, let alone flat-out chickenhawks, engage in prolonged reflection along those esoteric lines. Such unqualified sweet puppies can have no adequate violence-pro appreciation of why the Petraean updatin' of MacNamara's whiz kids makes neocounterinsurgency a whole different ball game. [5]
There are other senses or directions of ‘exaggeration’ that J. Michaels does not allude to, as for instance tactically, the alleged accomplishments of the Bribe-a-Tribe™ scheme, and strategically, the question of whether the GZOC gentry might not be paintin' the present state of the aggression in rather darker colours for public consumption than they privately view it at the Club. However we can talk about those matters any time we choose and need not detain J. Michaels and GOPToday any longer.[6] AGKB!
____
[1] Two "paragraphs," actually, because Wombschool World likes its print journalism short and snappy. GOPToday is not quite as snappish as the BBC on-line news is, but the latter has the plausible defense that many of their readers are not native speakers of Greater Texan.
[2] Daddy's stock response, I take it, goes something like "No, but were are getting there real fast." And JM's other analysis already quoted may correspond roughly: "4,882 militants were killed in clashes with coalition forces this year, a 25% increase over all of last year."
If the GOP operatives can only keep it up, I believe that will amount to over a 50% increase for all 2007 over all of 2006. Und morgen die ganze Welt!
[3] On the other hand, the Party's Little Brother recently chose to remind everybody of Vietnam quite unmistakably, although to be sure not with reference to the present topic. The GOP/DOD Complex is not perfectly monolithic, of course, and, as any fool could easily foresee, the violence pro hired hands are rather more circumspect than chickenhawk Big Management.
[4] Whether the GZOC gentry actually entertain other considerations is another matter. Very likely they do, although they are tactically unmentionable as well at the present moment. (It will be fun to read some of our brassier violence pros' memoirs!)
Above all, should the Ever-Victorious Surge of '07™ somehow fail to do the trick for invasionism, it will be sauve qui peut as the GOP/DOD Complex comes unglued. Little Brother and the chickenhawk HVS MBA's will want to pin their sorry tale of Peaceful Freedumbia on the so-called Democrat Party. That plan cannot be altogether satisfactory from a hired-hand perspective, though, for if the hands are not kept on or rehired by "President Clinton" or the like, why, they'll be out of work altogether.
[5] The Petraeo-MacNamarans could do with some Madison Avenue advice, it seems to me, for even chickenhawks do know a little bit of useful stuff at times. The P-M crowd ought to find some brand new monniker for their revised product, some label that does not have any "surge" in it whatsoever that might lead the wombscholars and the niedergedümmten (plus a certain slice of the so-called Democrat Party) to ignorantly expostulate, "But we already tried that, and everybody knows it didn't work!" Verb. sap.!
Meanwhile, Neocomrade Gen. Mixon scarcely does the (admittedly chickenhawk) whiz kids of RSM justice. Certainly their earlier release of the counterinsurgency product had a number of bugs in it, yet the notion that they thought in terms of "Let's simply kill them all!" is only what Mu’ámara Junction would call a "cartoon."
[6] 19 / 4 = 4.75. (But please don't tell anybody I told you that, Mr. Bones!)
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