Army Deploys Old Tactic in PR War

[question everything]

JUNE 1, 2009

Army Deploys Old Tactic in PR War

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
WSJ

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -- Body counts are back, reigniting the decades-old debate about whether victory in war can be judged by measuring the stack of enemy dead. In recent months, the U.S. command in Afghanistan has begun publicizing every single enemy fighter killed in combat, the most detailed body counts the military has released since the practice fell into disrepute during the Vietnam War.

The practice has revealed deep divides in military circles over the value of keeping such a score in a war being waged not over turf, but over the allegiance of the Afghan people. Does it buck up the troops and the home front to let them know the enemy is suffering, too? Or does the focus on killing distract from the goals of generating legitimacy and economic development? American commanders have detailed nearly 2,000 insurgent deaths in Afghanistan over the past 14 months. U.S. officers say they've embraced body counts to undermine insurgent propaganda, and stiffen the resolve of the American public. "It's a concern that at home, the common perception is this war is being lost," says Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, spokeswoman for the 101st Airborne Division, which initiated the policy. Still, the practice has led the U.S. into an impasse with military allies, who don't release body counts for fear it would prove politically unpalatable at home and counterproductive in Afghanistan.

(snip)

Even those who endorse the idea face the challenge of actually counting the bodies. Commanders know there's a good deal of uncertainty when firefights often take place at ranges of up to 1,000 yards and end with aerial bombardments. Insurgents frequently remove their dead, in what Lt. Col. Nielson-Green calls the "self-cleaning battlefield." That forces U.S. troops to use other methods -- such as intercepting insurgent communications, monitoring funerals or surveillance from unmanned spy planes -- to confirm the enemy body count. Some commanders are wary of such indirect methods. "My policy is when you stand with your legs astride a dead body, call me and tell me you killed one person," says Col. Chris Cavoli, who commanded an infantry battalion on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in 2006-07.

(snip)

Some battlefield commanders inflated body counts to appear more successful than they were. The American public "kept hearing these stories about how two of our soldiers were killed and 100 Viet Cong were killed," says Mr. Andrade. He says that eventually Americans wondered: "If we're killing so many people, why aren't we winning?" In the wars that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, body counts resurfaced in fits and starts as military authorities wrestled with their usefulness.

(snip)

As the insurgency intensified and American combat deaths rose, however, the U.S.-led military command in Iraq began releasing enemy casualty counts on occasion, generally after a big battle. Sometimes individual units detailed such information in press releases. But the military as a whole had no body-count policy. And senior commanders in Iraq discouraged using enemy casualties as a public measure of success, according to a general involved in those decisions in 2005 and 2006. In fact, the military kept classified its running tally of enemy deaths in Iraq between June 2003 and September 2007 -- 18,832 -- and only revealed the figure in 2007 when forced to do so under a Freedom of Information Act petition. That number hasn't been publicly updated. In Afghanistan, counting bodies is now more prevalent than it ever was in Iraq.

(snip)


When the fighting quieted, Lt. Col. Nielson-Green of the 101st Airborne called ISAF's Capt. Durkin and urged him to release the count of enemy fallen. It was, she argued, an exceptionally large number of insurgent dead and signaled a major allied victory. ISAF officials agreed to put out a brief press release, but reluctantly. They did so in large part because they didn't want the French public, unaccustomed to combat deaths, to think their soldier died in vain.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124380078921270039.html (subscription)

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

[immoderate]

1. Body counts!?

That just brought on a flashback.

--imm

[zbdent]

2. because now, it's Obama's war ...