Posted by
Andrews on Thursday, July 17, 2008 10:52:00 PM
I mentioned this before in passing, but I have to say our reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan have one strange quirk.
Normally, in wartime, when you report the casualties on one side, you match it with the casualties on the other. I am sure everyone has noticed this in history class. You know the drill. "During the Ardennes offensive, X Germans were killed, while Y Allied soldiers died." The idea being that when you know how many died on either side you can tell which side is or was winning. If it cost 2 lives to take 20, then that was probably a success.
However, in our current conflicts, either we have killed none of our opponents, or the press is being strangely lopsided in its reporting. We continually hear about 4000 deaths, there are big banner headlines and media delight disguised as shock whenever we hit a new number ending in zeros, but we never hear how many died on the other side.
It seems the media thinks that, hearing 4000 soldiers died, we will just assume we are losing. But that makes no sense. More men died every hour during D-Day, but that was a victory. If we lost 4000 in Iraq to kill 10, yes we are doing badly, but if we have taken out 100,000 then we are doing quite well.
Of course, casualties on the other side are not the only measure. One side can have lower casualties and still lose. Just ask Pyrrhus of Epirus. And, yes, the media is just as negligent in telling us how well we are achieving other objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan. But really, is it that difficult to tell us how many casualties the enemy suffered while they are trumpeting "2 Marines Killed!" with a poorly concealed smile?
It almost makes one think the media wants us to believe we are losing the war. But that can't be true, can it?
POSTSCRIPT
As reporting is so shoddy, I have had to resort to indirect means of figuring how many terrorists (which the press calls "insurgents") have been killed.
To get a reliable count of enemy fatalities, I started visiting those "Civilian Casualty Watch" web sites. My theory is that terrorists don't wear uniforms, so they are likely to be called civilians by groups eager to find war crimes. On the other hand, our soldiers have been taught by over eager prosecutors, a high command too sensitive to public opinion, and an anti-military press, through incidents such as Haditha, to avoid even standing too close to civilians, much less doing them any harm. As a result, I think it is safe to assume any civilian casualty is really a terrorist.
And judging from those diligently preparing exhibits for their eagerly anticipated Bush war crimes trial, it seems our soldiers are doing quite well at taking out terrorists.