Deadliest quarter yet

June 30, 2007

As of yesterday, three years to the week after the president triumphantly proclaimed, “Let freedom reign,” we are now seeing the end of the deadliest quarter for U.S. forces in Iraq since the war began.

Those deaths brought to 99 the number of U.S. troops killed this month, according to an Associated Press count. The toll for the past three months — 329 — made it the deadliest quarter for U.S. troops in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. That surpasses the 316 soldiers killed during November 2004 to January 2005.

As reader W.B. noted via email, using this data, we’re also ending the deadliest four-month period and the deadliest five-month period. For all the talk from war supporters about “progress,” the fatality rates are sobering.

That is, if you consider these rates important. Outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace said the other day that violence in Iraq is a “self-defeating approach to tracking results.” He recommends a more sensitive approach.

“What’s most important is do the Iraqi people feel better about today than they did about yesterday, and do they think tomorrow’s going to be better than today?

“If the answer to those two questions is yes, then we’re on the right path. If the answer to those two questions is no, then we’re not doing it right and we need to adjust our processes.”

I’m afraid this doesn’t work at all.

First, why Iraqis’ sanguinity is a more reliable “metric” than U.S. fatalities is apparently only clear to Pace.

Second, even if we’re playing by Pace’s rules, Iraqis aren’t feeling better today than yesterday: “The optimism that helped sustain Iraqis during the first few years of the war has dissolved into widespread fear, anger and distress amid unrelenting violence”:

And third, we’re measuring success in a war based on a population’s feelings? Isn’t that the kind of thing conservatives usually dismiss as namby-pamby liberalism?

Steve, if we’re measuring the success of a war based on a populations feelings…. need we look any further than all of the US polls? Pessimism ain’t just for the Iraqi’s (sigh)

  • “What’s most important is do the Iraqi people feel better about today than they did about yesterday, and do they think tomorrow’s going to be better than today?”

    Why does that mean we’re on the right track? Because it shows U.S. propaganda is working on them? But how is that going to stop the insurgents- just that the Iraqis think something is going to happen?

    The toll for the past three months — 329

    That’s so sad. That’s such a high number, I can’t believe the lives we are wasting. Those people died for nothing.

  • Pace is following orders he really doesn’t like. He’s committed to making the best out of a bad situation and can say nothing about realities not in line with his orders.

    It is an outrage to those of us who are virtually powerless to stop this “splurge” but what is tragic and is playing out before our eyes is that…..We knew then what we know now, and we know now what we will know then, but still here we stand watching our soldiers die supporting a failed policy when we should and could be protecting our troops by getting them out of harm’s way.

    When we say, “Hey you , go die for this reason….it had better be a damn good reason”. A reason better than are you feeling better today about your future than yesterday.. That’s a question we should already know the answer to. Having to ask that question means we are not succeeding.

    To quote Boener, “When are we gonna’ stand up and take ’em on”, and “them” are the supporters of this “splurge”. But then again, I’m quoting a drunk which is right up there with asking questions of occupied Iraqis about occupation strategy.

    Every day it keeps getting worse and every day we are told it will get better. Only 500-1000 more deaths to go till September. Yes, we already know now what we will know then.

  • The evident incompetence of the Generals, as well as the political leadership, in failing to create a strategic frame in Iraq, in which the efforts and sacrifices of junior officers and the troops they lead can be effective in achieving something (anything), is drawing criticism, even within the Army. See, as examples, INTEL DUMP and this Wall St. Journal op-ed.

    The determination of many antiwar Democrats to use Iraq to “prove” a general critique of military intervention, I think, has sometimes come at the cost of making the case against Bush’s specific incompetence. Obviously, a number of books have documented the corruption and incompetence of the occupation. But, the critiques of the Democratic candidates (I’m looking at Hillary in particular) has tended to accept Republican talking points about the need for the Iraqis to “stand up”, etc. This is incredibly short-sighted.

    Democrats need to be building the case, now, for getting out of Iraq, no matter what the consequences. Such a policy will only make sense if the American People undestand that Bush and his Republican allies have made Iraq FUBAR.

    The Democratic President inaugurated in 2009 will have to act quickly and decisively to withdraw from Iraq and initiate reforms in the Army, including a purge of a general officer corps selected by Republicans for pliable incompetence. Radical steps will be necessary, and the case needs to be made in advance, while the existing leadership is still “proving” the case on the ground at enormous cost.

  • The determination of many antiwar Democrats to use Iraq to “prove” a general critique of military intervention, I think, has sometimes come at the cost of making the case against Bush’s specific incompetence.

    I don’t think this is what they are trying to prove. I think this is what the Republicans want to believe. I think even the few who were far too reflexively critical of any military action have had a lot of time since 9/11 to mostly come around to supporting military intervention to the limited extent we need it to combat the terrorist threat.

  • The military should recruit intelligent people to be generals so long as their politics are within the American mainstream. A lot of good chess players would be great generals; if you look at the greatest general in history, Napoleon, the guy was a genius and he worked as hard ad a top-scale Manhattan lawyer. He paid attention to every detail and worked 18 hour days on his campaigns. There are a lot of analogous facets to warfare in chess, and you notice that once you’ve played it a lot, although the similarities may elude you at first when you hear people comparing chess to warfare all the time.

  • A lot of warfare is picking the right fight. There are a lot of sayings in warfare, and even in sports, that the victorious person wins the fight or whatever like two months before the fight. If you try to go somewhere you just can’t go, then you failed as soon as you made that decision, and nothing that comes afterwards will make a difference. It just becomes about cutting losses.

  • “What’s most important is do the Iraqi people feel better about today than they did about yesterday, and do they think tomorrow’s going to be better than today?”

    I respectively disagree with Pace.

    What is most important is American national security and not Iraqi national security. But the anational, imperial corporatists wrongfully occupying the Executive Branch want us to believe just that.

    And the NeoCon 9/11 Hit Squad continues its anti-patriotic campaign of disgusting psychological attacks upon the American public to prolong, exploit and manipulate the fear caused by the terrorism attacks of 9/11, and to intimidate political dissent in opposition to the Reich-Wing Authoritarian rhetoric and propaganda that says Iraqi national security is more important than American national security.

    American national security has been hijacked by those who were otherwise “responsible” for protecting American national security on 9/11. And now, instead of strengthening American national security since 9/11, our Military is over-burdened and stretched to its breaking point in defense of Iraqi national security, and all the while, the American psyche is assaulted and tortured by the NeoCon 9/11 Hit Squad. And as the mammoth resources devoted to Iraqi national security and the Dick-tator’s private corporate empire are syphoned away from any opportunity to protect American national security from another mass-terror frame-up, we have declared “war” upon a tactic (terrorism) or a psychological state (terror).

    As if the deliberately elicited American insecurity were not enough, the U.S. Constitution is now only a set of suggestions for the Unitary Executive.

    Still, 70% of Americans have spoken plainly and told King George and The Dick-tator “no.” But our benevolent Democratic majority in Congress substituted their judgment for that of the American people and have not acted to de-fund the U.S. Military Occupation of Iraq or impeach the international criminals in the Bush Administration who have committed treason and other capital crimes.

    Unlike the No Peace, More War Movement and the likes of George W. Bush, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, or Richard Bruce Cheney, I do not see the deaths of 329 American soldiers as “progress.”

  • “What’s most important is do the Iraqi people feel better about today than they did about yesterday, and do they think tomorrow’s going to be better than today?

    Did he conclude by thanking the American taxpayers for supporting his serious drug habit?

    WtF? If Peter still thinks we should be looking for that pony it is well past time for him to GtFo.

    Unless by “Iraqi people” he means people who left Iraq when they were infants, have never returned and incidentally have enough $$ to make major contributions to the GOP.

    If not, I say he should be the one who goes door to door in Iraq, asking people how they feel. And no, he doesn’t get a bunch of soldiers to hold his hand, they’re too busy surging.

    Cretin.

  • In a COIN war, sanguinity IS indeed a vital metric of success. Though accurately measuring it can be a difficult task.

    Successful counterinsurgency efforts, such as Malaya, or Angola (pre-Carnation revolution, when the Portugese largely had the nation under control) have prevailed because COIN forces were able not only to provide security, but also improve the well-being of the populace. This is the war of which David Galula said that the Army admin clerk or the military medic is more important than the rifleman. Britain in Malaya moved Malays into protected communities and created jobs and opportunities that built wealth and prosperity. The Portugese spent the majority of their budget on social programs and paid their local Army levies the same rates as whites. In both cases the civilian administration was as integrated into the plan as the military. These were wars where ‘hearts and minds’ were the target of operations.

    So yes, how the Iraqis feel is arguably more important to the mission’s success than losses. However, as you rightly point out, that war for hearts and minds has been lost. Possibly irretrievably so.

  • Cheney seems to be the manipulator behind the Iraq fiasco. If you think it’s time to impeach, and you’re frustrated by Pelosi’s stubborness, you might try the link below. Individual citizens allegedly can start the impeachment process by using a perfectly legitimate and legal, albeit obscure, procedure that allegedly was instrumental in the 1830 impeachment of a federal judge. Check it out at:
    http://impeachforpeace.org/ImpeachNow.html

  • Lee Brimmicombe-Wood, that was very eloquent. You’ve persuaded me to give this little adventure one more Friedman.

    Gee, this is just like Vietnam.

    Just kidding.

  • Lee Brimmicombe-Wood, that was very eloquent. You’ve persuaded me to give this little adventure one more Friedman.

    I hope not. I believe that Iraq is probably beyond saving. As I said above, it is likely that Iraqi hearts and minds are irrevocably lost.

    The trick with a COIN campaign is not to lose the populace in the first place. If you do, there comes a point beyond which only a major change in the political and social program stands a chance of working. You need something of the seismic level of a US and British withdrawal, or a regime change, to effect that.

    Pace has identified the problem correctly. The campaign’s centre of gravity is the Iraqi people, their aspirations and how they feel. However, he doesn’t appear to have the intellectual tools to grasp what the next step should be to influence them. Or maybe, like Petraeus, he knows perfectly well what should be done, but is shackled by the lunacy of his civilian masters.

    The solution is political and social as well as military, but I don’t see Bush/Cheney pursuing a course that would unmake the mess they have created. They appear to believe only that the people can be whipped or bought. They don’t understand that the art of persuasion goes far beyond propaganda. That every civilian killed by Americans is a failure that undoes any good works and delivers the nation into the hands of their enemies.

    Only something seismic will change the course of the war now. I vote for getting out.

  • Ummm….isn’t “Let freedom reign” a really bad juxtaposition of terms, if not an outright contradiction in terms? I’d attribute it to Bush’s misunderstanding of the nature of freedom, except that he’s an illiterate moron who probably meant to say “let freedom ring”.

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