Smoke and dust rise over Syrian town of Kobani after an airstrike. Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
Kathy Gilsinan, The Atlantic: Counting the ISIS Dead
The U.S. military cautions against using “body counts” as a metric of success, but continues to advertise them.
This week, a Pentagon official anonymously told USA Today that the U.S.-led air campaign against ISIS had killed 20,000 of the group’s fighters in just over a year. That figure was up from July, when “military and intelligence estimates” suggested that 15,000 members of the Islamic State had been killed.
Is this some grim sort of progress? And if not, what do those numbers mean? The Pentagon has repeatedly emphasized that body counts are not the key measure of the success of the military campaign. (Treating body counts that way fell out of favor after the Vietnam War, when, as The New York Times reported in 2003, “officers inflated casualty figures to get promotions and make their units look good.”) Asked in January how many ISIS fighters had been killed in the campaign, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby declined to give a figure, saying only that it was “hundreds, several hundred.” But: “We’re not getting into an issue of body counts. ... It’s simply not a relevant figure.” Weeks later, then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, would only confirm “thousands” but said of that number: “It is a measurement [of progress]. I don’t think it is the measurement. I mean, I—I was in a war where there was a lot of body counts every day. And we lost that war.”
WNU Editor: I have learned to be very sceptical on U.S. reports of enemy fighters killed. Afterall .... the U.S. is still unsure on who are the leaders/commanders in the Islamic State .... U.S. military might already have the data to identify Islamic State leaders. (Reuters) .... let alone on how many they have killed
3 comments:
If you don't know if the enemy is growing in numbers or decreasing, how do you know if you are winning or losing?
It is such an obvious question. I have to bring it up.
But the leaders and electorate seemed unconcerned. Maybe the Ultra low labor participation rate, lack of well paying jobs and generally poor economic situation have a lot to do with it
No one is interested in destroying IS. The coalition 'mosquito bites' have probably only made them stronger by adding 'crusaders and apostates' to their lists of enemies.
"adding 'crusaders and apostates' to their list of enemies. Another way of saying job protection.
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