The casualty rate, circumstances and gains are highly critical to media reporting. - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 29/06/2012 02:28:10 AM
Most of the time, they are pretty much the whole of media reporting. US kill ratios were obscenely favorable in Vietnam, but LBJ lost America with Cronkite because we had nothing to show for it after years of combat.
Lower is better, but that doesn't mean anything, Joel, I know people like to talk about being spread thin and such, but that's stuff the DOD says to get more money, and armchair quarterbacks say because they don't know better. Three equally sized and armed countries sitting somewhere, two go to war for a few years and lose about half their troops each, third guy attacks figuring they've got half the guys and they're exhausted. People nod their head and assume the victor is obvious, in reality either of the other sides who have lost forces would kick the shit out of their numerically superior 'fresh' enemy. Our troops are better trained for the options, far better equipped for them, and have very high ratios of experienced veterans... hence lower casualties, that is the principle source.
People talked about being spread too thin because of stop-loss and guys doing half a dozen combat tours; that does not reflect a surplus of troops, but a military trying to do too much with too little. There is a saying along those lines, yes? In terms of media impressions (and thus reporting) lower is considerably better. Maybe it is naïve or outright ignorant, but when the media compares 2000 slain soldiers over 2.5 years with the same number over a decade, they will inevitably conclude the latter operation is going better. Particularly when it began before the other one, so all the same issues of logistics and combat experience applied to it also, and for longer.
In other words, we invaded Afghanistan a year and a half before invading Iraq, and remain there six months (so far...) after leaving Iraq, yet have lost half as many troops there as in Iraq. Along the way, we eliminated the Taliban government that sheltered and aided the 911 hijackers, and executed the Al Qaeda leader responsible for the attack, while in Iraq all we did was lure Al Qaeda into a country toward which they had been hostile and remove a leader who was no threat to us. Those operations are night and day in terms of both cost and effectiveness. If anything, the media should be criticized for underreporting success in Afghanistan, but with running gun battles still common I can see why they do not.
But the rate isn't critical, it's mostly meaningless. It took a few years for us to get our feet under us in the various respects and to get all the new equipment manufactured, distributed, and trained up on. Trust me Joel, that's one of my actual areas of expertise. Grand strategy, enemy activity, how much area we have to cover by ourselves or with the local's help and/or friendliness, enemy supply, and so on make a difference, huge ones, but it's almost all training, equipment, and experience, and those ramped up massively in the first few years and then more or less plateaued.
If it was simply a matter of needing a few years to acquire combat experience, the year and a half of Afghanistan fighting before the Iraqi invasion should have provided it. Regardless, the rate is very critical to public perception of progress. When we lost our 2000th soldier in Iraq we had only been there two years, the Taliban and Al Qaeda were still strong, Saddam and bin Laden were still alive and active and most people were understandably asking what we had to show for 2000 dead soldiers and thousands of more severly wounded or permanently disabled. When we lost our 2000th soldier in Afghanistan, the Taliban was out of power and on the run, Al Qaeda fleeing with them, Saddam and bin Laden were dead, our troops had already left Iraq and were set to leave Afghanistan in two years. Again, night and day in terms of cost/benefit analysis.
Okay, that's hardly wrong but frankly you're assuming the media knows what the hell it's talking about, and it doesn't, that the president really has much say on anything besides pulling the trigger on the original situation, which they really don't, and that crap generals or retired officers say on TV means anything, which it doesn't anymore than 30 seconds spots by scientists or politicians do.
I assume the media reports its understanding of the situation, accurate or not; what else would it report? I assume current and former commanders of combat theaters have a good understanding of those combat theaters; who would know better? Bush should not have put up "Mission Accomplished" banners when we had not accomplished anything but the death of 2000 US soldiers (with even more deaths in Iraq to come,) but now Obama HAS accomplished his mission.
To be blunt, I feel it nauseatingly partisan for people who demanded both wars, accused anti-war groups of unpatriotically helping terrorists and condemn Obamas unmanned drone strikes as violations of UN treaties they despise to ALSO bust Obamas chops for our Afghan casualties, particularly when most of those occurred on Bushs watch, too. I would have far more respect if they just said, "we hate him because he is a Democrat." At least that is honest and leaves our soldiers out of it. The GOP has been waving that bloody shirt since 1865: Is it not long past time they stopped?
Well Rather retired wealthy and still respected by most people, Saddam was hung, so yeah there was a difference. Also we have McD's in theater, or did last time I was there... nice 24/7 one at the airfield in Kuwait we all processed through... I ate like a hundred double-cheeseburgers on my handful of occasions passing through. There are local eateries, I went to a real nice on in Dahuk, but you don't eat off base very often except MREs and you usually eat on base at the D-Fac because it's free and the food on a FOB is usually very good. But yes there is a McD's in BAghdad and a KFC and a Pizza Hut... except IIRC Pizzahut, Burger King, and Cinnabon pulled out of Baghdad last year. They're occupied countries, not actual warzones, and the only reason there wasn't way more of that stuff is command has learned from previous wars not to let our troops and civvies mingle much with the locals except on job and in groups.
Obviously I was being figurative when I spoke of Mideast McDonalds: We have not remade the region in our image, but that would not be right, was not what we signed for and exceeds our current military capacity regardless. We did, however, end a threat to Americas security and bring those most responsible for 911 to the only justice possible (I still worry about Al Zawahiri, but with any luck a Hellfire will find him soon.) We accomplished our mission and it is time to come to home, which we are doing, putting the 2000 US soldiers slain in 11 years of Afghan fighting in a very different context than the 2000 US soldiers slain in 2.5 years of Iraqi fighting.
Well, that's your opinion, personally I didn't really care about OBL that much or Saddam.
I could not care less about Saddam, but have cared very much about bin Laden since long before 911. If Senate Republicans had let the Commander-in-Chief BE the Commander-in-Chief in 1998 the man who plotted and financed the '93 WTC bombing would have never had the chance to plot and finance the worst terrorist attack in US history. The government that provided him sanctuary and a training ground is also gone, and that is another big win. If you disagree, and do not care about Saddam either, my next questions are: 1) Should we have invaded either country in the first place? 2) If not, how do you justify the 2004 re-election of the man who sent us?
Though I must dispute the contention the war has not changed much since the first month of each conflict; there is a significant difference between losing 2000 soldiers in 2.5 years and losing the same number in 11 years. You were an officer: Which attrition rate would you prefer, if forced to choose?
Lower is better, but that doesn't mean anything, Joel, I know people like to talk about being spread thin and such, but that's stuff the DOD says to get more money, and armchair quarterbacks say because they don't know better. Three equally sized and armed countries sitting somewhere, two go to war for a few years and lose about half their troops each, third guy attacks figuring they've got half the guys and they're exhausted. People nod their head and assume the victor is obvious, in reality either of the other sides who have lost forces would kick the shit out of their numerically superior 'fresh' enemy. Our troops are better trained for the options, far better equipped for them, and have very high ratios of experienced veterans... hence lower casualties, that is the principle source.
People talked about being spread too thin because of stop-loss and guys doing half a dozen combat tours; that does not reflect a surplus of troops, but a military trying to do too much with too little. There is a saying along those lines, yes? In terms of media impressions (and thus reporting) lower is considerably better. Maybe it is naïve or outright ignorant, but when the media compares 2000 slain soldiers over 2.5 years with the same number over a decade, they will inevitably conclude the latter operation is going better. Particularly when it began before the other one, so all the same issues of logistics and combat experience applied to it also, and for longer.
In other words, we invaded Afghanistan a year and a half before invading Iraq, and remain there six months (so far...) after leaving Iraq, yet have lost half as many troops there as in Iraq. Along the way, we eliminated the Taliban government that sheltered and aided the 911 hijackers, and executed the Al Qaeda leader responsible for the attack, while in Iraq all we did was lure Al Qaeda into a country toward which they had been hostile and remove a leader who was no threat to us. Those operations are night and day in terms of both cost and effectiveness. If anything, the media should be criticized for underreporting success in Afghanistan, but with running gun battles still common I can see why they do not.
The rate itself is also critical because, unlike in 2005, we know the troops are coming home, even have a fairly firm idea when. Then all we knew was that soldiers died daily, we had no idea how much longer past "Mission Accomplished" that would continue and had nothing to show for it. Even getting Saddam later was a significant, albeit short lived, boost, despite the fact he had nothing to do with 911 and had done nothing to the US but talk since I graduated HS (OK, he did target some fighters in the late '90s, but IIRC they tracked his hopelessly antiquated SAMs signals back to the stationary launchers and blew them to smoking shrapnel.)
But the rate isn't critical, it's mostly meaningless. It took a few years for us to get our feet under us in the various respects and to get all the new equipment manufactured, distributed, and trained up on. Trust me Joel, that's one of my actual areas of expertise. Grand strategy, enemy activity, how much area we have to cover by ourselves or with the local's help and/or friendliness, enemy supply, and so on make a difference, huge ones, but it's almost all training, equipment, and experience, and those ramped up massively in the first few years and then more or less plateaued.
If it was simply a matter of needing a few years to acquire combat experience, the year and a half of Afghanistan fighting before the Iraqi invasion should have provided it. Regardless, the rate is very critical to public perception of progress. When we lost our 2000th soldier in Iraq we had only been there two years, the Taliban and Al Qaeda were still strong, Saddam and bin Laden were still alive and active and most people were understandably asking what we had to show for 2000 dead soldiers and thousands of more severly wounded or permanently disabled. When we lost our 2000th soldier in Afghanistan, the Taliban was out of power and on the run, Al Qaeda fleeing with them, Saddam and bin Laden were dead, our troops had already left Iraq and were set to leave Afghanistan in two years. Again, night and day in terms of cost/benefit analysis.
The changes on the ground are 1) bin Laden is dead, 2) the Taliban has gone from offering to seeking shelter, 3) casualty rates are 20% what they were in 2005 and 4) the boys will be home no later than 2014 and 5) they have already left Iraq (though later than Obama pledged, and I have not forgotten that.) Those are big changes compared to 2005 when we had 1) bin Laden alive, 2) the Taliban staunchly resisting our efforts to change that and drive them from Afghanisant, 3) casualty rates 500% higher, 4) no idea when the troops would be out of either country and 5) a president who had flown a fighter jet into a non-combat zone two YEARS earlier to declare a mission "accomplished" that was barely begun.
Okay, that's hardly wrong but frankly you're assuming the media knows what the hell it's talking about, and it doesn't, that the president really has much say on anything besides pulling the trigger on the original situation, which they really don't, and that crap generals or retired officers say on TV means anything, which it doesn't anymore than 30 seconds spots by scientists or politicians do.
I assume the media reports its understanding of the situation, accurate or not; what else would it report? I assume current and former commanders of combat theaters have a good understanding of those combat theaters; who would know better? Bush should not have put up "Mission Accomplished" banners when we had not accomplished anything but the death of 2000 US soldiers (with even more deaths in Iraq to come,) but now Obama HAS accomplished his mission.
To be blunt, I feel it nauseatingly partisan for people who demanded both wars, accused anti-war groups of unpatriotically helping terrorists and condemn Obamas unmanned drone strikes as violations of UN treaties they despise to ALSO bust Obamas chops for our Afghan casualties, particularly when most of those occurred on Bushs watch, too. I would have far more respect if they just said, "we hate him because he is a Democrat." At least that is honest and leaves our soldiers out of it. The GOP has been waving that bloody shirt since 1865: Is it not long past time they stopped?
There may have been some media bias against Bush, though it is hard to see their hearts and know (I personally think Rather and the Bushes had it in for each other from the moment Bush 41 decided to tear into Rather out of the blew back in '88 to dispel the "wimp" charge, but that feud only ended slightly better for Rather than for Saddam.) Yet I believe the biggest problem was that we had nothing to show for 2.5 years of combat but 2000 dead soldiers and many more wounded/disabled ones. Same reason no one accuses Obama of cutting and running now: We got bin Laden, crippled the Taliban and restored our security as much as we can without encasing the country in cement. We have not yet put McDonalds in Baghdad or Kabul, but that is not our job and would probably take 10-30X more active duty soldiers than we have even were we (and they) willing.
Well Rather retired wealthy and still respected by most people, Saddam was hung, so yeah there was a difference. Also we have McD's in theater, or did last time I was there... nice 24/7 one at the airfield in Kuwait we all processed through... I ate like a hundred double-cheeseburgers on my handful of occasions passing through. There are local eateries, I went to a real nice on in Dahuk, but you don't eat off base very often except MREs and you usually eat on base at the D-Fac because it's free and the food on a FOB is usually very good. But yes there is a McD's in BAghdad and a KFC and a Pizza Hut... except IIRC Pizzahut, Burger King, and Cinnabon pulled out of Baghdad last year. They're occupied countries, not actual warzones, and the only reason there wasn't way more of that stuff is command has learned from previous wars not to let our troops and civvies mingle much with the locals except on job and in groups.
Obviously I was being figurative when I spoke of Mideast McDonalds: We have not remade the region in our image, but that would not be right, was not what we signed for and exceeds our current military capacity regardless. We did, however, end a threat to Americas security and bring those most responsible for 911 to the only justice possible (I still worry about Al Zawahiri, but with any luck a Hellfire will find him soon.) We accomplished our mission and it is time to come to home, which we are doing, putting the 2000 US soldiers slain in 11 years of Afghan fighting in a very different context than the 2000 US soldiers slain in 2.5 years of Iraqi fighting.
We got what (and whom) we came for, our boys are dying less often, for something worthwhile and soon will not be dying at all. Huge difference.
Well, that's your opinion, personally I didn't really care about OBL that much or Saddam.
I could not care less about Saddam, but have cared very much about bin Laden since long before 911. If Senate Republicans had let the Commander-in-Chief BE the Commander-in-Chief in 1998 the man who plotted and financed the '93 WTC bombing would have never had the chance to plot and finance the worst terrorist attack in US history. The government that provided him sanctuary and a training ground is also gone, and that is another big win. If you disagree, and do not care about Saddam either, my next questions are: 1) Should we have invaded either country in the first place? 2) If not, how do you justify the 2004 re-election of the man who sent us?