Scoring the war

[DesertFox]

Investors Business Daily

One way the media distort Americans' view of the ongoing war against terrorists is by focusing on just one side in the conflict: ours. Whether it's the daily body count or alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, the public could be forgiven for thinking the U.S. is not only losing the war, but behaving badly in doing so.

But neither is true. This year, for instance, the U.S. has killed roughly 650 terrorists a month, according to published reports and Defense Department estimates. That compares with about 37 U.S. combat deaths per month, through May.

The ratio, thus, is about 18 terrorists killed in combat for every allied soldier killed. And that doesn't include the current offensive in Diayala Province, Operation Arrowhead Ripper, which dispatched 159 enemy combatants in just the first five days.

Since the war began, we've lost about 70 troops a month. This compares with 526 a month in Vietnam, more than 900 a month in Korea and 6,639 a month during World War II.

In other words, by any meaningful metric employed, the U.S. is winning this war. But it will never be reported that way.


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[Timberwolf]

Just sent this to local TV and Radio outlets...now, let's see what happens.

TV guy...dunno 'bout him. Radio guy...Major in the Marines...two tours in Iraq.

I think the radio guy will spend at least one day on it. :thumb:

[PrezLeefun]

ALL wars get an F. There is no way to score bloodshed. Anyone who looks at it that way is a sad individual.

[DesertFox]

ALL wars get an F. There is no way to score bloodshed. Prez, that's saying there is no righteous war, and that's just wrong. What is a country supposed to do when attacked without provocation? Turn the other cheek and get attacked again? What then? Just keep turning the other cheek until everyone is dead?

You're too intelligent to be thinking that way.

I recommend two books for your edification on the issue of war, both concerning the same battle. The first, by Antony Beevor, is Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege. Beevor's account is the best and most current of the usually-accepted view of that ferocious fight. The second is Michael Jones' Stalingrad, which shows that fight in a whole 'nother light, one you wouldn't believe possible in a savage system such as the Soviets under Stalin established. Both books are available thru Amazon.

As you familiarize yourself with these two books, you will find yourself rocking back and forth, pulling first for this side and then for that. Which is odd, seeing as how you already know who won at Stalingrad (the Russians). But the story of the ungodly sacrifices made there, the unbelievable heroism on both sides, the extremes each went to, you come to appreciate just what war brings out in a human being that nothing else can: true spiritual nobility, clean awsome courage, unadulterated love of your fellow man.

War is an extremely complex subject, not to be dismissed with the thoughtless "a pox on all your houses" so often advanced nowadays by know-nothings. You're too bright to be in their company. Please educate yourself out of their company. Read these two books, in the order given above.

[noncom]

There are no "good" wars or "bad" wars. There are only wars that you win, and wars that you lose.

The Democrats scream until they're blue in the face that they "won't let this be another Vietnam."

...but they are doing everything in their power to try and make this war END in precisely the same way that war did: genocide and dictatorship.

[M.C.]

This war is an F-. I don't want Iraq to be a democracy, I'd prefer it to be a parking lot. That's just me. 'Nam worked out better than this is. I don't see any benefit to America whatsoever in it, and I know that isn't the popular conservative attitude on it, but I don't care. It seems to be a war that even if we win we lose. Sure we're killing bad men, but at the cost of our brothers and sisters who die for something that the next president is gonna end anyway. It is an utter waste in my opinion. At least annex their oil fields or something. War should be in the interest of America, not for whatever this is for.

We got nukes, let them rain.

[DoctorDoom]

War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
--John Stuart Mill

"Es kann der Frömmste nicht im Frieden bleiben, Wenn es dem bösen Nachbar nicht gefällt." (The gentlest man cannot live in peace if it does not please his wicked neighbor.)
-- Friedrich von Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, IV, iii, 124