If you want to find an example of pointless negativity in the war on terror, you need look no further than the "foreign editor's briefing" by Bronwen Maddox in today's U.K. Times Online.
Can the Afghan campaign stand this casualty rate?, the headline asks.
Let's stop right there. Can the campaign "stand" this?
As opposed to what? Turning tail and running away, leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Osama Bin Laden?
When it comes to a war for your nation's survival, defeat is not an option.
And anyone who thinks Britain's survival as a free nation is not among the stakes being played for in this war is not thinking clearly.
But let's proceed to the lead paragraph of this briefing:
HOW long can Britain stand the current level of casualties in Afghanistan? Probably a long time, shocking though the steady toll has been, and even more with the death of 14 in Saturday’s aircraft crash near Kandahar.
14 casualties?
Due to an aircraft crash?
As I pointed out when the news broke, the report is that the crash was probably due to a technical malfunction, not enemy fire.
While each loss of life is tragic, we must put this in perspective in the larger war on terror.
We should be grateful that that the number of the victims of this crash and the war in Afghanistan as a whole is still small enough to count and name the lost soldiers individually. Throughout much of human history, it has been somewhat of a "luxury" to suffer "only" 14 deaths in one day of war. For example, there were massive casualties in the U.S. civil war. At Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864, General Hood's Confederates lost over 6,000 men -- most of them in about two hours. Many other examples could be cited from throughout human history. The United Kingdom suffered at least 244,000 military deaths in World War II. That's an average of 111 military deaths per day, every day, for six years.
In that context, read the next tidbit of negativity from this same piece:
Yesterday’s death of a British soldier in a suicide bomb attack brought the British military death toll to to 37 since the start of operations in November 2001.
The Ministry of Defence classifies only 16 of these as killed in action, while it attributes 21 deaths to accidents, illness, or other injuries.
Perhaps that distinction helps to soothe public anxiety, as it is supposed to do. But the MoD and Nato seem unwise to have got into the “body count” game, regularly citing the numbers of Taleban killed.
For anyone still keeping track of the numbers, 37 total British deaths in a little short of five years amounts to an average of 7 deaths a year. If we look only at combat deaths and exclude deaths to due accidents, illness, and the like we are talking about a total of 16 combat-related deaths, which is an average of only about 3 combat-related deaths per year.
How many nations in the history of the world have ever managed to wage war with only three combat deaths per year? Instead of shaking its head over the current level of casualties, the Times should be doing handsprings and celebrating the astounding success of British generals.
It hardly seems worth it to continue dissecting this bizarre "briefing," but let's bravely soldier on, so to speak:
The one constant — with echoes of Vietnam — is that the totals are always far greater than the numbers of Nato or Afghan forces killed.
You can’t keep making such claims without prompting the question of why the Taleban death rate hasn’t yet made much difference. If the answer is that they keep streaming over the Pakistan border, or worse, that far more of the population in the south wants to fight than Britain first thought, then the numbers game is hardly reassuring.
So now Bronwen Maddox attempts to turn a positive -- the fact that the loss of life of enemy soldiers is much higher than the British loss of life -- into a negative. It must mean that Britain is losing.
I guess that if Britain were winning, it's own soldiers' death rate would be comparable to the Taliban death rate? Only in that case would Maddox be satisfied with the progress of the war? If so, then to satisfy Maddox, we either have to see many more U.K. soldiers killed, or -- more likely, since Maddox implicitly deplores the "casualty level" -- we would have to see the allies win the war without actually killing more than a tiny handful of Taliban soldiers. Three per year, let's say.
I don't know exactly which blessed utopia Maddox is living in, but in the real world, it is very hard to win a war against a determined enemy without actually killing anybody.
Public support may also be shaken by the row about whether British troops are overstretched and underequipped. That is a constant grumbling backdrop to any engagement, but is taking on new political heat. General Richard Dannatt, the new chief of general staff, has been quoted round the world for his comment: “Can we cope? I pause. I say, ‘Just’.”
If British troops are "overstretched and underequipped," they certainly aren't showing it, with only 16 combat-related deaths in five years.
And how about those words from General Dannatt that Maddox sees fit to quote:
“Can we cope? I pause. I say, ‘Just’.”
Gee, that will surely go down in the history books right alongside the words of Winston Churchill:
Never give in -- never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Bronwen Maddox undoubtedly has many professional credits to her name as the "foreign editor" for the Times, but does she know nothing about the psychology of war, let alone the psychology of success?
Rule One: You don't undermine your own nation's morale in wartime by announcing to the world that your troops are barely coping.
Rule Two: You don't bolster the enemy's morale in wartime by announcing to the world that your troops are barely coping.
Rule Three: If someone has been foolish enough to violate Rules 1 and 2, you don't repeat their remarks in a "briefing" that consist of thinly disguised, pointless hand wringing over the progress of a war that your nation cannot afford to lose.
Maddox brings her briefing to a close with speculation on what Gordon Brown would do if he succeeds Tony Blair as prime minister:
While Brown might not have wanted to get into these wars in the first place, he would surely not want to look weak on them. For all his deliberate inscrutability on future policy, he has suggested at least that much in key speeches about being tough on terrorism.
But that could change if Afghanistan begins to resemble Iraq in its intractibility.
And there are plenty of signs that it could.
Funny that Maddox should mention "looking weak" in wartime. One hopes that Maddox is capable of writing steelier stuff than this latest briefing.
But the problem here isn't just about looking weak in the war of Islamic terror. The problem is being weak in the war on terror.
Fortunately, Britain has been neither. We will never know how many civilian lives have already been saved by Britain's commitment and resolve to stand up to literally the most evil force in the world today -- Islamic terror.
Islamic terrorists have demonstrated time and time again that there is no evil, no depravity, to which they will not stoop in their quest for power. We know from their actions in recent years alone that they consider taking a school hostage and slaughtering innocent children and teachers (Beslan), or sawing the heads off of innocent men while they scream in agony, or bombing innocent commuters (London, Bombay, Israel, and many more places) a good day's work.
Islamic terrorists are, without exaggeration, evil beyond ordinary powers of description, and to imagine that their great evil would simply melt away if it were unopposed is truly to live in a fool's paradise.
I am confident that Britain will not falter in the war on terror, despite the efforts of some to undermine its resolve.
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Evil? Abu Grahib?
Ed.: Surprising question. Abu Ghraib was isolated, not current ongoing policy, and included mostly acts similar to college pranks. All improper conduct at Abu Ghraib, prank or not, was prosecuted and is being punished by the U.S. Compare to Beslan, 9/11, Nick Berg beheading or or London or Bombay bombings. None pranks. None isolated--there have been hundreds or thousands of similar atrocities. No participants punished by terrorists; any survivors were rewarded and deaths were celebrated instead. That is the sharp contrast between genuine evil and basic decency with occasional lapses.
Posted by: Harry Zorn | September 05, 2006 at 05:30 AM
I agree with Harry Zorn (Previous Commentator). The terrorists do not respond "in kind" as the media often says we should do. They are proactive in promoting death and destruction.
Our media does little to promote the good that our military is doing. All they see is the bad, because that is all they choose to see.
Ed. I think you may be confusing my editorial note with Mr. Zorn's original comment, but your point is very good.
Posted by: Terry Pearson | September 06, 2006 at 12:06 AM