Why Body Counts Are a Bad Metric for Judging Islamic State Fight
Why Body Counts Are a Bad Metric for Judging Islamic State Fight by Terry Atlas, Bloomberg
After extremists’ latest advances in Syria and Iraq, the U.S. is falling back on an old and discredited metric — estimated enemy body counts — to show it isn’t losing the war against Islamic State.
Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, filling in at a Paris conference this week after his boss John Kerry broke his leg in a bicycling accident, said the U.S.-led coalition has killed about 10,000 Islamic State fighters since its campaign against the group began 10 months ago.
U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and independent analysts questioned the accuracy and value of the number. It’s at best a rough estimate relying on limited intelligence capabilities and a poor measure of how the war is going because the militant group appears to be able to replace its losses with new recruits, they said…
Equally irrelevant is measuring ISIS success in terms of ground taken.
This is neither a war of attrition nor a war of conquest – this is a competition for influence, and the real battlefield is within the minds of the Sunni Arab population of Syria and Iraq.
What are we doing to win that battle? Have we offered them a viable political alternative to ISIS?(of note, they have already voted by their actions that the Assad regime of Syria and the US-designed Shia dominated government of the former state of Iraq are NOT viable alternatives)
And equally frustrating for our metric-hungry leaders, how does one measure something so subjective? There may be strategic indicators that are readily observable, if we knew what was important and what to look for. There are also ways to derive objective findings from subjective inputs (juries do this every day all across America in deciding civil and criminal cases).
If we define the problem wrong, we will engage the problem wrong and measure the problem wrong. IMO, we have defined this problem wrong from the very beginning, as we are way to self-absorbed in our efforts to preserve and prove the highly flawed “solution” for Iraq that we designed and put in place.
Would the best metric for judging the fight against the Islamic State be:
a. The number of potential Islamic State fighters who are (1) dissuaded from taking up the Islamic State’s cause and from (2) joining those that have entered onto the battlefield in this cause’s name? And
b. The number of present Islamic State fighters who we have convinced to return home/to take up a more-peaceful existence?
If my “a” and “b” above are, indeed, the best metrics — for judging the fight against the Islamic State — then to ask if the return of United States soldiers, to this self-same battlefield, is the (best) method by which we might achieve favorable statistics/metrics along these lines?
Or would the application of more U.S. soldiers — to this battlefield and at this time — present us with future “a” and “b” statistics/metrics pointing in exactly the wrong direction?
To wit: Statistics/metrics which would indicate that our such application of U.S. soldiers to battlefield resulted in:
a. Potential Islamic State fighters becoming actual Islamic State fighters and
b. Present Islamic State fighters — rather than go home/return to a more peaceful existence — deciding to remain in the fight?
As I have so often said it is about the 5 rings of violence and how to apply them. Killing Pablo is the best model I have seen so far. Whenever we start killing the mega-rich princes and destroying their yachts and Rolls Royce’s and their million dollar compounds and drain their bank accounts peace will break out all over, until then not much will change.
Slap,
. you just paraphrased Bin Laden, Mao, Che and Lenin. Welcome to the revolution.
. The American Way of War since 1864 has been “we had to destroy the village to save the village.”. I believe that to be a viable strategy for Clausewitzian war between distinct systems of governance; but has little place in internal, non-war revolutionary conflicts within a single system of governance.
. All war is political violence, but not all political violence is war.
. We need to apply our Clausewitz in the spirit he intended, not the dogmatic “war is war” (and increasingly, “peace is war too”) taught in service colleges and espoused by so many PhDs who are experts in the study if conflict.
Bob,
Slap’s hypothesis is simply a re-articulation of Warden’s disproven hypothesis. It is a simplistic view of war based on false premises. Liddell Hart addressed the fallacy of this type of thinking when he wrote something along the lines that in war your adversary is not a patient tied to the table, yet many Generals assume he is just that. Warden’s theory assumes the adversary is a non-adaptive system, and if you do X then Y happens. This theory assumes ISIS is a patient (system) tied to a table and can’t adapt to our actions. Facts are argue to with, ISIS has already adapted.
You discredit your arguments when you assume the war colleges teach war is war, and therefore war requires a Clausewitizian response. I’m not seeing that, they actually present a number of theorists that students can consider to come up with their own ideas. The Army tends to lean heavily on Clausewitz, maybe too heavily. CvC’s theories are not the end all, be all when it comes to describing war and providing a theory on war. However, they do offer much to think about in my opinion
You are arguing if we call something war, then it requires a specified approach that CvC articulated over 200 years ago. I don’t think he was that myopic, though many of his students are, so your concern isn’t completely misplaced. Another view using CvC as a basis for this argument is looking at the difference between the nature and character of war. In general the nature of war remains inconsistent (it probably isn’t immutable), but the character constantly changes.
The nature of war can be articulated in many ways, we don’t need to blindly embrace CvC, but overall it is when one group employs force to impose it will upon another group. It is normally an extension of politics (broadly defined), with war being the means. It normally involves opponents with irreconcilable wills, which is important, that is normally why they’re using force in the first place. It isn’t a bloody election, or a parliamentary debate, it is a very different condition. It is interactive, and it usually involves all the following that we’re familiar such as the trinity, friction, and the fog of war.
On one hand, IS and Iraq are at war with each other, that point isn’t debatable. On the hand, the character of the war and how one wages this war is wide open and can change over time. Nonetheless, failing to recognize that it is a war is the first step to ruin. Obviously, the Iraqi government does not desire to comprise politically with IS at this point, so it is relying on the use of military to impose its will upon the IS. IS pursues its ends by using military and paramilitary force (along with other forms of force) to impose its will on Iraq. The nature of war hasn’t changed because it is internal to the state. The character or type of war, the war’s ends, how the war is waged, and so forth can change. Calling it what it is, a war does not limit an opponent’s creativity in determining how to wage it.
Our mad tactics made plain to see, as our killing plays a role in setting the middle east aflame. But it helps run up the body count!
“SEAL Team 6: A Secret History of Quiet Killings and Blurred Lines“, New York Times, 6 June 2015 — “The unit best known for killing Osama bin Laden has been converted into a global manhunting machine with limited outside oversight.”
From the article:
Fred Hof? The Atlantic Council?
That article has nothing to do with ISIS, metrics or body counts, really. It’s just another regime change piece, as if the only thing that gives oxygen to ISIS are Assad’s atrocities.
Just like in AfPak, where we attempted to assuage security fears of neighbors, when, really, it’s the desires of many outsiders to fan local flames that egg on conflict.
In AfPak, it was all reduced to Pashtun tribals against a corrupt Afghan central government, and Fred Hof is trying to reduce everything to Assad and his crimes when the situation is far more complicated.
Boots on the ground don’t close that gap. Policy does.
The Atlantic Council has a flickr page, complete with standard think tank photos. Poor things, DC. What once seemed impressive now seems a bit downmarket and desperate. Who’s singling out The Atlantic Council or its employees? It’s a feel about a time and a place. Can’t go back to 1985 no matter how desperately you try to do that.
Yet there is beauty and there is power in this experiment, America. It just isn’t found in the standard old precincts….
RCJ wrote:
‘This is neither a war of attrition nor a war of conquest – this is a competition for influence, and the real battlefield is within the minds of the Sunni Arab population of Syria and Iraq.’
I would argue that the real ‘battlefield’ is in the minds of two small groups of business elites. One is the House of Saud and the other is the senior leadership of the Iranian clergy. I dare suggest most need little convincing as to the extent money drives the HoS but how many are aware the same avarice drives the Ayatollahs?
For some reason when a native of the middle-east wraps 20 odd feet of silk around his head and wears flowing robes we default to belief that such individuals are primarily driven by the dictates of God and tribe. Similarly when we are confronted by thousands of their similarly attired foot-soldiers we likewise default to the God and tribe template as fundamental to their ways, means, ends.
Strangely enough if Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffet, the Kochs, the Waltons etc. started wearing bishop hats, purple 0r red gold flecked robes and their employees trudged about in cilice hair-shirts whilst proclaiming a spiritual awakening and blood-pledge to the corporate mission statement, we would burst out laughing or throw up.
When we decided to remove Saddam we eliminated a major business player from the marketplace. Since then the HoS and the Ayatollahs have been busy scrambling for their share of the former Iraqi dictators assets. They employ the services of a fruit-cake element (that exists in every country I have ever lived in) to carry out the dirty deed.
For reasons that escape me we consider these Machiavellian intrigues by a tiny elite, and the enforcement by a criminal thuggish element, as somehow reflecting the nature of the general population and immediately crash about like a bull in a china shop in an attempt to fix this population-centric problem.
We place the influence of this toxic leadership at the fulcrum of the prism thru which we hope to glean a meaningful political perception and wonder why, after much pain and expense, the baby goes out with the bathwater. I mean to say if we flip this analogy to the US would anyone take seriously the suggestion that the attitude of a Gates, Ellison, Buffet, Koch or Walton or the behavior of tens of thousands on Wall Street as a meaningful insight into the political, social, spiritual hopes and aspiration of the American populace .
To alleviate a ‘white man’s burden’ distorting our lens in the middle east consider the plight of the Jews in Europe. For more than a 100 generations the Jewish community was arguably the most critical societal group in terms of peace, culture and prosperity within Eastern Europe. Certainly sectarian violence and pogroms were a feature but the 10 million Jews who inhabited the region in 1940 were more often than not amongst the most prosperous and influential of all social groups. Within a few short years they ceased to exist.
Using the matrix that we currently employ in Iraq and Afghanistan we would argue a groundswell of revolutionary friction borne out of sectarian tension and denial of Jeffersonian legitimacy rendered this hugely important social group – that had lived and prospered for more than a thousand years – extinct in a blink of an eye. Furthermore thru the same political lens we’d assume the notion that a tiny clique of lunatics and hordes of jack-booted fruit-cake was merely a symptom rather the cause of their extinction is IMO the argument many seem to be employing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I was in New Delhi in 1984 when Indira Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards shot her more than 30 times – supposedly in retaliation for the Indian Army storming the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar. There was considerable confusion as what had happened. She was rushed to hospital and a crowd, predominately Hindu, formed outside of the hospital awaiting news of her condition. A few Sikhs were outside as well handing out sweets and drinking celebratory toasts to her misfortune.
News came she was dead and the Hindus literally went berserk.
The violence across Delhi on that day was unspeakable. People turned on their neighbor, co-worker, fellow passenger and literally tore them to pieces with their bare hands. Many Sikhs were doused in paraffin or cooking oil and set alight. Crowds cheered as the victims staggered about flailing at their burning skin before collapsing to the ground as the crowds laid into the smoldering corpses with sticks and stones. A roar went up when the next Sikh was dragged forward and so it went on and on. For a good week the commuter traffic bumped over the corpses on their daily commute in a city of 12 million people.
Go there today and you would think such communal bloodshed to be impossible. Delhi is safer than most western cities. The prosperity is nothing short of a miracle and much of the prosperity brought about by the economically astute Sikh community. The transformation of society, especially the younger generation, is simply astounding.
However the same things that happened in 1984 could happen this afternoon. The same tensions and bigotry are still there but it does not impact upon the communal desire to live in peace and prosperity.
India may very well become the wealthiest country on earth before such a terrible event happens again. Let’s hope so but all it needs is the wrong circumstance, the wrong group of people to converge at the wrong place at the wrong time and you will have a similar disaster.
However here’s the rub. If such events do come about society will recover and more forward as they have for 6000 years.
IMHO our inability to shape an effective strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a consequence of intractable religious, tribal or economic grievances but a simple refusal by those in the region, and many of us, to accept a tiny number of malevolent people in KSA, Iran and Pakistan are the root cause of the all the violence and destruction.
JMO,
RC
RCJ wrote:
‘But they did not cause the fight, and it is a fluke of geography and demographics that makes that issue part of this fight.’
I have a question for you. Do you believe that it is a revolutionary/resistance energy that is driving the warfighting in the Donbas? I personally do not see any difference between what the FSB is doing in the Ukraine and what the ISI is doing in Afghanistan.
Stalin used the communal violence that emerged in the final months of WW2 (and continued across much of lawless and devastated Europe well into 1946 and even 1947) as a pretext to subjugate all of Eastern Europe for 50 years. Eventually your Jeffersonian resistance/revolutionary energy broke the Soviet shackles but 50 years is a long time to condemn entire countries to foreign tyranny.
As you often remark we need to develop a different approach. In the current interesting time our RMA- MICkey mouse approach is failing badly. IMO the FSB, the Mabahith and the IRGC have all been inspired by the ISI’s UW success in AF against the Soviet Union and the US led coalition. Where we feel agonizing failure they see great potential for enduring success.
From my experience I consider the ISI the masters of UW and their IED-centric approach gives their Ways and Means a virtually inexhaustible capacity – as opposed to our own financially and politically bankrupting RMA-MIC beholden failure. The rulers of the 5 rivers (Punjab) have had 6000 years of UW experience. Needless to say we have a great deal of catching up to do. Perhaps an examination of the approach of those currently ahead of us in the UW race might be helpful:-
The KSA God is Great/foreign fighter approach lacks the enduring simplicity of the ISI approach but their deep pockets and Wahhabi fruit-bakery ensures their Ways, Means, Ends can be facilitated by a steady stream of paid-up foreigners and local zealots.
The Iranians choose to lean heavily on the region’s largest pool of manpower and throw bodies at their UW approach. In the recent past this has proven to be a politically risky approach. The Iraq-Iran War came down to the lack of Iranian men willing to be used as cannon fodder in the ‘Jihad’ against Saddam.
Towards the bitter end of the Iran-Iraq War the IRGC was reduced to press-ganging children off the streets to fill the ranks of the ‘faithful’. By the war’s end more than 90,000 uniformed minors had been ‘martyred’. Despite the Iraqi ‘wolf’ lurking ominously at the door, grown men refused to heed the Ayatollahs ‘God-blessed’ call to arms. When he finally admitted the clergy had lost the trust of the population Khomeini was forced to ‘drink from the poisoned chalice’ and beg for peace with Saddam.
The low casualties of the Ayatollahs current ‘Jihad’ (as opposed to the hundreds of thousands KIA in the Gulf War ‘Jihad’) has yet to provoke the political skepticism of the past but the Ayatollah’s God-given authenticity has a limited political shelf-life.
Putin does not have Stalin’s Red Army nor his intellectual cunning and as such his efforts strike me as foolishly short-sighted.
And the purpose of me boring everyone rigid with my rant?
Most people acknowledge destroying the village in order to save it has never worked and will never work. You believe a new approach is necessary and I would hazard to guess few disagree with you. However I would suggest if a tiny elite’s quest for money and power (my contention) is mistaken for native political revolutionary/resistance energy (your position) our 50 years of military failure will continue.
One of the fundamental planks of Machiavellian deceit is to hoodwink the population into believing they are fighting for the promise legitimate native governance will deliver. The ISI, Mabahith, IRGC, FSB et al apply enormous energy into propagating the message that their interests are aligned with the revolution and resistance native energy you contend we fail to recognize. As a consquence of this lack of understanding we fail but our equally foreign opponents (Pak,KSA, Iranian Russian) succeed!.
Leaving aside the extreme elements of native revolution/resistance legitimacy epitomized in American suiciders in Yemen, English decapitators in Iraq, British suiciders in Iraq, Pak bombers in Afghanistan, Chechen bombers in Boston, Saudis and 9/11 etc. I still find the logic of a native desire (as opposed to these alien elements) for the wanton slaughter of their fellow countrymen somewhat illusive.
As much as I’d like to agree with your argument that the death and destruction is a frustration borne out of native political grievance my encounters with hundreds of Af, Pak, Arabs , Uk and Russians combatants and non-comments over the last 30 years suggests your argument is without foundation.
So what?
IMO to shape a better approach to CUW we need to read less into Sun Tzu, CvC, Jomini etc. and more into Machiavelli. With the ugly shadow of rogue-state/ non-state nuclear proliferation looming ever more likely, my grandchildren’s generation need us to stop losing – for whatever reason.
If we return to the subject of this above essay; I depressingly find myself in complete agreement with you. The essay’s critique of an air force 2015 version of the ‘5 o’clock follies’ body count suggests we have learnt nothing thru 5 wars and 30 years.
How awful is that?
RC