Editorial: War by body count

Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005 | 9:29 a.m.

Few people who were high school age or older during the Vietnam War will ever forget the headlines about major battles, which generally read like this: "1,000 enemy fighters killed; U.S. losses light." These stories were based on numbers provided by military commanders. They were in keeping with the overriding strategy that came to define the war -- kill the enemy faster than he can be replaced, and someday we'll win.

This "war of attrition" was supported by then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who opposed leaving Vietnam and also opposed all-out escalation of the fighting. It didn't take long for the public to come up with names for such a policy -- "McNamara's War" and "quagmire" were among the kinder names.

When the United States entered Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and military commanders swore that the days of war by "body count" were long past. With President Bush's speech after 9/11 serving as the backdrop -- "We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail" -- a majority of the American public supported war. Images of military action with clear objectives beyond a 100-1 killing rate were clear.

In Afghanistan, once ruled by the Taliban and overrun with international terrorists, the promise holds true. A civilized government has taken shape in Kabul, and American forces are keeping it secure.

In Iraq, however, where nearly 2,000 American troops have been killed, criticism is mounting that McNamara's War is back. A new government was installed, but assassinations and other acts of deadly violence are everywhere. The Bush administration does not want to leave Iraq, nor does it want to build up its presence there.

The growing view of Iraq as another Vietnam has been fortified in recent months because the military has started emphasizing body counts. The public should be wary of this tactic. Numbers showing dozens of enemy killed for every American casualty are as misleading in Iraq as they were in Vietnam. How many of the "enemy" were actually civilians? How much do such reports depend on guesses, or intentional inflation?

Even McNamara, in his 1995 book about the lessons of Vietnam, said such reporting was often erroneous and led to conflicting analyses that prolonged the war.

Emphasis on body counts led Washington, and the American public, to believe for many years that North Vietnam could be waited out. We learned, however, that North Vietnam's communist government wasn't going to surrender no matter how many of its fighters died. Our current enemies are showing the same indifference to death.

In our view, body counts are an unreliable method of interpreting our progress. We should instead evaluate the war in Iraq by asking what our objectives are, and how many of them have been achieved.