Rumsfeld brings back an old tradition

Yes, in the face of rising U.S. casualties, Rumsfeld has unearthed one of the many endearing habits of Robert Macnamara from some 35 years ago -- enemy body counts.

Writing for KnightRidder, Joe Galloway, who wrote We Were Soldiers Once...and Young knows where that sort of measurement leads -- to phony numbers, poor tactics, and a distracted public (including the elected public) back home.

Take the new Iraq numbers. If, as Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the U.S. Central Command, has said, the total insurgent strength in Iraq is now only 5,000, and if Rumsfeld's high-end number is correct and 2,500 of the enemy were killed in August, then just one more month and the enemy will all be dead and we can go home. Right?

Would that it were so. When you fight in urban terrain, in the streets and alleyways of cities teeming with people, the killing you do today breeds new enemies tomorrow. Galloway's rule of thumb is that for every enemy you kill in a guerrilla war, you create two new ones.

Worse, machine guns and tank guns and Bradley chain guns and Air Force and Marine bombs inevitably kill the innocent as well as the guilty.

The ordnance destroys homes and automobiles and the pitiful possessions of the dispossessed, and it creates even more recruits to the war against the Americans. You blow up my house and kill my mother, and I will soon be waiting on a rooftop with an AK-47 and an RPG launcher and hatred in my heart for all Americans.

This is why the main emphasis in counter-insurgency warfare is, or should be, on the political side of political-military operations. This is why there can be no purely military solution in Iraq. This is why, until and unless some political solution is found, Americans and their allies will continue to be maimed and killed in Iraq on a daily basis.

Trouble is, the Bush administration and Rumsfeld's Pentagon disregared the need to put that political operation in place. If elected John Kerry will have to take on the messy business of doing that (and it may well be impossible to do that -- it's damn hard to put the lifejacket on once you're in the water).

But that's why I wonder at critics of Kerry, on the Right and Left, who say that Kerry will be sunk if he doesn't lay out his plan for dealing with Iraq.

As I said, I wonder.

When has Bush told us of his plan? And if Kerry gave an intelligent answer, that it is going to require a combination of political and military solutions, the Busheney beast has so soured the political discourse that the Right will pounce on such "girlie-man tactics" while ripping out his aorta screaming "Weak on terrorism!"

At this point, I'd say that Kerry's rhetoric -- "He screwed it up. I'll do something different in Iraq" -- looks pretty effective.