Juan Cole has an interesting post examining differences that liberals and conservatives see in the use of military force. But here he makes a good point on the body count mentality of some in the Pentagon:
The US military seems strangely unaware of the realities of insurgencies. It seems to think there are a limited number of “bad guys,” who can all be killed or captured. The possibility that virtually all able-bodied men in Fallujah supported the insurgency, and that many are weekend warriors, does not seem to occur to them. In fact, as Mao noted, guerrillas swim in a sea of supportive civilians. The US military slides suggest that now that the bad guys have been taken care of, the civilians can be won over. That this outcome is highly unlikely does not seem to occur to them.
As long as we’re simply killing bad guys, we’re never going to turn this thing around in Iraq; more will just keep popping up. The only thing that’s going to stop this is if we get the Iraqi civilian population to turn against the insurgency. And, unfortunately, we haven’t seen a great deal of progress on that front during the past six months.
Brian,
First of all, there is a limited number of bodies. Eventually, the available populace is going to get the idea that there’s little to gain in serving themselves up as cannon fodder, and the well will begin to run dry. Regardless how fanatical their attitudes are toward dying a martyr, eventually the fanatics will be gone and enough saner heads will be left to stem the tide.
Second, as for civilian support – I agree to some extent, but how do you account for the scads of Iraqi’s who are still turning out to join the police force, even after multiple attacks on their recruiting centers? Sounds like there’s a will for support there…