There are no real surprises to the graph this month. It is bad but it has been obvious from the day of the Chinook shootdown that would be so. As I noted last month, I felt it best to delay comments until these numbers were in.
D.Amon, all rights reserved. Permission granted for use with attribution to Samizdata
It is rather obvious to me there has been significant re-organization and re-grouping of the Baathists. They have gone from utterly ineffective to being at least capable of co-ordinating attacks which inflict some damage.
A problem they face is their numbers, while large, are limited. Saddam’s loyal core forces which vanished ‘into the woodwork’ in mid-April numbered perhaps 15-20 thousand. They are at present expending those numbers at an horrendous rate. True, they are doing some damage to the Coalition – but not major damage in any tactical, let alone strategic sense. They attack and they kill some of the Coalition forces… and promptly get their own arses handed back to them on a platter.
It is not as if the Baath have an unlimited pool of personnel and cash. There is no superpower backing them behind the scenes; there is no huge mass of conscripts to fill in the holes left by the fallen. If they fight a war of attrition they will lose unless the populace backs them. Given what the Baathists did to that very same populace for three decades, such a turn about seems unlikely. You cannot turn a butcher into a folk hero in less than a generation.
My crystal ball is rather hazy this month. I expect the casualty rates to drop off a little bit but to remain high for at least several months. The major factor in how long they remain high depends on things for which I do not have the information on which to base a ‘WAG’ let alone a reasoned judgement. I can only say the numbers will stay up until either the reformed Baath command structure is shattered or attrition in the ranks erodes their ability and will to fight.
In the best of worlds, that could take several months.
Paul Bremer has said that he believes the numbers may well increase in the next 3-6 months.
What is missing is the comparative graph of enemy deaths.
Without that your graph loses much of its meaning.
I think that November’s deaths are potentially misleading, since you can arguably take out two helicopter incidents (one of them a collision induced by a Baathist attack) and consider that the attack on the Italian contingent was really an Al-quaeda style bomb in the back of a truck. As I say, if you exclude those as freakish, which in terms of a military strategy they are (because they clearly haven’t been sustained assaults), you are left with less than half the deaths that are represented in this graph.
That would leave the rate of deaths flat in terms of the graph.
Add in the fact that the deaths occurred in the first half of the month coinciding with the beginning of Ramadan, and the fact that so far in December the coalition have experienced fewer attacks and fewer deaths, and things look better. Consider too that the enemy has been picking off soft, non-battle hardened targets such as Spanish and Japanese, who will swiftly reform their approach. In the light of all these considerations, the assurances given by US spokespeople and military men that they are succeeding and the security situation is improving ought to be given a lot of credibility. Of course any deaths are too many, but soldiers wouldn’t be in Iraq at all if Iraq wasn’t somewhat poisoned by militarism.
While all that may be true, it would hardly be fair of me to change my method of analysis just because the numbers got bad this month. I approached the numbers a certain way in September when I first graphed them and the numbers were going down; I’ll continue to apply the same criteria even when the results are other than what I’d like to see.
You can’t take out those events because they are part and parcel of what may be a new strategy of attacking in such a way as to cause large numbers of coalition deaths in single attacks.
As I said in September… we’ll see what the numbers say as time goes on. Everything else (my statements included!) is opinion.
I don’t advocate taking out the numbers from the helicopter shoot downs (for at least two reasons), but I agree with Ed.
Saddam had a strategy – shoot down low flying aircraft. It worked for about a week or two, and then we adapted. I don’t think it will happen again. I expect that next month will be more like the Bank heist in Samarra : they attack, and we whoop them to the tune of a few wounded and no deaths.
Or at least, that’s what I’m really hoping for. God protect them all.
Brock
Brock: I really, really want you to be right. However I have nothing factual to base that hope on. There are indications that the rate tailed off towards the end of November. But bringing down a single transport could change all that, and there are a *lot* of missiles floating around. It is a numbers game. Fire enough of them and by statistics alone you are going to get lucky now and then. I’m hoping they have improved counter-measures to prevent this… but that DHL cargo plane took one in the wing just a week or so ago.
I’ll just wait patiently for early January and see how things have developed.
I will warn everyone though… I have consulting jobs in January and will be doing my intercontinental gypsy engineer thing again, so it is possible I won’t get December charted until February.
Dale,
There is no short supply of fanatic death cultists in the ME. Don’t bet on their running out of manpower.
Without diminishing the sacrifice of the fallen, it’s worth remembering (again) that more than 700 people in the U.S. die each year in farm/ranch accidents. In a military sense, these casualties in Iraq are nugatory. In a domestic, psychological sense they are sustainable. In a statistical sense they are liable to leap about because they are small.
I think the coalition is winning this. Perhaps it’s naive to say, but right is on our side. I believe that is a powerful advantage. Also, with every passing day the pressure builds on the Iraqis who don’t want Saddam back or an anarchical bloodbath in a struggle for power to get their shit together.
I just wish we had the will to go after Syria…right now…on the ground.
It is interesting to overlay the comments of Lt. Col. Henry Arnold in the Wasington Post (here, & go to pg. 2) with Dale’s graph.
Lt. Col. Arnold’s says “As the money getting directly into the hands of the commanders dried up in September, the FRL/foreigners were then able to fill that gap with their money and we have witnessed a sharp increase in attacks ever since. . . . Although more money has been approved for Iraq, we have seen none of it out here yet, and the result is increasing disenchantment or indifference with our presence on the part of the average Iraqi.”
Correlation=causation? Not sure, but interesting, regardless.
“I think the coalition is winning this”
Winning would mean installing in Iraq a regime which is stable and not fomenting terrorism – a regime like in Jordan, and unlike in Syria or Iran or Saudi Arabia. Is that possible in Iraq? Nobody knows, but if it’s going to happen it will take many years to mature, not a few months. Chances are 7 to 5 it won’t happen.
Meanwhile terrorism will continue. That’s a way of life in the ME. The best that can be hoped for is keeping it at a “tolerable” level.
Dale, I was wondering if you had seen any information about covert Syrian backing and logistical support for the Baathists?I reckon that is one regime which has a vested interest in seeing the USA bogged down in Iraq rather than free to go after the next terror sponsor.
According to what I’ve read in DOD transcripts, the border is fairly well sealed off and the vast majority of those they are killing and capturing are Fedaheen Saddam or at least Iraqi.
The outsiders seem to blow not leave very many peices behind when they blow themselves up.
Even if Syria was putting money in, Syria is not a big league player. They just don’t have the resources to cause serious trouble for anyone except themselves.
Not well advertised is that there are US hunter-killer teams along the borders, and they are quietly killing infiltrators.
Other than 2nd hand info from the AO, I have only seen one article on this. The teams were complaining about having to bury the dead infiltrators, contending that leaving the corpses around would have a better psychological attack.
I think there is a strategy in place here… Achmed goes off to be a hero in Iraq. Nothing is ever again heard again Achmed. Repeat as often as necessary.
Jihadism could get significantly less popular under such circumstances.
I too read a piece in the last month that made mention of spec. ops. hunter-killers along the western border of Iraq.
It was IIRC a transscript of a press conference by the general in charge of that sector.
“Chances are 7 to 5 it won’t happen.”
What are you, a bookie?
The graph is so striking because it seems to show real volatility and change over the last month or so. However, this is misleading because the absolute numbers involved are so low. Imagine, we are concerned about two helicopters being shot down. Two! And worrying that a single helicopter a month will mean the Baathist attack is being “sustained.” Perspective, people, perspective. We lost more men in a manner of minutes in WWII, in several battles, than we have lost in the entire Iraq war dating back to 1991.
Militarily, we are winning hands down. The opposition in Iraq is incapable of making any kind of strategic advance at all, and we continue to wear them down and win supporters through reconstruction.
The danger, as always, is that the Islamists’ anti-American fellow travellers will use their high ground in academia and the media to sap our will to see this through. There is only one winning scenario for the Islamists, and that is the suicide of the West.
The battle that counts is the US battle between Pollyanna and Cassandra over the heart of the US middle. Cassandra is trying to convince the US middle that all is disaster, that we must take precipitous action to pull out now. Pollyana is all for staying the course because we’re winning and that the losses are insignificant.
The truth is that the losses are not insignificant. The truth is we should still stay the course. The problem with Pollyana (who dominates the right currently) is that the islamists and baathists who hear those words can take them literally and have as their lesson learned that they just need to up the casualty count until the losses are no longer insignificant.
What’s needed is a third strain that says, yes the losses are significant. The pain is real. But we take the threat of these people seriously and in the end to accommodate them is to destroy our belief in equal rights under the law and freedom of religion. We hold these values so central to the meaning of our nation that we would be willing to fight to the last man to keep these principles alive.
This undercuts the enemy’s strategy by changing the perceived stakes. There has been an unwillingness to lay this out to the people. Some are pessimistic that they would answer the call. If the pessimists are right, we are doomed. It’s just a matter of how much blood will be spilled before the other side wins.
The sharp increase in coalition casualties coincided with the lifting of nightly curfews for Ramadan. Politics, rather than enemy initiative, are resulting in more American body bags. From a Marine Corp “lessons learned” briefing:
Curfews – Canceling the curfew was a political, not a military decision. Most lower level military commanders want the curfew reestablished immediately. The number or attacks have increased dramatically since the curfew was lifted. Enemy forces are now free to move equipment and personnel around the battle space or emplace IEDs during the hours of darkness without interruption. Lifting the curfew violates one of the fundamental principles of counter insurgency operations, which is strict control of the general population.
Any graph is essentially useless unless taken into account with externalities. The very fact that the helicopter incidents could cause such a spike in the graph is testament to the actual low numbers of KIAs for coalition forces.
However, body-counts are not really a good metric for measuring war. Westmoreland and company tried it in Vietnam. Sure, they exagerated, but that alone wasn’t the only reason that it failed as a measure. Pure numbers alone do not provide a good picture of the situation on the ground.
I’m actually a little distressed that the C forces resorted to a body-count style of gloating after Samara. It doesn’t matter how many of the enemy you kill, only that you kill the right ones. That, we must concentrate on.
As for money and recruitment; a recent article in the SF Chronicle detailed and interview of a Jordanian jihadi in Iraq. He asserted:
1) Foreign recruits came to Iraq of their own will, and found their way to camps;
2) Camps were run by Iraqis (prob. Baathists)
3) It sounded as if the Iraqi bad guys were recruiting and training foreigners for jihad/suicide missions
4) the Jordanian jihadi stated that it was now more difficult to slip into the country because the borders were better patrolled [he was interviewed in Iraq, he expected to die there]
PS – I don’t mean to denounce Dale’s charts, I like them. I’m just wary of breaking down such a complex operation as such.
Dale,
The key lesson here is NOTHING is as it seems and it is dangerous to jump to conclusions. Quoting from Dan Drezner:
“In our last conversation in Washington, Drew Erdmann said that it made no sense to claim any certainty about how Iraq will emerge from this ordeal. “I’m very cautious about dealing with anyone talking about Iraq who’s absolutely sure one way or the other,” he said.”
MARCU$
[he was interviewed in Iraq, he expected to die there]
I certainly hope we can accomodate him. And all his friends and associates.