All Intensive Purposes

Some conservatives I know acknowledge how poorly things have gone in Iraq, but insist that now the balance has shifted. Larry Johnson suggests where they're coming from, and why we may not have reached that elusive tipping point:

Although our troops and intelligence operatives are killing scores of insurgents (my friend estimated the kill rate at 160 enemy per each friendly) the insurgents keep coming. As Sy Hersh predicted in last month's New Yorker, the military commanders decided to shift from ground confrontations to high altitude airstrikes. According to press reports on Wednesday, for example, the United States carried out 53 strikes inside Iraq. One of these, the mistaken bombing of a civilian home north of Baghdad, was condemend by Iraqi officials.

There should be no doubt our tactics have changed. The United States is relying more on aerial bombing, most of it high altitude or stand off, rather than close air support for troops on the ground engaged in a fight. Despite the promise of "precision" bombing, aerial strikes are anything but precise. They are very lethal and very powerful. On that front, a lot of insurgents, mostly Iraqis, are dying. But a bombing campaign, short of nuclear strikes that vaporize the whole country, cannot defeat an insurgency. We do not have enough planes or pilots, not to mention bombs.

Most U.S. military officers on the ground sincerely believe that we have reached a tipping point where we are killing enough insurgents that their will to fight is being sapped. But the death toll from insurgent strikes during the last two days calls into question that confidence. It is worth recalling that in Vietnam we killed close to 1 million North Vietnamese while we suffered 57,000 fatalities. That was a kill ratio of roughly 20 to 1. Unfortunately, we do not know where this magical tipping point is.

The alternative argument is that imprecision of the U.S. strikes is likely to generate more insurgents than are killed. Within the ethos of the tribal culture in Iraq, seeking revenge on those who have wronged you or your family is a mission that can span centuries. The folks we are fighting have a much longer attention span than we do.