US Stops Giving Militant Death Tolls In Afghanistan

AFP:

The US military in Afghanistan has stopped releasing figures showing how many militants have been killed in fighting with US-led forces, officials said Friday.

[The US military in Afghanistan has stopped releasing figures showing how many militants have been killed in fighting with US-led forces, officials said Friday. "Indicating the number of insurgents killed has little relevance to impacting the lives of Afghans," Navy Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, seen here in 2008, said in an email to AFP.]The US military in Afghanistan has stopped releasing figures showing how many militants have been killed in fighting with US-led forces, officials said Friday. "Indicating the number of insurgents killed has little relevance to impacting the lives of Afghans," Navy Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, seen here in 2008, said in an email to AFP.
"Indicating the number of insurgents killed has little relevance to impacting the lives of Afghans," Rear Admiral Gregory Smith said in an email to AFP.

"In fact, if that were the only purpose and metric, you would likely only extend the time it takes to bring about an end to the insurgency."

Read the whole story: AFP

Comments

[JoshLink]

11:38 PM on 07/26/2009

This is great news. It looks like the military is FINALLY realizing that reporting kill totals is completely irrelevant and does nothing but breed false confidence in the public.

[EHarold]

04:23 PM on 07/26/2009

So if a country invades us and we fight back will we be called "militants" and will our deaths go unnoticed??

[Agent420]

03:57 PM on 07/26/2009

I guess they are afraid of the same thing that happened in Vietnam. The total enemy kills added up to more than the population of North Vietnam!

[WTEffington]

02:47 PM on 07/26/2009

General Westmoreland just rolled over in his grave.

[epiphany1234]

02:32 PM on 07/26/2009

They don't count "other" dead bodies because no dead bodies count but American dead bodies.

The "other" is a non-entity.

[totaldisbelief]

01:14 PM on 07/26/2009

remember the Vietnam body counts?

[Hank007]

12:17 PM on 07/26/2009

A 'militant' or 'insurgent' is basically anybody fighting to defend their home and family from an invading army. The Taliban had nothing to do with any of what we are allegedly avenging, that was the work of ObL and the Saudis. To the Afghan people, we are just a softer version of the Soviets. We backed the Mujahaddin then left, and are now back, based on some concept that ObL is hiding in a cave somewhere, killing anyone we can, and building bases along the oil pipeline route (there are 3 major bases there now). Counting dead civilians, which all the casualties are, is pointless. Either get the oil moving soon, or get out.

[GardenerNorCal]

10:21 AM on 07/26/2009

I wonder which PR firm recommended this?

I suppose next we'll be seeing pretty reports of schools and hospitals being built on the nightly news, with little or no reporting of the weddings and funerals that bombed.

[LizinOhio]

09:48 AM on 07/26/2009

Body counts meant nothing during the Vietnam conflict and it means nothing now. No one knew for sure if those laying dead were civilians or charlie.

[Tom Joad]

09:31 AM on 07/26/2009

...the numbers weren't true anyway...

[madbonger618]

09:09 AM on 07/26/2009

This is a good move. War isn't a baseball game where you keep score by who scores the most. This was started by President Bush who somehow thought this was a good way to see who was winning or losing.

What I'd really like to know is what we are doing to keep young Muslims from going down the road of fundamentalism.

[GardenerNorCal]

10:16 AM on 07/26/2009

I would think we are doing about the same as we do in the prevention of young Americans becoming fundamentalist Christians. It's not our place to determine the religious attitudes of others.

[calfacon]

01:48 PM on 07/26/2009

Exactly!

[cathoir]

03:11 PM on 07/26/2009

When the main interest in some of the fundamentalist organizations is to kill Americans it sort of becomes our problem.

Anyways, we kind of owe it to the Aghan. We didn't just give the Afghans stingers and training to fight the soviets... we helped the ISI set up the entire propaganda mechanism that creates these fundamentalists. Most of those religious "schools" along the Afghan and Pakistan border were built with Saudi and American money. We have to make some effort to clean this up, I don't want our legacy to the region to be a bunch of brain-dead zealots that try to bomb the government every time they try to teach girls how to read.

Just because we never agreed with Reagan or his idiotic foreign policy doesn't mean we don't have to clean up his mess.

[Hank007]

12:13 PM on 07/26/2009

We are driving them to fundamentalism by re-iterating what the Russians taught them: western Christian armies try to kill you, the Taliban feeds and clothes you. The Taliban came to power by being the only organization able to get vital supplies through the maze of warlords following the Soviet pull-out. We may not like what they stand for, but they are angels compared to what we are doing to the people over there.

[heyoka]

08:54 AM on 07/26/2009

This is a good move. I rememember that inthe nightly reports from Vietnam there used to be body counts. It always made it look as if we were winning because there were more dead Vietnamese than Americans.

However, in a guerilla war it makes no sense. You don't always know who your enemies are, and if you are tempted into counting civilians killed as enemy, then in a fatal psycholgical sense you make the people you enemy, and you lose.

[MikeDu]

11:22 AM on 07/26/2009

I'm reminded of the institutional pressure from above for commanders in the field to 'increase the body count' in Vietnam. In the best of circumstances it lead to lying about the numbers, in the worst cases it lead to indiscriminate killing just to hit number goals.

[JackRusselTerrier]

08:22 AM on 07/26/2009

How disappointing there are only 11 comments as I write this. Doesn't anyone care that people are dying and there isn't even an acknowledgement of this by our government? This is just sad.

[Gripen]

09:01 AM on 07/26/2009

I was suprised that US media was once even writing about how many militias that died in US service, when they didnt write how many allied forces that died.

With allied forces i mean Swedes, canadians, britts and so on.

[JackRusselTerrier]

09:24 AM on 07/26/2009

This conflict is a waste of lives on all sides. These young men are just fodder for a war manipulated by those interested in land for a pipeline, seizing power, and money.

I hold no malice for the soldiers on either side. What a tragedy it is for them to be used in such a way.

[Tom Joad]

09:32 AM on 07/26/2009

HuPo's quiet all around today....

[VotingPresent]

09:48 AM on 07/26/2009

Think everyone is at church?

[Agent420]

04:09 PM on 07/26/2009

No, it is hot as hell here and they are all out at the coast.

[nellie]

06:52 AM on 07/26/2009

http://www.truthout.org/072409J

[ChairmanOfTheBoard]

06:48 AM on 07/26/2009

Gee, i wonder why they would stop giving death toll numbers all of a sudden. Just label all the civilians the pedator drones kill as militants and you would never have to report on how many innocent civilians are being killed I hope international human rights groups are monitoring, this is pathetic