Not Cost-Effective

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Ranger Question of the Day:
Have all of these 19,000 supposed dead been buried according to
the Geneva Conventions with graves marked and reported to the
International Red Cross?

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As a palliative measure for the masses, the White House recently released figures showing the latest Good News: U.S. forces in Iraq have killed upwards of 19,000 insurgents.

Ranger doesn't care a diddle about dead bodies and fully understands that people get killed in wars, but why, and to what purpose, is the question.

These 19,000 were not al-Qaida types targeting U.S. citizens in our homeland (oops--HOMELAND.) Many no doubt simply objected to a foreign army of invasion on their home ground. And who is to blame them? Ranger would do the same if a foreign power invaded this nation to remove our WMD. Ranger had grown rather fond of U.S. nuclear weapons, and will fight anyone trying to take them away.

Ditto those who would try and save me from my corrupt, lascivious society and feeble-thinking president. While the liberator's intentions might be for the good, as they would see it, I have come to enjoy and identify myself with many things American. Even if I don't like the rest, I don't want someone else coming in and rearranging it for me.

Injecting some reality into the 19,000 figure: This means a friendly/enemy kill ratio of 19,000 : 3,750, +/-. This is an unacceptable figure, and in classic counterinsurgency literature, the usual figure is 10 : 1 for an operation to be considered a success.

The 19,000 figure is nothing to write home about. But as usual, all straws are grasped to make this sow's ear look like a silk purse. We created them, now we're happily counting them as significant strategic kills to enhance democratic freedoms.

The combatants we are killing in Iraq are not valuable al-Qaida worldwide assets, those capable of killing U.S. citizens. It is unlikely that hardcore al-Qaida operatives are going to stand mano-a-mano with U.S. combat power. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was not captured on the battlefield. It is only the lowly riflemen that are captured on the battlefield.

Now divide 19,000 into $500 billion and what is the figure? In rough measure, $25 million a head? For folks wearing shower shoes? The individual cost of killing each nasty ass Iraqi insurgent is neither cost-effective nor fiscally acceptable. Aside from the fact they pose no actual threat to the American continent.

Please remember that GWB recently threatened to veto a $35 million spending bill to fund medical care for uninsured U.S. children. As always, we gladly pay for death-dealing, but are unwilling to fund life-affirming programs. Especially not for non-strategically placed people.

Killing people is not the formula for success, if success means making the U.S. safer from terrorist attacks by the group al-Qaida. Killing the right people is the requirement, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are far off the mark. Al-Qaida is not the same as a Taliban or an Iraqi insurgent. The threat is al-Qaida, so capture and kill them. The Army is not the man for that job.