U.S. Fatality Figures Don't Tell Entire Story
This week marks the fourth anniversary of President Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, and American casualty figures for April are in: At 104 fatalities, it was the deadliest month of the year for U.S. troops.
But what does this figure–up from roughly 80 a month earlier this year–say about how the war is going?
In the past year, the monthly toll has fluctuated between a low of 61 last June to 112 in December, but experts say a further factor makes it difficult to draw conclusions: The fatality figures are only part of the picture. The number of killed often doesn't coincide with the pattern of total killed and wounded–"which makes it an even worse indicator of combat damage," says Anthony Cordesman, an expert on military affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
What is clear, though, is that the April spike in deaths among soldiers has not come as a surprise to U.S. military officials. Since the "surge" of troops into Baghdad was announced, the Pentagon has been working hard to brace the American public for the higher death tolls it expected to accompany a new mission for soldiers and marines in Iraq–namely, an emphasis on Americans providing security for Iraqi citizens in embattled neighborhoods.
That's a shift from the previous plan to have "Iraqis in the lead"–an oft-repeated military phrase that has faded considerably from the Baghdad lexicon in the past several months. That pretense is gone as more U.S. troops have streamed into Baghdad to take on the task of locking down the city themselves, setting up outposts in areas where ethnic cleansing by roving militias and al Qaeda elements have forced residents from their homes and fueled vicious tit-for-tat violence.
That is urban warfare of a sort that the administration previously had sought to avoid, and it comes with risks. "I think it's a sad reality, but I think we anticipated that there would be, in some respects, an increase in the violence, and particularly in the belts around Baghdad, as we pushed the bad guys out of some of the neighborhoods where we had not been active in a long time," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said this week.
The remarks echoed the comments that Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, made on the heels of a visit to Capitol Hill last week to press for more congressional patience with the war effort. He pointed out that al Qaeda is using more large car bombs and that casualties among Iraqi security forces have been "two to three times ours or even more."
And there is a perception among some soldiers in Iraq that even as they lose comrades, they are also making progress–often in a sort of reverse logic that says that more U.S. casualties is in itself an indication that U.S. troops are gaining ground.
"The enemy is getting pushed into a corner, and so they're fighting back," says one U.S. military official in Baghdad. "It shows that they are getting a little bit desperate."
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