Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

News outlets in this country have become enamored of body counts. In no war prior to Vietnam was this a daily issue in the news. The Johnson Administration is responsible. Because there was no way to measure success in the “normal” fashion, Robert MacNamara and his Defense Department leaned on the count of enemy killed as a measure of progress. I remember watching the news each night, and the lead or final graphic on newscasts was “XX American soldiers died today in Southeast Asia.”

I was struck by this today as I read an article on MSNBC’s web site. It carried a boilerplate paragraph:

The deaths raised to 513 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the United States and its allies launched the Iraq war March 20. Most of the deaths have occurred since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.

I have seen this paragraph in every single article on that site that reports American deaths. It is a running tally of, in their view, a lack of progress in Iraq. And it modifies their previous boilerplate which mentioned only the deaths “since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.”

Body count is no measure of success or failure. In all the history of warfare, it has been simply a number, if tallied at all. This has often been used to illuminate the human cost of battles in history, placing the number in context for comparison. But no effort is exerted in trying to do that here.

My youngest son, Birdie, is an 82nd Airborne trooper. He spent nine months in Afghanistan killing Al Queda and Taliban fighters. He spent those nine months keeping his soldiers from being killed by same. He is now in Baghdad, involved in a different scenario. He is involved in efforts more akin to police work. His soldier skills are not as important as his people skills. He must walk that fine line in order to stay alive, yet not harm innocents.

I don’t think he and his fellow soldiers concern themselves with body counts. They pay attention to each job at hand, and measure their success by how well they accomplished it. They have no mandate, as did soldiers in Southeast Asia, to build an enemy body count as a way for the folks in Washington to measure progress.

On the other side, however, body count is the only weapon they have which can be effective. There is no possiblity of them defeating our forces. All they can do is erode support here at home. That is a given, and everyone from every philosophy in this country knows this.

There are people in this country who want to show dead American soldiers on television. Failing at that, they want to show caskets being off-loaded from aircraft. Lacking that, they want to show families grieving. Right now, what they have to settle for is a chorus counting deaths daily, and keeping a spreadsheet tally for convenience. Citing this body count is an insult to the memory of those men.

As a father of two in that part of the world, doing a job they feel is important to do, I’m sick of the crybabies in our media standing on the roof of a 4-star hotel every evening to tell us how many of our sons have died “since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.”

Had these folks ever done anything of real value in their lives, I would cut them some slack. Bob Arnot gets a tip of my cap, and there are one or two others. But most never leave the hotel lobby. I’ve been deployed with some of these losers nipping at my heels, and they live a vicarious existence. What they need is real lives. In Ethiopia, I had dozens of them to take care of. What I mean by that is that they had absolutely no experience on a flight line, and my troops and I had a constant battle keeping them safe around aircraft. When they weren’t outside, they were in the terminal, or back at the hotel.

When they are with the troops, they can easily get in the way without trying. Others try to get in the way so they can get their “story.” In Afghanistan, Birdie’s team had the pleasure of Geraldo’s company on a raid. Birdie isn’t small, and when he entered the structure, his left shoulder took out the door while his right elbow took out Geraldo.

Realistically, neither scenario is satisfactory; Being with the troops, or staying in the hotel waiting for reports to file or broadcast. But there are plenty of other things they can do, if only they were willing to put a little effort forth, and maybe put themseves in some jeopardy. Some did during the days before “President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.” They filed extraordinary reports with the soldiers and Marines. But their compatriots and anti-war agitators accused them of “becoming too close the the men they were with.” Some good ones have gone home to safer digs. Professionally, the risk was too great.

Those remaining could take a cue from one of the several Iraqi bloggers. Alaa is one they might read. I would guess they could find some simply amazing stories to write. If they followed any one of these leads, much better stories than the ones they currently put out might lead to the Pulitzer they want. And it would be of far more value to this country, the world, and Iraq than “since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.”

UPDATE: I just ran across this while checking out Glenn Reynolds. Kevin Sites is, obviously, a true journalist.