2007-04-30 05:51:36 · 17 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics & Government ➔ Politics
I support the war in Iraq, but honestly it's because body counts were used in Vietnam. The government doesn't want to use body counts because they do not want any similarities between Vietnam and Iraq. Granted, there already are a lot of similarities, but there are also many extremely important differences. If the government issued a body count, that is just begging the anti-war movement to say, "Look! We might as well be in Vietnam. We all know how that turned out..."
2007-04-30 06:06:31 · answer #1 · answered by 12 2 · 1⤊ 2⤋
We never counted as many bodies as most others. WWI. Germans and French massacred each other for a couple of years before we joined. WWII the war was grinding up people from the late 30's in Asia and Europe when we finally got in -- 12,, 1941, The Korean War was a disaster, and still ongoing, Viet Nam started by the French long before us and is now all communist,. We has victories in Granada, Haiti and Panama, President George H W. Bush Liberated Kuwait with 500,000 troops and intelligently got out. Now four years and thousands of dead and wounded Americans and Iraqis later we have our body count.
2007-04-30 06:10:45 · answer #2 · answered by Rja 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It's difficult to tell who is the enemy and who isn't. At least SOME of the people who fought in Vietnam wore different uniforms.
Besides, number of dead is no measure of progress, it's more a measure of how much your commanders are willing to sacrafice your life. The Soviet Union lost more soldiers than anyone else in WWII yet they were still on the winning side. Many of the insurgents don't care about dying, so killing thousands of them isn't going to stop them from fighting.
2007-04-30 06:00:51 · answer #3 · answered by Mordent 7 · 3⤊ 1⤋
It is measured in body counts! Havent you heard all the press blathering about all those innocent civilian terrorists that are being killed? Never mind how much of a body count the previous proprieter or Iraq racked up.
2007-04-30 05:56:50 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
Precisely because that's how things were measured in Vietnam. It's one of the 'lessons' learned from that conflict. The American people reacted badly to the tallying of the dead as a measure of victory.
2007-04-30 05:55:23 · answer #5 · answered by B.Kevorkian 7 · 2⤊ 1⤋
We remember well General Westmoreland and his "Kill Ratio" flip charts. He was still flipping them the day before the chaotic helicopter evacuation from the top of the American Embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). Good Kill Ratios though.
2007-04-30 06:45:21 · answer #6 · answered by Madmunk 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Really - it's a poor way to measure progress. Good way to measure the cost of war, though.
2007-04-30 05:55:48 · answer #7 · answered by Garth Rocket 4 · 3⤊ 2⤋
Simple...who exactly is the enemy? The Shiite or the Sunni? As for the other factions there they are there to help the Shiite or the Sunni.So who's side do we take?
2007-04-30 06:06:50 · answer #8 · answered by Whiner 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Because the media is more pessimistic, they like to measure it in US body counts. If you compare how many of them we kill to how many of our troops are killed, I it a staggering ratio. But that lends creedence to the war, therefore cannot be used.
2007-04-30 05:57:37 · answer #9 · answered by Angelus2007 4 · 1⤊ 2⤋
Times change.
2007-04-30 05:55:21 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋