What is the deal with body counts?
I'm pretty addicted to NPR, with all its warts. Lately I've noticed a trend I don't like at all. Every newscast seems to have a body count in it - tonight the body count is 35 of Sadr's men in Baghdad. Apparently every single one of them was an insurgent. Good - I'm glad they can tell that for sure, especially since the insurgents were amongst the population in Sadr city. I'm sure every one of them was a very bad person. Since we've established that we never screw up and kill people by mistake...
(Due to javascript use, I can't make a link to the newscast. You can go to their main page and click on the `hourly newscast' button on the left side, a bit down. Right now the body count bit is a couple minutes in, but that changes.)
Anyways, this seems like a recent trend. Anybody else noticing this? Is it happening on other news channels? Is it getting more common?
Two things about this...
-First, I'm going to send a letter to NPR about this - complaining mainly about the unquestioning way they report these body counts, especially the `fact' that every fatality is A Bad Person. Any suggestions for talking points?
-Moreover, though - what's going on here? Here's my theory...the Pentagon is changing its emphasis in the news it is feeding to reporters. We are back to Vietnam style body counts to show everybody we are winning the war!!!
We here know that this is not a zero-sum game...killing terrorists while you occupy a country, if you are not willing to adopt Stalinist/fascist tactics forever, doesn't help much. You just create more terrorists.
But if you ask Americans "How would you define winning the war in Iraq?" I wonder what you'd find. How many Americans define winning in Iraq as "Killing Iraqis?" Somehow I guess those folks belong to the Bush base.
Now we've got the Pentagon - and the media? - telling everyone: "Look! We're killing `em! We are winning the war!"
Do I just have a dark outlook? I'm especially interested in whether others have noticed the body count reports. And what do those of you who know more about Vietnam than me think?