U.S. Casualties in Afghanistan: The Need for Perspective

There are good reasons to question whether we should stay in Afghanistan. They include the quality of governance and the problems with President Hamid Karzai; the value of winning in Afghanistan without success in dealing with Pakistan; the ability to create a stable Afghan regime after we phase out troops and aid; and the sheer cost of any degree of success in money and lives, at time that the Congressional Research Service estimates that the war has already cost at least $557 billion, and the Department of Defense estimates that U.S. casualties alone total 1,557 killed and 13,011 wounded. We should never commit ourselves to combat without constantly reexamining the strategic value and cost of the war.

No one can ignore the loss of 30 American troops, including 22 Navy SEALs, when a helicopter went down in Wardak this past Saturday. It is the single bloodiest incident of the war for the United States, it cost the lives of our allies as well, and it’s a very real tragedy.

That said, it is necessary to keep such tragedies in careful perspective:

  • Nothing done to a helicopter can prevent it from being vulnerable if it hovers, lands, or takes off in any area where the enemy is present. No silencing can prevent it from giving some warning. Night cannot keep it from being profiled as a target at short range.
  • Squad-sized automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) can “kill” a helicopter if it comes with range of the enemy. There are no countermeasures to direct fire, the enemy is often not visible to the best night vision systems, and sheer chance can make up for the lack of tactical experience and advanced guided weapons. What some in the military call a “magic bullet”—one that finds a critical vulnerability out of sheer chance—is a constant risk of war.
  • No intelligence system can ever warn or predict the density of scattered infantry that is masked by natural cover and is in motion. Even the best unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) sensors have limits, and the Taliban and other insurgents know that if they have a high profile, attacks may come and can locate their fighters accordingly.
  • Many of the missions in the east are high risk, going into insurgent held territory without major support. This raises the risk of exposure, but it is also essential if we are to focus on critical targets—which generally stay in the more secure areas—rather than ordinary fighters.
  • It has been clear from the start that the surge and new strategy meant we had to intensify our combat operations in the south and the east in 2010–2012 to have any hope of a successful transition in 2014. We have stepped up every aspect of U.S. operations, including higher-risk Special Forces operations, and this is likely to continue through the end of 2012. This has increased the risk of casualties as we have taken the fight to the enemy. So far, the actual increase has been limited, the Taliban has not been able to intensity its operations as much as predicted, and we have scored major gains in the south. This is, however, war. It is a killing ground, and losses are inevitable.

None of this means that we should not mourn every U.S., allied, and Afghan casualty. It does mean, however, that we should not overreact to worst-case incidents or exaggerate their tactical and strategic importance.

This is particularly critical because the Taliban, Haqqani network, and other insurgents are reacting to their losses by shifting away from the area they once controlled to tactics focusing on assassinations, high-profile bombings, and terrorist attacks, and seeking to win the war at the political level by outlasting the U.S., ISAF, and Afghan willingness to fight.

If we overreact to a single major loss, rather than judge the war on its tactical and strategic merit, we give the enemy an advantage that has nothing to do with the overall fighting and merits of the conflict.

More broadly, the same caution in overreacting is true of incidents that involve civilian casualties, major bombings, and assassinations of key Afghan commanders and officials. These are part of the same Taliban and Haqqani strategy in seeking to win a war of political attrition that they are not winning at the military level.

Similarly, we can expect the Taliban and their allies to continue to use every military act that produces collateral damage and civilian casualties as a political weapon. We can expect them to try to stop night raids, target Special Forces operations, and counter UAV attacks by publicizing and exaggerating civilian casualties just as threat forces do in the Iraq War and did in the Kosovo conflict. They know our sensitivities, they know that few Afghans understand the fact that overall U.S., friendly, and civilian casualties are far lower in such operations than in any comparable operations using other means—or in previous conflicts in history.

Above all, we need to remember that this is war. We often do ourselves great harm in overemphasizing success and minimizing sacrifice, in exaggerating what our technology and weapons can do, and in creating expectations based on “surgical” and “perfect” war.

War remains a horrible, bloody mess that can only be justified when it is better than every alternative. It inevitably kills people and not things, and it is always filled with unavoidable confusion and error. We would be far better off if we accepted this reality, never minimized it, and never asked our troops and allies to make sacrifices that did not involve a full recognition of the costs. Unfortunately, this is an area where public affairs officers are often as dangerous as the enemy, if not more so.

This means that we need far better leadership from the president, the secretary of defense, and the secretary of state in describing the details of the conflict, both the negative and positive trends, the costs, and exactly what our plans are for transition. We need far more detail on our strategic goals and grand strategic goals and the probability that they can be met with lasting effect after 2014. This is any area where there has been so little real leadership that there is nothing to follow, and the efforts to control the message have really amounted to having no message at all. The is the area where the American people, the media, analysts, and think tanks, and the Congress should constantly challenge the reasons for being in Afghanistan—not necessarily because the war is a failure, but because this is an area where no president or commander deserves trust without earning it in depth and every day.

Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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