UPDATED: "Body count journalism" reached critical mass during the Vietnam War, and has strongly shaped U.S. public opinion in the current Iraq conflict. In the typical "Iraq War Deaths Round-Up" piece about U.S. soldiers, the text often includes quotes from relatives that the fallen one died doing what he or she thought was right. Let me be very clear: it is basic and crucial to remember and honor our war dead. Yet "body count journalism" carries another message, eagerly swallowed by Left Coast readers in places like Seattle, Portland and San Francisco. It is, "soldiers dead; war bad; U.S. evil." Somehow, other body counts don't get as much attention, i.e. Iran, Sudan, Darfur, Oakland. Palestine, of course, is an exception, though the causes of the Israeli "attacks" often get no more than a paragraph at the end. In the U.S., body count journalism has lately focused not only on American military casualties in Iraq, at 2,842 as of this posting; but also on Iraqi civilians killed since the U.S. toppling of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Estimates of the latter have ranged wildly, from under 50,000, to a widely-criticized report of more than 600,000 in a medical journal article. Today comes news of a completely seat-of-the-pants Iraqi estimate that the number is 150,000. Apparently this must be regarded as news, even if it comes out of thin air. What cannot be estimated is how many more Iraqis could have ended up in mass graves beyond the 300,000 during Saddam's 23-year reign, if Saddam - now facing a death sentence from an Iraqi court - had not been removed from power.

All the same, the daily reports of Sunni dead-ender and freelance jihadist suicide bombers killing dozens of innocent Iraqis have rightly been hard to ignore. The news has understandably convinced the American electorate something is very wrong in Iraq, resulting in a Democratic re-taking of the U.S. House and Senate Tuesday, and the resignation of U.S. Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld the next morning. Much is getting toward right elsewhere in Iraq, but something is indeed very wrong around Baghdad. Surveying the conservative zeitgeist in this August post at Sound Politics, I wondered out loud, "more troops needed to secure Baghdad?" Well, President Bush's nominee to replace Rumsfeld appears to be thinking about that himself. The New York Times reports today (here via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer):

(Nominee Robert) Gates....(is)....a member of the Iraq Study Group, the commission that is preparing to make recommendations next month about overhauling Iraq strategy. Associates said that Gates had questioned military leaders there about whether more U.S. troops in the capital could stem the violence, and whether the training of Iraqi troops could be overhauled....Senior administration officials have said that pouring more troops into the most violent of the Baghdad neighborhoods is among the possibilities that Bush may now consider. During the campaign leading up to Tuesday's elections, Bush declared unambiguously on several occasions that "we're winning" and vowed not to leave Iraq until victory had been achieved. Over the past two days, however, several officials said that Gates will likely be given some latitude to redefine what constitutes victory.

Permanently stabilizing Baghdad has to be at the top of the list. The new Democratic majority in the U.S. House and Senate may well find that in order to get out of Iraq, we will have to get in a little deeper, in and around Baghdad. This is not what many die-hard Democratic partisans want or expect. They are likely to learn a few difficult but important lessons now that their legislators have a key role in U.S. policy on Iraq. Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein of California in today's SF Chron says part of Rumsfeld's legacy was insufficient troop levels in Iraq, and that will have to be corrected. In a piece on expected investigations and oversight from the new Democrat-led Congress, today's L.A. Times observes that one area of inquiry will be the Bush Administration's decision to ignore recommendations for higher post-invasion troop levels in Iraq. But merely highlighting strategic failures on troop strength, via showy hearings, will not be enough; Democrats will have to join in providing a fix, as Feinstein notes.

The hypothesis that makes the most sense to me regarding the Hell that is Baghdad now is that Iraqi citizens in everyday ways large and small (think, for instance, "human intelligence") can tip the balance toward the new government and its security forces. However, that happens only if the Iraqi government and its soldiers and police first earn their trust by protecting them from the terrorists (known to our morally-neutered mainstream media, of course, as "insurgents"). More U.S. troops to Baghdad, and soon, make sense if Iraqi security forces can truly come to control Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle. But by when? That is the question. From a U.S. political perspective, it can't be more than two or three years, tops, before Iraqis are responsible for the vast majority of the security apparatus in the own country, most particularly including Baghdad, other Saddam-ite strongholds, and porous border regions through which jihadists now pass with ease.

But the simple-minded "just get out now" cries from places like Seattle, San Francisco and Portland have no connection with what will be unfolding in months to come.

TECHNORATI TAGS: IRAQ, DEATHS, ROBERT GATES, DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. TROOP STRENGTH, BAGHDAD, U.S. DISENGAGEMENT, GEORGE W. BUSH, SADDAM HUSSEIN, DIANE FEINSTEIN

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 10, 2006 03:17 PM

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