Terrorist Death Watch and Our Losses
There has been some discussion at several sites that link to the Terrorist Death Watch about how the losses suffered by the enemy don’t seem to appear to be in a proper ratio to our losses. Don Surber and Free Republic.
I’m going to use the Iraq Coalition Casualties site for my analysis. I may be off by one or two, because the site does not display exactly what I need and I have to hand count some items. But, here goes:
104 American troops killed in Iraq in April 2007
8 were non-hostile deaths
leaving 96
65 were killed by IED’s or IED’s and small arms fire
leaving 31 killed in direct combat or by artillery
In that same time we killed, as announced on TDW, 174 terrorists.
If you count each American death, the ratio is 1.7 terrorists to 1 American
Eliminate the non-hostile deaths, and the ratio is: 1.8 to 1
Eliminate the IED deaths and the ratio becomes: 5.6 to 1
Why eliminate the IED deaths? IED’s eliminate the possibility of our troops responding to the attack and killing any of the enemy. The TDW counts enemy combat losses and our comparison should be like to like.
This analysis treats 2/3’s of all deaths from hostile action as not significant to the analysis of the ratio of terrorists deaths to American deaths. You can challenge that assumption, but I would ask that you demonstrate a like to like comparison for your challenge.
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IEDs may be cowardly, but they are a reasonable weapon for an insurgent so long as they are used against troops and not civilians. Not much different from a traditional landmine; better actually, since they can hold off when a civilian passes.