So, has anyone else noticed that the military has started including body counts in their press releases?
I noticed it for the first time around mid-September, when it seemed that "60 insurgents killed" was the front-page headline of every paper in the country. And one of the things I thought was interesting about it at the time was that the uniformity of the reportage indicated pretty clearly that the figure of "60 insurgents" was actually being pitched by official sources in a press release or briefing of some kind.
At the time I assumed that this body counting would probably end with the election, but it seems to be continuing, such as in today's New York Times:
As the Americans battled near the first station, more insurgents began firing down on them from a nearby mosque, said Capt. Bill Coppernoll, a spokesman for the Army's First Infantry Division. The fighting became so intense that American jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on the insurgents, and up to 20 fighters were killed, he said.
It seems clear enough that the combatant casualty figures are meant to assuage concerns that might arise in the American public about such un-mediapathic activities as dropping bombs on churches and civilian homes, killing an injuring noncombatants, including women and children. "Yes," the reports seem to say. "We did bomb a church. But we killed up to 20 fighters! We're winning the war on terror!"
As usual, I find myself wondering how the American public can fail to be offended by such transparent hucksterism. I mean, just to choose one example, you'll notice the ubiquity of the phrase "up to" in these reports, as in "killed up to 20 fighters". Personally, I associate that turn of phrase with late-night commercials for miracle diet creams; I associate it with people who are trying to bullshit me. And it's curious to me that the American people, who believe their form of government is so patently superior that it should be forced upon the rest of the world at gunpoint, are so fucking cynical about their own government's tendency to lie to and mislead them that they don't even blink when their military reporting goes from "We don't do body counts," to "Up to 60 insurgents killed."
Group it with its epistemological cousins, the offense stands out more clearly: "Whitens teeth! It slices! It dices! Atkins friendly! Guaranteed or your money back! Up to 20 insurgents killed!"
Feh.
And, you know, God forbid I be counted as one of those "I question the timing of…" people, but it seems fairly obvious that this sudden willingness to count corpses has much more to do with various bits of bad news about the progress of the forced democratization of Iraq than it does with any desire for operational transparency on the part of the military or the White House. And again, if there's one thing about that situation that bothers me more than another, it's that more Americans aren't questioning the overarching motives of an administration that is so clearly trying to manipulate their responses. I know we're all supposed to be too jaded to believe that our democracy is really a government of by and for the people, but if we're going to kill people in order to franchise our particular form of democracy to the Middle East it does seem to me that it would be polite to be somewhat less obvious about the wagging of the dog, if only so we can keep a straight face when we tell the Iraqis and the world that our motives in all this are ultimately altruistic.