"We're pinned down": 4 Marines die in Afghan ambush

[Rank amateur]

In the meantime, I (like Uboat509) will remain uncomfortable with the apparent concept that the life of one US service person is worth less than the intangible psychological (or political) benefits to the "big picture" of allowing that life to be taken.

Are you comfortable with 10,000 casualties to establish the Normandy beach head? If so, then isn't your issue not with the loss of life, but the apparent lack of a beachhead?

[jmm99]

Hi Rank amateur and all,

Please carefully note my use of the adjective "intangible". The endstate in the ETO was the destruction of the Wehrmacht as a combatant force and the unconditional surrender of the German government. Those are tangible goals.

Did they justify 9 men left standing in one company of the 29ID after they had taken their objective at Normandy ? Did they justify 138 casualties in C-1/117-30ID to break through the Siegfried Line ? I believe they did, though I do wish that those actions had not been necessary. That wish is personal because of the tangible physical and psychological costs to my father and others.

So, yes, I am uncomfortable with loss of life (and the other personal costs of war) for such intangibles as "making the world safe for democracy" and the like.

[Schmedlap]

This ROE thing continues to grow legs...

Meanwhile, the consequences of McChrystal’s new rules of engagement aimed at limiting Afghan civilian casualties from American air and artillery strikes are becoming clearer.

Afghan civilian casualties have, indeed, fallen sharply in recent months. However, as McClatchy Newspapers’ Jonathan S. Landay reported from the battlefield this month, American troops are being killed and wounded when they can’t get the fire support they need. Parents of troops serving in Afghanistan and members of Congress have taken critical note of the cost of McChrystal’s new rules.

- Joe Galloway, Obama's Afghan Dilemma

[Michael C]

Schmedlap, great spot. I still think it is unfortunate because the facts are not clear.

To JMM- Isn't a democratic government a tangible goal? A democratic government holds freely run democratic elections and leadership steps down from power. Plenty of think tanks rate governments on how democratic they are. To make the intangible goal tangible we simply find the metrics and say we want an Afghan government that passes so-and-so's criteria for a democratic government.

On the other hand, we could ignore what time of government it is, be it democracy or autocracy or theocracy, and simply say we don't want it to be a failed state (the logic being failed states like Somalia or Afghanistan pre-October 2001 have a greater chance of harboring terrorists). To define a failed state we could also go to any of the NGOs or think tanks that define Failed States (Foreign Policy magazine does an issue every year). We could just say they need a per-capita GDP of X and a child mortality rate of Y and human rights ranking of Z. Thus the intangible benefits of democracy become very well defined.

Of course, you might mean that the creation of a democracy and/or the prevention of failed states are not something you care about in Afghanistan. But, it is hard to deny that there are tangible and concrete metrics we can use to measure our goals. (Whether or not our leadership clearly define those goals or not.)