Friday, December 30, 2005
Declining civilian casualties in Iraq
Gateway Pundit has drilled in on some very interesting information about civilian casualties in Iraq: they have declined dramatically this year. The same cannot be said for American military casualties, however. Does this suggest that the insurgency is moving away from indiscriminate mass casualty terrorism to more focused attacks on military targets? If so, perhaps it is because the insurgents have learned that the wanton murder of noncombatants is hardly the short path to political power. Perhaps reading too much into these numbers, they may also suggest the declining influence of jihadis -- who kill apostates because they can -- compared to dispossessed Sunnis or basically nationalist Iraqis. Either way, this is good news for Iraq insofar as it implies that most insurgents are fighting for an objective. That suggests that the government has room to make a deal.
1 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Dec 30, 07:30:00 PM:
The Gatewaypundit numbers appear to be wrong. Please see the comments I left on his thread.
