Body count (war)
Body count is a term for the count of the killed members of the opposing war party .
Vietnam War
The United States tried in the Vietnam War , through the body count to measure their own progress, advocate was the then US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara , the more enemy bodies were counted, the more successful seemed the tactics of Search and Destroy to be the American troops. Other "metrics" for military success such as B. the size of conquered areas or the number of aircraft shot down make sense only in conventional wars against armies, but not against insurgents and guerrillas who are inferior in terms of personnel and technology . The opponents were divided into three categories:
- A: North Vietnamese soldiers and fighters from the FNL
- B: "Sleeping", ie inactive FNL cadres
- C: People who “worked in some way” with the FNL.
The civilian population in the Free Fire Zones was also affected by the extremely vague definition of Group C. " If you acted according to the body count mentality and wanted to meet the quotas, then that could only be done by Group C - and that was impeccably genocide, " said CIA agent K. Barton Osborn , who was responsible for this program was partly responsible.
The results of the body count were broadcast every evening over the radio and were intended to serve psychological warfare . According to Conrad C. Crane, director of the military history institute of the US Army War College, a strategy of attrition was pursued in Vietnam, so that body counts became the measure of the efficiency of military units. The numbers were often falsified out of career addiction and, grotesquely, are said to have even exceeded the assumed total number of Vietnamese opponents.
William Calley gives an example of the unreliability of the "determined" figures in his book I was happy to be in Vietnam . After an unsuccessful battle, he was asked by radio about the number of opponents killed, to which he replied, "six to nine" (six to nine), for embarrassment. To the counter-question ".... sixtynine?" (Sixty-nine?) He confirms. This increased the body count by 69 killed enemies, while Calley claims to have actually seen no dead enemy at all.
Change of strategy
Based on the experience from Vietnam, US commanders avoided disclosing information about killed opponents in later conflicts - until the early phase of the Iraq war . In the meantime, despite possible bad publicity , the US military has resumed this strategy with high civilian casualties in order to be able to demonstrate its successes in operations against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Enemy Body Counts Revived Washington Post, October 24, 2005, engl.