One hopes that there would be a voice in the Islamic Ummah saying that this mass slaughter of believers is the price paid by the all volunteer Jihad and demand that the best way to support the Jihadists is to bring them home. 

Or that the Western Media would show the numbers in comparison so the public would have a context in which to measure U.S. military deaths. 

But like Lt. Colonel Kaeveny said, body counts are not the best measure of progress. 

Especially when one of the enemies see suicide as a virute and have openly proclaimed for 14 centuries to love their own death as much as everyone else loves life.   

Killing people who want to die at an extraordinarily high rate is not a deterrent to others joining the cause. 

LESSONS OF 2005 

In 2005 when I rolled around Fallujah I got to participate in nearly every Battalion level operation. 

In 5 months I went with Marines who cleared Amariyah/Ferris twice and Kharma twice.  We Rushed Gold--a strip of asphalt outside Fallujah--two or three times. 

In 2005 I saw entire High Value Target lists and even Black Lists be captured or killed only to be replaced by characters just as or even more despicable than their predecessors. 

In 2006 the same pattern of clearing and killing continued across much of the country. 

Despite killing thousands of terrorists in 2005 the progress made was slow and barely discernable--if at all existent. 

Some areas got worse over time. 

LEARNING CURVE 

The greatest advantage the Marines have over the Army in Iraq is 7-month deployments. 

Every Platoon Sergeant and Squad leader has done the work at least once before--often twice before. 

The Company Commanders were all here as Platoon Commanders.   

The Battalion Commanders were all here on Battalion or Regimental Staff. 

Some of the Generals were here as Regimental Commanders. 

And they all worked in the same general area and saw that the tactics of 2004 and of 2005 were not yielding the same results so in late 2005 a new tactic was starting to be used.  It was slow, tedious, decidedly un-infantry but had been effective in the past.  

As Marines rotated through this tactic became accepted as the operating procedure and was refined with each tour. 

The era of the big clearing operation was ending.  The enemy would no longer engage in maneuver warfare on much scale.  The nitty gritty work was begining. 

DE-OXYGENATING THE POND 

In his book, 'The Long, Long War' about the  Maylayan Emergency, Brigadier General Richard Clutterbuck heaps scorn on commanders who were keen to engage in large scale clearing operations with names like "Operation Hammer and Anvil." 

Like the Brits, the Marines are very good at "Hammer and Anvil."  (So much so that it used to be a part of the recruiting campaign.)  But it did not make much progress toward and endstate. 

When the Brits had the communist insurgents broken down into small cells and the major operations no longer worked they eventually changed tactics--it was called the Briggs plan. 

The Briggs plan was simple, but tough to execute--through forced relocation, ID card programs and physical barries--seperate the insurgents from the population. 

Villagers were re-located into new, larger villages away from the jungle fringes.  The new villages all had police station in the middle and were surrounded by a fence.  There was only one way in and one way out and that was strictly monitored by the police and army.  If you were not from the village, you were not allowed in the village without a pass.  The residents were searched coming and going. 

A home-guard unit patrolled the interior of the village and assisted the police and the British army largely worked outside the villages. 

Mao said, "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea."

The Briggs plan prevented the guerillas from moving from swimming among the people--removing the oxygen from the water.

In 2005 and 2006 the Marines started engaging in census/data collection operations to build a directory of the AO they worked in.

Now in 2007 the best databases are a combination phone book, DMV and genealogical record complete with photos.

When squads and platoons go on patrol they know who lives in an area and who does not.

This started to give Marines in certain areas an upper hand against the insurgents--it was now harder to hide among the people.

The second leap forward in removing the oxygen from the sea was the spontaneous and coaxed rise of the Anbar Awakening.

In some AOs like Khalidiyah, the awakening was not very spontaneous.  Marine Battalion Commanders worked with respected members of the community and tribal leaders to bring it about.

The Awakening added the last ingredient needed for an Anbar variant to the Briggs plan--the home guard and an invigorated police to man all the entry control points.

In some villages AQIZ (Zarqawi's al-Qaeda) has been choked out.  In Ramadi the fight went block by block as the Army and Marines sealed off and held each area Brigg's style.  The same effort is now being made in Fallujah and is successful in the village of Shihabi outside of Kharma.

TOWARD AN END STATE

In 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 the coalition killed thousands of terrorists, insurgents and other anti-coalition forces.

It did not achieve an end state.

The refresh rate is too high.  Killing Zarqawi was a good thing, but affected AQIZ's operations the same way the death of Pablo Escobar affected the cocaine trade in Colombia--which is to say not at all.

The killing of terrorists, insurgents, irreconcilable militia members and other anti-coalition forces is necessary and is a part of the end state solution, but concentration on killing them alone will never achieve an endstate.

Denying them the ability to operate, seperating them from their potential recruits, finances and sanctuaries will make it easier to close with and destroy them by fire and maneuver.

THE PETRAEUS PLAN

In Army Field Manual 3-24, Section 5-71 "Population Control Measures" a modern variant of the Briggs plan is laid out.

As the variants of it are used in Anbar, they are showing signs of actual progress.

The implementation of this in Baghdad, which dwarfs Ramadi, is daunting but I have seen units slowly gathering census data and neighborhoods being blocked off with check points or even wrought iron fences.

The missing element to bring it together is a vigorous police force to man the check points.  In the parts of Baghdad I saw, the IP showed little interest in performing their functions.

Baghdad is Anbar in 2004 and 2005.

As the surge units break down cells, gather census data and slowly close off neighborhoods their success will require one more element--an awakening of the people and invigoration of honest IP officers.

Until then the soldiers will be street fighting and winning every engagement, snatching bad guys off the street and racking up huge body counts, but that alone will not achieve an end state.

Indeed, there are ways to operate that could increase the number of enemy killed--but as we saw in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and 2006 we cannot kill enough to beat the refresh rate.

Which is why body counts are not the best way to measure success.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The final end-state for Iraq requires the killing of the irreconcilables for they are unwilling to engage in or accept any form of compromise.

But to get to that final end state when the last hold outs can be indentified, located and killed will require a variant of the Maylayan Brigg's Plan or a variant of its modern counterpart--The Petraeus Plan.

Until the oxygen is removed and the insurgents are no longer able to freely swim among the sea of the people, body counts will be a poor measure of success.