Another Bad Day In The Jihad

While I hestitate to offer tips to the jihadis attempting to ambush our fabulous troops in Iraq, I don't think I'm giving away the game when I say it's a bad idea, a very bad idea indeed, to be planting your IEDs when our troops are lurking nearby with night vision and a big ass gun, unless you're very intent on hooking up with them there seventy-two virgins. Watch it here.

Strategy Page places incidents like this ambush of ambushers in perspective:

"In a very good month, Iraqis make a hundred or more attacks a day on American troops, and kill, on average, about four of them. While the terrorists make a big deal out of every American killed, they know that most of their attacks were not only failures, but got a lot of their buddies killed. On average, 10-20 terrorists die for every American killed. This has been going on for years, and an increasing number of Iraqi fighters are demoralized and quitting. Many either become informers, or surrender and speak freely. This is resulting in fresher intelligence, and raids that are catching terrorist cells preparing for operations, and in possession of weapons, bombs and incriminating documents."

Let's do the math, shall we? If a band of insurgents makes a hundred attacks and loses forty to eighty guys to kill four Americans, that means they will suffer one dead insurgent every one to three attacks. Traditionally, combatants suffer three to four wounded for every one killed. The insurgents are generally neighborhood gangs. That means that a band of a dozen insurgents would be killed and wounded after a dozen attacks, at best. More likely, after a fight or two where one of their buddies got killed and a couple others got badly wounded, they'd get out of the insurgency business.

That sounds like defeat to me, though not the kind that's being marketed to us in the media.