Dead enemies mean we’re losing; dead Americans mean we’re winning

In war, it’s entirely possible to have battle causalities increase despite the fact that you’re winning.  This is because, as with the Surge in Iraq, you are aggressively engaging the enemy.  Yes, you are defeating the enemy, decimating his numbers, and driving him back, but the very fact of engagement is necessarily going to result in more losses on your own side too.

Then there’s the mirror image situation, the one that sees your enemy having the Surge — perhaps because your own Commander in Chief announced a year ago that he was giving up on the war and had already set a date for pulling the troops out.  Your troops aren’t engaging more, but the enemy troops are, and they’re very successfully killing you and destroying your weapons:

International Security Assistance Force officials are providing additional details about the Sept. 14 attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan’s Helmand province in which two coalition service members were killed when insurgents attacked the base’s airfield.

Because it is still early in the investigation of this attack, information is subject to change as new details become available, officials said.

The attack commenced just after 10 p.m., officials said, when approximately 15 insurgents executed a well-coordinated attack against the airfield on Camp Bastion. The insurgents, organized into three teams, penetrated at one point of the base’s perimeter fence, officials said.

The insurgents appeared to be well-equipped, trained and rehearsed, officials said. Dressed in U.S. Army uniforms and armed with automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and suicide vests, the insurgents attacked coalition fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft parked on the flight line, aircraft hangars and other buildings, officials said.

Six coalition AV-8B Harrier jets were destroyed and two were significantly damaged, said officials, noting three coalition refueling stations were destroyed. Six soft-skin aircraft hangars were damaged to some degree.

Coalition forces engaged the insurgents, killing 14 and wounding one who was taken into custody, officials said.

In addition to the two coalition service members that were killed, nine coalition personnel — eight military and one civilian contractor — were wounded in the attack, officials said. None of their injuries are considered life-threatening.

The administration is spinning this as proof that Americans are winning.  Although Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is “concerned” about the attacks (doesn’t anyone in the administration ever get upset when Americans die?), “he sees the insider attacks as the ‘last gasp’ of a Taliban insurgency that has not been able to regain lost ground.”  Me?  I see this as Americans being on the wrong side of someone else’s Surge.  Or, as a friend of mine says,  “after Vietnam we decided the enemy body count did not mean we were winning but nowadays we equate our own body count to a sign of our certain victory.”

In other words, the Left is always completely consistent:  dead enemies mean we’re losing; dead Americans mean we’re winning.  But please, don’t question their patriotism.