The War on Terrorism: Jihad

Jihad has a wonderful sound to it. It is wild, romantic, courageous. It sounds like victory and glory. The hope of men like Usama bin Ladin is that terrorism against the West will bring about retaliation. This retaliation will cause resentment. Islam will unite in Jihad and overthrow the West. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world. Surely if they unite in Holy War against the infidel, victory is certain.

There are certain problems with this scenario. In a population of 6 billion, 1 billion is not that many. China and India each have a population by itself about equal to the entire world Muslim population and both will act to suppress any Muslim Jihad. Russia and the European Union together probably equal the entire Muslim population in the world, and they will act to suppress any Jihad. Still, the Muslim terrorists have not challenged one of these powers at a time but have launched simultaneous attacks against them all. This has triggered a worldwide suppression of potential terrorists. This expresses the world situation.

Leaving out the world. Assuming that the US alone stood against the entire Muslim population of the world. While there are approximately 1 billion Muslims, there are about 280 Million Americans. There are about 3.571 Muslims to each American. One Billion is not that big. 3.5 to one are good odds, but they are not great odds. Sun Tzu said that when attacking fortifications you need at least 3 to 1 odds. The US is separated from the Muslim world by the two greatest oceans in the world. This is the best fortification the world has ever seen. In the entire world, only the US has the technology to project military force over those distances. It is physically impossible for the entire Muslim world to attack the United States. The United States can sit back and with relative impunity project overwhelming military force anywhere in the world. Jihad will not work against the US. It would just give the US big enough targets to warrant using some of its more serious weapons.

Another question is, how many Muslims does it take to kill an American in combat. This is a good question, but it is best to begin with a war which America lost. How many Vietnamese lives does it take to kill one American? Some statistics from Nam are, 58,169 Americans were killed and 304,000 wounded out of 2.59 million who served. The number of North Vietnamese killed was approximately 500,000 to 600,000. Casualties: 15 million. From an article at Facts and Parables: Vietnam Remembrance Diane Alden Sunday, Nov. 10, 2002 http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/11/9/143935.shtml. 8.59 Vietnamese died for every American killed. 49 Vietnamese were wounded for every American wounded. This was in very, very difficult terrain. It was perfect terrain for guerilla warfare, heavy weapons like tanks were almost impossible to employ, and the Vietnamese were supplied by the Chinese and Russians with weapons almost as good as the Americans had. Islam will have none of these things in a war with the United States. Assuming that Islam is so good that with less resources, terrain more favorable to the US, and the US having a greater technological advantage, that Islam can still maintain the same kill ratio the Vietnamese had, if it takes 8.59 Muslims to die for every American dead, then at 3.6 Muslims to every American, the Americans outnumber the Muslims of the world 2.3 to 1.

The Vietnam war was a long time ago and it had a traumatic effect on the US Military. While in Sociopolitical terms it may have been a Cold War victory, to the US Military it was a defeat and it stung. Shamed and disgraced in their own eyes and in the eyes of their country they began a massive restructuring. They trained harder, longer, and to higher standards than ever before in the history of the country. Today it would be no exaggeration, and might be an underestimate to say that the average Army soldier is as good as a Marine in Nam or WWII. The average Marine is more like Special Forces. The Special Forces units perform in a close to superhuman manner on a routine basis.

In addition to this the Japanese chose this same period to humiliate the United States. Japan conquered the US temporarily, economically, with superior products by Honda, Toyota, and Mitsubishi. The United States stung to the heart of its pride and vanity howled out in agony. (The American Consumer nonetheless bought the better Japanese products until the US Military Industrial complex reformed itself.) This outcry brought all of the US industry under scrutiny. In this climate the Pentagon could no longer buy toilet seats for 300 dollars. They had to buy weapons that actually worked. So, because of these two humiliations the peacetime military became the best trained military in the world, and for the first time in its history, the US military had weapons in peacetime that actually worked.

Operation Desert Storm, the war with Iraq showed what a difference these things could make. In the Gulf War, the US suffered 467 individuals wounded, 148 killed in battle, and 145 killed in other than battle. These statistics are telling. The total number of American soldiers killed by the enemy is only 3 higher than those killed by accident and friendly fire. This war might have been the first in history when accident and friendly fire killed more of the victors troops than the enemy did if not for one lucky Scud missile hit. If these casualties were compared on a manhour to manhour basis to the casualties which US forces suffer training against each other in places like the National Training Center in the Mohave desert, it would be seen that fewer Americans died fighting real enemies than die fighting in training against each other. No one was prepared for this, casualty estimates ran to 50,000 in the beginning later lowered to 20,000. For anybody with a knowledge of military history what happened in the Gulf War was virtually impossible. All of the standard maxims of war planning and campaigns made it impossible. Estimates of Iraqi casualties are between 10,000 and 85,000. Assuming only 10,000 Iraqi deaths which accounted for 148 American deaths, it takes 67 Muslims lives to take 1 American life. With only 3.6 Muslims for every American, the US outnumbers the Muslim world 18.6 to 1.

Next it is useful to look at Somalia, another place where America ‘lost’. In the famous “Battle of Mogadishu” the US lost 18, the Somalis 2,000. It took 111 Somali Muslim lives to kill 1 American. This was a remarkable battle in which everything favored the Somalis. It is generally agreed that the Americans were not equipped for war. They had been equipped for a peacekeeping mission, not war. The Somali warlord was able to choose the terrain and time and set the battle up. His men were used to fighting other Somali and virtually lived with their guns. A highly elite force by Third World standards. With all the traditional advantages that give the commander the victory it still cost 111 Somali lives for every American killed. In Afghanistan, more Americans have died from auto accidents, maintenance incidents, and carelessness than from enemy fire. So few have died from enemy fire it is not even worth analyzing.

There is a trend here, Vietnam 8.59 to 1. Desert Storm 67 to 1. Somalia 111 to 1. The numbers of lives it costs to kill one American just keeps going up, and up and up. These numbers do not generally include collateral damage or civilian casualties.

When you look at this and consider that there are only 1 billion Muslims and there are 280 million Americans, it begins to look as though the entire Muslim world rising in Jihad against the United States would be basically an occasion for a barbecue and some target practice. Of course, making it even worse, there are those two oceans to think about. The Americans can cross them easily with massive firepower. There is no power in Islam capable of anything like that.

The hope that Islam could win some kind of victory if all Muslims rose up in Jihad against the US is no true hope. It might offer enough of a challenge to the US to force deficit spending on a large enough scale to help its economy, but it can hardly have any more effect than that.