Lack of casualties surprises Pentagon No GIs have been killed by enemy as U.S. perfects arm's-length war Related stories

Paul Richter - Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON _ After nearly seven weeks, the unconventional war in Afghanistan has produced an unlikely statistic: Not one U.S. service member has been killed by enemy action.

While this record could change quickly as the war grinds to an end, it has nonetheless been greeted with surprise and quiet relief at the Pentagon, where officials have warned from the outset that Americans needed to be prepared for substantial casualties.

Even in a seemingly lopsided contest, "you expect casualties when bombs fly," said one military official, who recalled that the war opened amid widespread predictions that Afghans would bloody U.S. forces, just as they did the Soviets during the 1980s.

The casualty rate reported by the Pentagon attests to the continuing technological advances that the U.S. military has made in developing an arm's-length, precision style of attack. It reflects, too, the Bush administration's caution in putting troops in harm's way -- despite polls indicating that Americans would support the war even if it involved high casualties, experts say.

Coming after the 1999 air war in Yugoslavia, in which the United States suffered no combat losses, and the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which there were relatively few, a low-casualty campaign in Afghanistan would reinforce Americans' view that war can sometimes be waged with minimal casualties.

It may also reinforce an impression held in some parts of the world that U.S. military doctrine calls for the United States to use its advanced hardware -- and for others to do the dying.

Clearly, many Afghans have been killed and injured since the U.S.-led campaign began Oct. 7. While estimates are still largely guesswork, some experts believe more than 1,000 Taliban and opposition forces have probably died in the fighting, along with at least dozens of civilians.

Pentagon officials have said that the intense bombing of Taliban front lines near the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and the capital, Kabul, after a few weeks of fighting proved deadly, judging by the relatively small numbers of Taliban troops who emerged from trenches when the radical regime began its retreat earlier this month.

On the U.S. side, although there are thousands of troops, hundreds of warplanes and dozens of ships in the region, the Pentagon has reported six deaths to date, none caused by enemy action.

Two of the dead were helicopter crew members who died Oct. 20 in the crash of a helicopter that was supporting a special operations assault near the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar. Three sailors were killed in two maritime accidents, and the sixth fatality was an airman who died in a forklift accident, according to U.S. Central Command.

Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council aide now at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said he believes the administration has been "significantly constrained" by its fear of large casualties.

He said that despite the Pentagon's remarkable record in avoiding combat casualties in the past decade, he said he doesn't think that Americans would come to expect wars of "immaculate coercion," as some pundits have predicted.

"I think there is still an appreciation that war is a dirty business and people will get killed in it," he said.

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001