The last question that needs to be answered as concerns the parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam is why we are not pursuing a campaign of territorial conquest. In Vietnam, the U.S. did not seek to gain and maintain control of territory; rather they sought to combat only the military forces of the insurgents. That is why the now legendary “body count†was so important in Vietnam. The same thing is not happening in Afghanistan, at least to the extent that the “body count†is important. The metric I see being used to determine progress in Afghanistan in place of the “body count†is tracking how many attacks occur within delineated sectors of territory. This metric is probably just as useless in determining victory or progress, as was the body count. So many factors go into determining how many attacks occur in a given region that the actual number of attacks is meaningless.
The Fronts of World War I in 1915 & 1916
After Turkey’s entry into the war towards the end of 1914, the Dardanelles was closed to allied shipping and thus the only warm water route to Russian ports was closed. The allied solution to this dilemma was to use the powerful British Navy in concert with a French battle group to force the Dardanelles and reopen the route to the Black Sea. This operation gained added impetus with the massive Russian losses suffered in the previous year and because of the Turkish opening of a new front against Russia along their common frontier in the Caucasus. The first naval attempt to force the Dardanelles in February 1915 ended … More after the Jump…