Body counts are back,nans playing cards (for now), in an attempt to add some palitability to a long protracted war, the military thinks sentiments at home can be swayed by simple arithmetic.

Body counts are back, reigniting the decades-old debate about whether victory in war can be judged by measuring the stack of enemy dead.

In recent months, the U.S. command in Afghanistan has begun publicizing every single enemy fighter killed in combat, the most detailed body counts the military has released since the practice fell into disrepute during the Vietnam War.

The practice has revealed deep divides in military circles over the value of keeping such a score in a war being waged not over turf, but over the allegiance of the Afghan people. Does it buck up the troops and the home front to let them know the enemy is suffering, too? Or does the focus on killing distract from the goals of generating legitimacy and economic development?

American commanders have detailed nearly 2,000 insurgent deaths in Afghanistan over the past 14 months. U.S. officers say they’ve embraced body counts to undermine insurgent propaganda, and stiffen the resolve of the American public.

The issue of insurgent deaths in a non conventional conflict like the global WoT in general, and Afghanistan in particular is problematic, for a number of reasons. Aerial droning a “safe house” where a suspected AQ leader is holed up does not lend itself to accurate body counts. Some innocents are always sacrificed in the process, who among the dead were AQ and who were not? The locals (especially if they harbor any sympathies for the insurgents) will always exaggerate or create specious claims regarding casualties.

Does Mohamed, the driver of Mr. AQ bigshot, get lumped into the body count, or Amir, the neighbor, who was outside his house at the time and also got taken out? We have no uniforms, no groups with weapons that would indicate actual fighters, and no score card to identify who is who.

Still, the practice has led the U.S. into an impasse with military allies, who don’t release body counts for fear it would prove politically unpalatable at home and counterproductive in Afghanistan.

“Recording an ongoing body count is hardly going to endear us to the people of Afghanistan,” says British Royal Navy Capt. Mark Durkin, spokesman for the 42-nation, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, or ISAF.

Aside from the practice not being accurate and only intended to shape political support at home, I have to side with the Limey on this one.

I admit that when I read a story emanating out of Afghanistan where it is reported that so many insurgents were killed in a particular attack, it provides the intended response from me, that we are killing bad guys so we are winning. Some skepticism is always baked into the cake, that a certain amount of literary license is assumed, and that the exact figures are always dubious, but a win is a win, so I am easily sated. No doubt this is the motivation behind these stories, a disgruntled populace at home can torpedo a war effort quicker than you can say Curtis Lemay.

But the war in Afghanistan was never about numbers. This is not a war where all we have to do is kill all the AQ members and then we can come home. Much like Iraq, there will always be Iranian inspired or funded malcontents who will make mischief to destabilize the democracies in place, so we will never “win”. The idea is to stabilize the existing governments of the two nations so that they can fend for themselves, to value their own freedom and sovereignty enough that they will fight to preserve it, to take the fight to AQ, the Taliban, and insurgency in general because it is in their best interest to do so.

Afghanistan (and Pakistan for that matter) will be on the front burner for a long time to come, and the military knows what can happen when the folks back home turn disaffected and skeptical.