The Enemy Body Count

Ackerman keeps tabs on kills in Afghanistan:

[I]t’s the easiest statistic to understand: a dead fighter. The trouble is, the militants never seem to run out of ‘em. The insurgents have between 25,000 and 35,000 fighters, according to a guess by the Afghan Ministry of Defense. As Joshua Foust of the American Security Project notes, that’s been the estimated total for years, suggesting that the insurgency is a) very large and b) opaque to the U.S. and its allies. Clearly the insurgency can replenish its ranks, discrediting the suggestion that NATO can kill its way to victory. And it’s that insight that caused many in the military to gravitate toward counterinsurgency theory in the first place.