‘Because the kills all count the same’: Accounting for death in the Vietnam War

Abstract

The US military campaign in Vietnam was supposedly a ‘limited’ war. Calculative practices were vital for military and civilian leaders in managing the conflict and claiming progress against objectives. The most infamous accounting measure was ‘body count’, one of many performance indicators used by the US military in a conflict deeply influenced by the logics and practices of war managerialism. This article explores an important example of Vietnam-era calculative practices: Sharpening the Combat Edge, a 1974 US Army handbook that provides a tangential history of the war in the Mekong Delta, while offering military commanders practical systems to ‘aid decision-making’ in current and future conflicts. Drawing on the concepts of accounting for death and war managerialism, the article deconstructs the accounting practices marshalled in this text. It argues that Sharpening is a powerful example of the legitimating roles that accounting for death can play in promoting and normalising state violence.