October 13, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Crikey
The editor of The Lancet isn't going to stand idly by while people sow doubts about his judgement in publishing the Iraq mortality study. He's going to go right out and sow some himself.
Posted by Jane Galt at October 13, 2006 12:26 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>Wow, this guy's a real nutcase. No impartiality here, is there?
Posted by: Rex on October 13, 2006 12:52 PMWhat a despicable fascist-enabling man.
This confirms more than anything that the study is a bunch of politicized crap.
Posted by: Dean Esmay on October 13, 2006 1:07 PMGreat. Now we don't have to consider the possibility that Iraq is at best no better off thanks to the U.S. invasion. Whew.
Posted by: Leo on October 13, 2006 1:12 PMWe can consider anything we want. Including the clear fact that The Lancet is no longer a scientific publication, but is merely another hatemongering leftist rant-rag.
Posted by: Dean Esmay on October 13, 2006 1:13 PMCouldn't be bothered to watch the whole thing, so he might have gotten even foamier at the month, but I particularly love his accusation of arrogance. Physician heal thy . . . ah, too easy.
Posted by: Middle Browser on October 13, 2006 1:26 PMThat video offends me, maybe it should be flagged like Michelle Malkin's or David Zucker's.
Well, maybe not, we conservatives don't need to ape the liberals.
Dean, you sound like you're on the rant rag. Can we ignore you?
Posted by: Leo on October 13, 2006 2:08 PMAn ad hominem attack on someone who neither wrote nor peer-reviewed the article is relevant why?
Posted by: GT on October 13, 2006 2:24 PMShowing a tight close up of someone speaking to a mass audience proved to be a very effective tool to discredit Dean in the last presidential race.
You have learned your lesons very well.
Posted by: spencer on October 13, 2006 2:25 PMAlso note the date; Horton would have seen the current Lancet article but wouldn't have been able to talk about it. How do you think you'd feel having that kind of knowledge but having to keep it a secret?
Posted by: dsquared on October 13, 2006 2:26 PMHaving read the paper, I have one minor and one major problem with the method, one of which was addressed by the authors. First, to the extent that people have moved from high violence to low violence areas within Iraq in the last two years, the high violence areas would have been over-represented: the authors mention this, and it may not be a large source of error. This is a minor problem.
The major problem is that they violated randomness. They were very careful to randomly select the starting house in each cluster, but they allowed people to opt out of the survey, and allowed word to spread about what they were doing while they were going house to house. In other words, they spoke only to people who wanted to talk to a group doing a house-to-house survey of deaths. Such people could plausibly have a larger proportion of deaths in the family than a randomly selected group. Since the authors don't give the percentage of non-responders, I can't tell how big a problem this is. That's the major problem.
Posted by: Seb on October 13, 2006 2:32 PMOops, they did give the percentage: 0.8%. Probably not large enough to significantly effect the results. So, major problem removed.
Posted by: Seb on October 13, 2006 2:44 PMGreat. Now we don't have to consider the possibility that Iraq is at best no better off thanks to the U.S. invasion. Whew.
Because obviously unless you accept the results of every bogus study the Lancet cranks out, you're completely unwilling to even consider the possibility that there's trouble in Iraq.
Because those are the only two options in LeoWorld: either unthinking credulity or unthinking optimism.
Posted by: Dan on October 13, 2006 3:02 PMShowing a tight close up of someone speaking to a mass audience proved to be a very effective tool to discredit Dean in the last presidential race.
You have learned your lesons very well.
Spencer, I don't know if I'm missing the sarcasm, but the poster of that video appears to be a supporter of Horton, not a detractor.
Posted by: Jody on October 13, 2006 3:31 PMHe seems like a calm, reasonable, evenhanded, nonpolitical sort.
(Seriously -- is that really the editor??? Good God.)
Posted by: TallDave on October 13, 2006 3:32 PMJane:
You slipped my question at Ezra's site so I thought I'd annoy you over here. You said you might (and might not) be able to accept 660,000 deaths, depending on the outcome.
Okay. What outcome do you hope for and how many deaths would be too high a price to pay?
This is a question any supporter of the war should be able, and required, to answer. You should have already asked yourself this a thousand times.
Let's say the outcome is something less than you hope for: then how many deaths would be too many? You know what I'm asking. Please give me three or four outcomes and the number of deaths that would be too high a price to pay for each outcome.
You seem like a relatively straight shooter. So shoot. Any war supporter who can't or won't do this is a fraud and a coward.
Posted by: david mizner on October 13, 2006 4:10 PMAnd Seb, do you honestly think that professionals didn't allow for the varible you mention?
Posted by: david mizner on October 13, 2006 4:12 PMIs it just me, or do a great many of the defenders of left-wing research sound strikingly like creationists in their approach to their theories. Specifically, no amount of evidence casting doubt on their conclusions ever even remotely impugns the theory unless it absolutely, definitively proves said theory wrong. I'm sorry, but somehow, "Well, it could still be the truth..." just seems like thin gruel for the rest of us (well, me at least) to accept a theory as gospel.
Posted by: Bill Dalasio on October 13, 2006 4:22 PMI don't know, Dave. At this point: peaceful partition would almost certainly be better for at least 70% of the population than life under Saddam. Not to mention the neighbours not being invaded. How much better?
Long drawn out civil war would be much worse. But I question how long a civil war could be drawn out. A random grab of historical ones from my brain indicates that 5-6 years seems to be the upper bound for most civil wars, with the bloodiest interludes being in the middle; (towards the end, one side or the other is generally weakening). The Sunnis have half the population of the Shia, and their areas are experiencing the most violence; if the Lancet's figures are correct, they really are going to run out of young men to get shot pretty quickly.
So: relatively peaceful partition? Or federal system? With the shooting over by 2008? And after that a growing economy in a state no worse than, say, that in Ukraine? Probably worth it, given the benefits to the remaining Iraqis and their neighbours. I have very strong feelings about horrible dictators. The things that Saddam had to do to make the state hold together his way were really, really bad, and his sons were batshit crazy.
Endless civil war? With, say 20% of the populatioin of Iraq killed? Obviously not worth it.
As I said on Crooked Timber (and maybe here too): America lost over 400,000 men fighting the Civil War, with at least that many more seriously wounded. Was it worth it? It depends on how bad you think slavery is. I think a regime that does the kind of things to ethnic minorities that Saddam, and the American south, did, are worth disposing of at a very high price.
Posted by: Jane Galt on October 13, 2006 4:27 PM"The editor of The Lancet isn't going to stand idly by while people sow doubts about his judgement in publishing the Iraq mortality study. He's going to go right out and sow some himself."
Posted by Jane Galt
Megan, by that standard, everything that you say could be disregarded due to you being an Objectivist, or at least using an Objectivist pen-name.
Posted by: Barry on October 13, 2006 4:34 PMHi all,
I also don't know if the Lancet figure is right or not. But I find it interesting that the post that Meagan offers is to suggest it is too high, and offer rationalizations as to why this might be true.
She could be right. Then again, she could be wrong. And the interesting question, I think, is to ask--what if these figures are right? I liked the fact that she started to meditate on what cost limit would be worth the war. I would submit that any cost estimate would also have to include the very real possibility that "spillovers" are possible. Let us suppose that the civil war peters out after 5-6 years as she suggests. Will that put an upper bound on death and destruction? I have a caveat that I am sure that Meagan has considered as well--the possibility that the Iraq as breeding ground for terrorism argument is in fact a reality, and thus, casualties from this policy choice will reverberate far far into the future.
As this is just a consideration of the cost side of things, one can still make the argument that the costs will be worth it, in terms of the benefits. Out of curiosity, would a loose federation of Iraq, mainly ruled by a theological autocracy be considered a cost or benefit, or a wash?
As a matter of consideration--if the Lancet is right--god help us in what we have chosen to do as a nation..
Posted by: Cas on October 13, 2006 4:42 PMBarry: Incorrect. The Lancet is supposed to be a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and the editor is the one ultimately in charge of the integrity of his publication.
Horton, speaking specifically as the editor of that publication, had discredited himself and his publication not because of his political opinions (as hateful and irrational as they might be) but by making it clear in what he said and how he said it that the "study" was part of a political agenda.
Megan does not edit a peer reviewed scientific journal, and does not claim to speak for such a journal.
Horton should resign in disgrace, or be cashiered. He has debased the integrity of a once-distinguished medical journal.
Posted by: Dean Esmay on October 13, 2006 4:43 PMGT,
I don't know. Perhaps you should ask Dr. Horton, since that's what he was doing.
Posted by: Rex on October 13, 2006 4:43 PMCas: What if the figures are right?
Then, as a matter of consideration, it is almost certain that most of those deaths are not due to coalition forces, but due to terrorist "insurgents" and militias murdering their fellow Iraqis.
Therefore, consider the possibility (however odd it might seem to some people) if we were to abandon that country to the terrorists, the death toll could only go UP, not down.
Abandoning the people of Iraq would be a horrible smear on the honor of our nation and a human rights travesty beyond description.
Even assuming these ridiculous figures are correct, which they almost certainly are not.
Posted by: Dean Esmay on October 13, 2006 4:46 PM"The editor of The Lancet isn't going to stand idly by while people sow doubts about his judgement in publishing the Iraq mortality study. He's going to go right out and sow some himself."
I swear I thought that said "Iraq morality study."
Posted by: datarat on October 13, 2006 4:53 PMBill Dalasio, I haven't seen a single liberal defend this study as gospel, and either have you. What've we pointed out is the effort to deny and conceal the cost of the war that you (I assume) support. The study itself says the number could be tens of thousands lower than 660 k. Alright, let's say it's 300 k. Worth it? I know, I know, it depends on the outcome. Jane, in her envsioned outcome--peaceful partition--says she'd accept 660,000 deaths. (Extrapolating, that would be as if more than 7.3 million Americans died.) While peaceful partition is a pipe dream--the U.S. isn't even trying to achieve that outome, and 9 million Sunnis denied oil: not peacefu--but at least she sort of faces up to the cost of this war. Of course, Iraqi civilian fatalities are but one of the costs. (I have to say: the first words of her post are telling: "I don't know." How do you not know? How do supporters of this war not lie in bed awake at night and do the moral math?)
I suppose I should add that I hate dicators too, but the best hope, the least bad hope, for Iraq--as for all countries in such situations-- was and is democratic change from within.
Oh, and deaths in the civil war: definitely worth it.
Let me ask this question: assuming you disapprove of the genocide in Darfur: what if the UN ends up sending military forces to stop the genocide, and the militias keep killing anyway? How many people would they have to kill before you decide that the effort to stop the genocide wasn't worth it?
Posted by: Seb on October 13, 2006 5:12 PMSeb, is that question for me?
The analogy doesn't work because in the case of Iraq the invasion caused the deaths.
Posted by: david mizner on October 13, 2006 5:29 PM“This is a question any supporter of the war should be able, and required, to answer.”
Agree completely with the principle you’re alluding to, David. Those of us who supported going into Iraq ought to own up to every negative outcome the policy risked creating or actually brought about — the tragic deaths of tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqis included.
But by the same token, those who opposed going into Iraq ought to have done the same thing: acknowledged unequivocally the various risks associated with NOT deposing Saddam (as they were understood at the time), and expressed clearly the number of deaths they were willing to accept (as the price for not invading) had any number of alternative histories unfolded.
The truth is, the vast majority on either side would have been unwilling then — and would still be unwilling now — to own honestly both sides of their position, the good and the bad.
For me personally, back in 2002-3, I was prepared to accept the short/med-term loss of foreign good will, the unavoidable deaths of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, and even the risk of American failure — all to counteract the threat of a potentially WMD-armed Saddam (or even WMD-ambitioned Saddam) in a post-9/11 world. Neither course of action looked good, but the one in which Saddam stayed in power looked worse.
Today, looking forward, it’s a question of how much risk there is in exiting vs. how much in staying put. Unfortunately, I’m not convinced the death toll would be less if we pulled out.
Bill Dalasio, I haven't seen a single liberal defend this study as gospel, and either have you.
You should get out more, then. Because I've seen several do it on this site alone, and countless more doing it in the forums on left-wing websites like DailyKos. Then there's Indymedia -- eesh.
Posted by: Dan on October 13, 2006 5:55 PMdavid mizner,
You indicate that you're not defending the study, and to your credit seem to admit that it might be off by a factor of 50%(hundreds, not tens of thousands). That much is well and good, and you personally should be credited with that . Nevertheless, I've seen four iterations of this go through, where your allies seem to be trying to defend the integrity of the study, when its clearly bogus.
Nevertheless, no one is denying the cost of the war in terms of lost Iraqi lives. Certainly fewer than are defending the Lancet study as a reasonable estimate. I do however, feel the need to focus on marginal costs, which your discussion seems to omit. The fact of the matter, however, is that we don't know what those marginal costs are. The blunt fact of the matter was that peaceful democratic change from within for countries like Iraq or N. Korea or Sudan is much more a pipedream than peaceful partition is. And I'm sorry to break this to you but your concern for the Sunnis strikes me as much like worrying about the poor plantation owners denied their property by that bastard Lincoln. The fact is though, that we don't know the fate of Iraq absent invasion. The "democratic change" you envision might likely have been a worse free-for-all than they're seeing now (and incidentally where most of the Iraqi deaths are coming from). The sanctions regime might likely have fallen apart, clearing the way for Hussein to resume shopping for WMDs. You ask how supporters don't lie awake in bed worrying about the consequences of American action. How do you not lie awake in bed at night worrying about the consequences of American inaction? Or are we to treat that as an act of God?
Posted by: Bill Dalasio on October 13, 2006 5:56 PMDavid;
The question was to anyone on the site who chose to think about it. Thank you for answering.
"The analogy doesn't work because in the case of Iraq the invasion caused the deaths."
I think the people doing the killing are responsible for the killing, and I would be surprised if many of the same people who used to do the killing for Saddam aren't still doing the same thing today. Of course, they're being opposed by Shiite groups using the same methods of war on civilian populations.
I submit that the analogy is proper precisely because the same argument could (and certainly would) be used in my 'alternative future' scenario as a post hoc condemnation of the use of military force against the militias in Darfur.
If all murders committed after the invasion are blamed on the invasion, then all the murderers have to do is keep killing to retroactively delegitimize the invasion. That doesn't seem morally reasonable to me. If white southerners had gone on a kill crazy rampage against black southerners in retaliation for the Civil War (and vice versa), would it have retroactively delegitimized that war?
On the main topic: if the Lancet article is correct, on average roughly one out of two Americans who has served in Iraq has killed an Iraqi. I could just ask the other members of my National Guard unit how many of them killed someone. It's not rigorous, but spot checks of data aren't valueless.
Posted by: Seb on October 13, 2006 6:11 PMDan, I said "gospel" as in the indisputable truth. Lots of people are defending it as a legitimate piece of work.
And Bill, I didn't say I wasn't defending the study. By all relatively impartial accounts, it's a serious piece of scholarship. That doesn't mean it's accurate. It could, in fact, underestimate the deaths. In any case, we should all agree that the number of deaths is in the hundreds of thousands.
Further, Bill, I wasn't for a second claiming that democratic evolution/revolution wasn't bloody. I was saying that it has a chance of succeeding. The under-acknowledged truth is that a national-building occupation like Iraq has never succeeded in the history of the world. Why anyone thought it would in the heart of the Muslim world is beyond me.
My concern about the marginalization of the Sunnis wasn't, primarily, humanitarian, although comparing them to plantation owners is absurd. Relatively few Sunnis were part of Saddam's regime. I was saying that shutting Sunnis out of oil money is a recipe for permanent civil war.
All this could be seen before the war. You have to pick your battles. Iran was a greater threat to world peace yet also held a greater potential for democracy. Now it's stronger and the reform movement there is weaker, thanks to Bush.
Bill Dalasio, I haven't seen a single liberal defend this study as gospel, and either have you. What've we pointed out is the effort to deny and conceal the cost of the war that you (I assume) support.
This is known as 'moving the goalposts', or at best, hearkens from the Fake-But-Accruate school of defense arguments.
The study in question is not an allegorical revelation from God, designed to speak in figure and type so that we might consider the cost of the war. It is nominally a scientific study showing actual numerical estimates of casualties and their origins. It is therefore fair to criticize it on any relevant factual grounds, including the revealed biases of those responsible for vetting it, and refuse to accept the numbers as useful if there is evidence that the study authors could have achieved a similar level of precision by quoting yesterday's lottery numbers.
The cost of the war, we can and should speak about anytime. But, the attempts by certain liberals to hold this particular study above reasonable factual criticism (yes, those liberals exist, get out more), for reasons only they can explain, merely cheapens the very debate you were hoping to have by chasing away the moderate center.
Posted by: anony-mouse on October 13, 2006 6:37 PMDavid Mizner,
I'm actually surprised with some of the stuff you seem to be trying to peddle here:
The under-acknowledged truth is that a national-building occupation like Iraq has never succeeded in the history of the world.
I guess that must be news to the Germans, Japanese (U.S. post-WWII), and Indians (18th century Britain).
By all relatively impartial accounts, it's a serious piece of scholarship.
If you define relatively impartial accounts to exclude those who disagree with its conclusions, this may be the case. On the other hand, the scholarship in question has been shown to be full of holes. In effect, the authors' confidence interval appears both biased on the upside and much wider than they acknowledge.
You have to pick your battles. Iran was a greater threat to world peace yet also held a greater potential for democracy. Now it's stronger and the reform movement there is weaker, thanks to Bush.
Okay. Lets see what happens when the rubber hits the road: If President Bush had launched a strike against Iran, rather than Iraq, would you have supported it? If the situation in Iraq eases significantly in the next year or so, will you support an invasion of Iran? Please note, these are yes or no questions. I'm not really all that interested in your reasons, just your willingness to move against the battle you're claiming we should have chosen.
Posted by: Bill Dalasio on October 13, 2006 6:54 PM"How do you not know? How do supporters of this war not lie in bed awake at night and do the moral math?"
You tell me what value to assign to an Iraqi life, and what value to assign to an American life, and what future value to assign to those whose lives are NOT lost because of our efforts, and I might be able to begin to think about an answer to your question.
I'll tell you what the war in Iraq is worth to me: my life or my son's life. I was in the Marines for 28 years, enlisted and officer, active duty and reserves, and my son has been in the Marines for 10 years now. I was activated for DESERT STORM and my son returned this spring from al Ramadi. From our perspective, this war is worth fighting.
And please, when you do these "moral" comparisons, factor in the lives that were lost under Saddam and would continue to be lost if he were still in power. (And that doesn't count the lives saved from concentrating terrorists in Iraq where we can and do kill them instead of letting them be free to enter other countries and wreak havoc.
Posted by: Rex on October 13, 2006 6:59 PM. . .lives saved from concentrating terrorists in Iraq where we can and do kill them instead of letting them be free to enter other countries and wreak havoc.
Oh, please. Any terrorists who think they can do damage in other countries are going to go to those countries and do it. Our presence in Iraq isn't some sort of magnet that draws them irresistibly in. The terrorists operating over there are the ones who were spawned there by our invasion.
Posted by: Rex Little on October 13, 2006 7:30 PM"Oh, please. Any terrorists who think they can do damage in other countries are going to go to those countries and do it. ... The terrorists operating over there are the ones who were spawned there by our invasion."
That's a lot of certainty, right about there. I wonder where you get your information from?
Are you absolutely sure that the people who have been murdering their fellow Iraqis (since your statement denies the possibility that any of the terrorists are/were foreigners) since the invasion hadn't had any practice before the invasion?
Posted by: Seb on October 13, 2006 8:26 PMBill Dalasio: When you write, "Specifically, no amount of evidence casting doubt on their conclusions ever even remotely impugns the theory unless it absolutely, definitively proves said theory wrong," you're actually describing war supporters. The fact that we're arguing about how really screwed-up Iraq is and not about how really great things are going should tell you something. Actually it is telling you something, but you're too worried about not having your theories impugned to realize it.
Posted by: Ted on October 13, 2006 8:27 PMYou know, furthermore, "Rex Little" seems a little bit disrespectful (towards "Rex") to me. So unless you've earned the right to disrespect the military, or I'm mistaken about your intent with that name, I think you should change it.
Posted by: Seb on October 13, 2006 8:31 PMTed,
While I suspect you're being disingenuous, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. By what rational standard does continuing to support a war that is not going well constitute being impervious to contrary evidence?
Posted by: Bill Dalasio on October 13, 2006 8:50 PMDan, I said "gospel" as in the indisputable truth. Lots of people are defending it as a legitimate piece of work.
Lots of people are accepting it as *true*.
As for whether they're accepting it as indisputably true, well, an awful lot of them are responding to any attempt to claim that the results *aren't* true by engaging in ad hominem attacks against the questioners.
So far as I'm concerned, anyone who thinks something is true and refuses to engage with anybody who feels otherwise meets the standard for believing something is the "gospel truth". And right now that describes most of the blogospheric Left.
Posted by: Dan on October 13, 2006 9:44 PMBill, I don't think I claimed that war supporters were impervious to contrary evidence. Clearly it pisses them off. My point was that if anybody is ignoring (or trying to ignore) what's in front of their face, it's people who thought (and continue to think) that invading Iraq was a good idea. There's plenty of evidence that it wasn't. There's not much that it was. At what point will you stop and think, "Maybe I shouldn't continue to support this thing that isn't working"? (Or AT LEAST "Maybe I was wrong to have supported it in the first place"?) Will it take 655,000 dead people to prove your theory absolutely, definitely wrong?
Posted by: Ted on October 13, 2006 9:58 PMTed makes a good point. For all the claims of the war supporters on this this thread that they need to face up to the cost of this war, not one of them has said what number of deaths would be too many. I'll ask them one more time. For a stable sort-of-democracy that is close allies with Iran--that's the unlikely but best case scenario at this point, no?--would you spend a million lives? Yes or no?
And Bill Dalasio, if you think the nation-building experiments like Japan and Germany are like Iraq, I'm afraid we can't have an an intelligent discussion here.
And I wasn't saying we should invade Iran; I used battle as a figue of speech. My point was simple; Iran was--it might still be--the best hope for democracy in the Middle East, and we should have done everything in our power to support the reformers--human rights groups, nongovernmental organizations and everyone else that could form the underpinnings of a democratic revolution. You'd think that conservatives who like to claim credit for the fall of the eastern block would have a little more faith in the possibiblity and power of revolution. It's hell but it's sure beats invasion.
"I was saying that shutting Sunnis out of oil money is a recipe for permanent civil war."
More likely, the opposite. Without treasure, arms and ammo are hard to come by. The insurgents might be willing, but they would no longer be able.
Partition with exclusion from oil would provide the Sunni Triangle with a carrot for cooperation within a federal Iraq.
Posted by: Steve on October 14, 2006 5:16 AM"How do you not know? How do supporters of this war not lie in bed awake at night and do the moral math?"
Let me answer from the perspective of someone who didn't support the invasion, but (marginally) supports the continuing presence.
The cost of leaving has a low, but significant chance of facilitating a genocide-lite type civil war. (Yes, there's already a civil war, but think *organized* slaughter.) The continued American presence prevents that.
Now it's entirely possible that in the absence of Americans, the Iraqi's would find their own peaceful solution, but the worst case is so horrendous that I am willing to see the current course continued, unsuccessful as it has been.
For me, a less violent analogy is the police being called dozens of times for a couple's near violent domestic disputes. Perhaps if the police didn't show, they'd have to resolve their difficulties themselves. But the small chance that one of them would end up dead is too high a cost to justify failing to respond the next call. (Even if the couple is unappreciative of the intervention.)
My problem is that I don't see a moral case for exit when the chance of massive catastrophe is so sigificant.
I will ask those supporting immediate withdrawal: If the worst case does occur, what is America's moral responsibility to the Iraqi victims? Allow those fleeing to immigrate here?
Posted by: Tom West on October 14, 2006 5:41 AM"[H]ow many deaths would be too high a price to pay?
How many deaths would there have been in the absence of an invasion?
With sanctions in place over a hundred thousand would have died each year.
Without sanctions in place the Hussein family regime would have been able to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. There are about 6.5 million people in Israel or 8 million people in New York City.
With or without sanctions, the Hussein family regime would have remained or collapsed. If it collapsed, how many people would have died in the ensuing regional conflict involving Syria, Turkey and Iran? For a ball park number, the amount of deaths during the Iran-Iraq was over 1 million. If it did not collapse then we are back to the first and second propositions.
Before the invasion, the sanctions regime was unraveling. Several millions would have to die before the invasion was not worth it on humanitarian grounds.
Posted by: Alan Klein on October 14, 2006 5:58 AMAround a million people died in the Iran-Iraq war. The I-IW lasted 10 years and involved two heavily armed armies that were among the largest standing armies of the era. The impartial "scholars" at the Lancet would have us believe that 666,000 people have died without heavy artillery and without pitched tank battles involving hundreds of thousands in the last three years.
Bullshit.
But if so, all this proves is that the insurgents are evil scumbags that need to be crushed with extreme prejudice and without delay.
Posted by: David on October 14, 2006 6:11 AM"And Bill Dalasio, if you think the nation-building experiments like Japan and Germany are like Iraq, I'm afraid we can't have an an intelligent discussion here."
Perhaps we could have an intelligent discussion if you would explain the difference, and tell us what sample you had in mind. You imply that similar nation-building exercises have occurred often enough for us to know their probability of success, yet you don't give even one example.
Alan Klein - you did a great job laying out the likely alternatives. All the Iraqis had to look forward to was his sons taking over after Saddam's death - would it have been better if the two sick sons had cooperated, or fought for control? Either way, their future wasn't bright.
One of Bush's first initiatives after coming into office, in the spring of 2001, was to try to improve the Iraq sanctions system so that food and medical supplies could get through more easily (and military supplies couldn't). But it was blocked - Russia, France and China were against an Iraqi sanctions regime that actually worked.
Posted by: Ann on October 14, 2006 9:41 AMJane Galt said: "Long drawn out civil war would be much worse. But I question how long a civil war could be drawn out. A random grab of historical ones from my brain indicates that 5-6 years seems to be the upper bound for most civil wars[.]"
Angola--the Civil War started right after independence was granted in 1974 and ended in 2002.
Colombia--nearly continuous civil war since 1948.
Afghanistan--civil war began in 1978 and is still continuing. It really never stopped, despite Afghanistan being occupied at various times by two foreign armies.
Will Iraq be like any of these sorry examples? I hope not, but it seems entirely possible.
Posted by: RWB on October 14, 2006 1:04 PMFirst let me say that I appreciate this chance to chat with supporters of the war...
"You imply that similar nation-building exercises have occurred often enough for us to know their probability of success, yet you don't give even one example."
Sorry if I wasn't clear. No, we don't have a sample to go by; an experiment like this invasion/occupation has never even been attempted--for good reason. Germany, for one, had a history of democracy, and, God knows, Germans saw themselves as a nation. Japan was and is probably the most homogenous country on earth. Oh, and Japan and Germany were defeated, lacking the capacity to mount serious insurgencies. So forget nation-building for a moment: very few, if any, occupying armies have defeated insurgencies. As for the nation-building part, Iraq wasn't a country-it was held together by force--so the thought the we could go there and impose coherence was, well--you see the results. People still don't have an appreciation for just how radical this undertaking is. Saddam was a brutal dictator, an immoral thug, but his evil doesn't make us immune to the laws of history, or common sense.
So now Iraq seems to be breaking apart, and I have to say, commentators on this thread are pretty sanguine about this development. Jane raises the possibility of peaceful partition, which is a little like peaceful war. And Steve writes:
"Without treasure, arms and ammo are hard to come by. The insurgents might be willing, but they would no longer be able. Partition with exclusion from oil would provide the Sunni Triangle with a carrot for cooperation within a federal Iraq."
Leaving aside Steve's conflation of Sunnis with insurgents, Michael Ware, who's done some of the best on-the-ground reporing in Iraq, says that Al-Qaeda essentially runs large swaths of Anbar Provence, which the U.S has given up trying to take back. You better believe Al-Qaeda in Iraq wants partition. And what happens to Baghdad? That's the homebase for Al-Sadr and millions of other Shia.
Which is a long way of saying that there's a civil war going on in Iraq. That's the most salient point: the U.S. troops are caught in the middle of the a civil war. I promise you that an occupying army has never in history quelled a civil war.
Tom West wants us to stay; his concerns are legit and, I promise, shared by every reasonable person who advocates withdrawal. But the slaughter is already organized and it is increasing. So we stay to do what? Kill and be killed? Build up the security forces? Well, those secuirty forces are becoming part and parcel of the Shia- dominated, Sunni-oppressing government. Make no mistake: we're funding Shia terrorists. In other words, we are, on the one hand, helping the militant Shia by building up the security forces, and on the other hand, fighting them militarily. Reports suggest we're going to go after Al Sadr forces in Sadr City, and I'm terrified to see the results. If you want to talk about the risks of saying, how about a mass unprising of Shia against U.S. forces? Remember, most Iraqis want us out.
Rex asks me to compare the moral costs of allowing Saddam to stay in power with the moral costs of the invasion. First, this wasn't Bush's main argument for war; if it had been, we would never have gone to war. But, as it turns out, it's the least bad case, the only one not in shreds, the moral case.
But I opposed this war, and continue to oppose it, because I have never believed the we had the capacity to replace Saddam with something better, and because I thought there was a high possibility that something worse would emerge--like a civil war, like a theocratic government friendly to Iran. The war has turned Iran into one of the most powerful countries in the world, the beast of the Middle East.
I will say this, though: what we have allowed to happen might have happened anyway, in one form or another: A violent Shia takeover, with slaughter of Sunnis. You can even argue that this was the best case scenario (though as I've said, I had hopes for a revolution in Iran, first) but if this had happened without a full-blown American invasion (surely the CIA could have helped), we wouldn't have lost thousands of Americans, hundreds of billions of dollars, moral authority, etc, etc, etc.
Oh, and we wouldn't have given such a HUGE present to Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda: remember them?
If you'd understood at the outset that this war would strenghten both Iran and Al Qaeda, would you have supported it?
Posted by: david mizner on October 14, 2006 1:06 PMThis isn't Jane Galt's fault, but the absence of logic amongst her rightist blog commentators is genuinely appalling.
This isn't a DailyKos diary. It's a casualty estimate that used standard methodolgy, basically identical to the methodology used to estimate deaths in Darfur that I'm sure Dean Esmay is ready to foam at the mouth about. It was run by Johns Hopkins, a medical institute of unquestionable professionalism and minimal poltiical role, and published in a leading peer-reviewed medical journal. In other words, there is no reason in the world to dispute, lacking any evidence whatsoever, its basic methological accuracy.
And here's Dean Esmay:
This confirms more than anything that the study is a bunch of politicized crap.
What a joke you are, Dean. The guy holds opinions - like every other human being that ever walked the earth. Are your analytical abilities so pathetic, and are you so tempermentally fragile, that you deem to base arguments against a piece of science on the fact that someone involved with its creation is anti-war?
So what? You're an alledged anti-fascist. Shall I now disregard everything factual you ever have to say about facsists, given that you have no claim to objectivity whatsoever? I mean, I can pretty much count on you to just make sh*t up about fascists, right? Because you have an agenda?
If you want to level a scientifique critique of the study's methodology, let's hear it. If you want to attempt to argue a flimsy logical argument as to why the results seem wrong to your "gut instinct", go ahead, although most of the ones I've seen so far are based on unsupportable assumptions and factually incorrect data.
If you want to engage in emotional venting about how much you hate anti-war people, then it's a free blogosphere, but rational people everywhere will disregard your opinions as worthless. This has nothing to do with the author's political opinions and everything to do with the work of science he has produced.
Bring it. But before you do so, do something crazy - read the PDF of the study's results and their explanatory paper first.
glasnost:
"It was run by Johns Hopkins, a medical institute of unquestionable professionalism and minimal poltiical role, and published in a leading peer-reviewed medical journal. In other words, there is no reason in the world to dispute, lacking any evidence whatsoever, its basic methological accuracy."
The main reason is that it gave a result far above other, existing counts (none of which are definitive). If I get five results, four of which roughly agree and one of which differs by a factor of five, I'm going to look sceptically at that result, especially if the person who measured it has a non-professional reason to want a specific result. It is VERY easy, in science (to say nothing of the topics in medical journals), to get the result you want.
If, to use your example, someone publishes an identical study tomorrow that shows the death rate in Darfur was 4 million over the last two years instead of 400k (for example), will your reaction be to say "Well, it was published in a peer-reviewed journal and used standard methodology, so it must be right" or will it be "well, that seems a lot higher than the other numbers I've heard, I wonder why?". What if that reviewer is on the record as passionately committed to forcing international action on Darfur?
The other (related and already mentioned) reason is that I tend to distrust science that gives the scientist an answer so clearly in accord with their political views. The same thing goes with respect to their financial interests: you have to declare financial conflicts of interest simply because it is assumed that results you get will be questionable if you have a reason to influence the data one way or another. Well, this group clearly has a political conflict of interest in doing their science, and they got a result in accord with their political views. All that says is that scepticism about their result should be a little higher than it would otherwise be, not that they're automatically wrong.
Again, I am not saying that they lied, or fudged the data, or even that their result is wrong. I am saying that you are incorrect about there being "no reason in the world to dispute, lacking any evidence whatsoever, its basic methological accuracy." I do think you're right about some people being emotionally committed to agreeing with or disagreeing with this paper, though.
Peer-reviewed, incidentally, doesn't mean "double checked". Reviewers don't check the data.
Posted by: Seb on October 14, 2006 3:29 PM"What a joke you are, Dean. The guy holds opinions - like every other human being that ever walked the earth. Are your analytical abilities so pathetic, and are you so tempermentally fragile, that you deem to base arguments against a piece of science on the fact that someone involved with its creation is anti-war?"
Actually, yes. Mine are too: I definitely base some of my arguments against a piece of statistical analysis of survey data (please, please, don't call that 'science': as a scientist that bugs me) on the basis of the prejudice of the person involved in the measurement. Do you really think that scientists are so above human propensities to misuse data that they can be trusted to always be right? If so, then I'm a scientist, and you should therefore believe everything I tell you. I promise my opinions are all scientifically based. Ready?
Anyway, the point is, that the person's scientific opinions are relevant. If a person is extremely idealogically committed to a specific political position, his pronouncements on that political topic should take that into account. This study is such an announcement, in my opinion.
I could be wrong, and I re-state, I don't see anything wrong with the data analysis. I'm a biochemist, not an epidemioligist. I don't mix politics with my science. I feel it degrades both.
Posted by: Seb on October 14, 2006 7:16 PMMeant to say:
"Anyway, the point is, that the person's POLITICAL opinions are relevant"
Sorry.
Posted by: Seb on October 14, 2006 7:21 PMYou know, furhermore, this is something that irritates me about the Lancet and medical journals in general. I think their political opinions inform their scientific opinions and influence them more than do those of real scientists. That's ok, lots of people aren't scientists, but most people who arent don't pretend to to be, either.
Anyway, take that into account when you're considering my opinion about medical journal articles.
Posted by: Seb on October 14, 2006 7:31 PMFor a stable sort-of-democracy that is close allies with Iran--that's the unlikely but best case scenario at this point, no?--would you spend a million lives? Yes or no?
The best case scenario is a stable democracy that is not a close ally of Iran. Another good scenario is three separate democracies -- Kurd, Shiite and Sunni. You might believe neither of those things is possible, but that's not my problem.
Now, how many Iraqi lives is that worth? However many it takes.
Posted by: Dan on October 14, 2006 8:18 PMDan: "Now, how many Iraqi lives is that worth? However many it takes."
This is progress. I finally got an answer out a war supporter. For Dan a democracy (not allied with Iran? BAAAHAAA) is worth the life of every last Iraqi, 21 million people. I suppose that's one way to solve the problem of violence, have everyone die. I'll assume not all you agree with this lunacy, but it reveals something telling about the mindset of the 35 percent of the country that still supports the disaster.
Posted by: david mizner on October 14, 2006 11:40 PMFor Dan a democracy (not allied with Iran? BAAAHAAA)
The idea that a democratic Iraq would want to ally with a more-powerful, nuclear-armed dictatorship right next door is idiotic, especially since we'll have troops stationed there for the indefinite future (as we did with Germany and Japan). Iran has nothing to offer Iraq.
is worth the life of every last Iraqi, 21 million people. I suppose that's one way to solve the problem of violence, have everyone die.
Iraqi violence isn't the problem. They could all kill each other -- why should we give a shit? Violence against the United States by Muslims is the problem. Democracy in the middle east is the solution to that problem.
Muslims no longer have the right to live in an unfree society. We've seen what that leads to.
Posted by: Dan on October 15, 2006 5:18 AMglasnost:
It was run by Johns Hopkins, a medical institute of unquestionable professionalism and minimal poltiical role...
Nonsense. The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health is a noted academic proponent of gun control, receiving funding from the Joyce Foundation and other gun control supporters. The profession of Public Health is a very politicized field.
Posted by: Kevin P. on October 15, 2006 2:10 PM"Muslims no longer have the right to live in an unfree society"
Brilliant, Just Brilliant.
Dan you have just distilled the problem with Muslim societies into a clear concise statement that legitimizes our war with islamism.
"They don't have a right to live in an unfree society."
What a beautiful self-correcting goal for the rest of us.
thedaddy
Seb:
All that says is that scepticism about their result should be a little higher than it would otherwise be, not that they're automatically wrong.
I'm sorry, but there's a fundamental difference between an opinion and a scientific study. If a pharma-industry funded research institute conducts tests on individuals and their tests demonstrate that Vioxx shows zero negative health effects, there financial (substituting for ideological here) biases can lead one to be suspicious, sure. But that suspicion *by itself* is no basis for argument. A contrary study may be the basis for the argument. Solid logical observations about inherent methodological weaknesses - the study only observed the patients for three weeks - are legitimate arguments - (though they may, on a case-by-case basis, be clearly irrelevant or even disingenuous). But arguing against the study data based on who the people are that made it without anything else to go on is hackery. I was highlighting hackery.
The main reason is that it gave a result far above other, existing counts (none of which are definitive). If I get five results, four of which roughly agree and one of which differs by a factor of five,
By comparison, this argument offers a logical and evidentiary comparison with other empirical data as a reason for doubting the study. That's an ok *type* of reason to doubt the study. However, the actual facts behind this specific opinion are wrong.
There haven't been four or five other sampling studies, Seb. There's the Iraq BodyCount, which counts dead people listed in English-language news reports. That is a completely different methodology than sampling. The few other estimates out there, like Brookings, have been done the same way - media reports. It's a logical absurdity to suggest that by counting the English-language media reports of deaths you will successfully count everyone dying in Iraq. Do I have to detail the reasons why?
This study stands alone as the only investigation even pretending to be trying to determine the *actual* number of people killed in the Iraq war over the past three years. There's one exception to this - a UN survey that estimated the first 6 months of the war and found more than twice the deaths suggested by IraqBodyCount at the time.
And that's the end. So it's not deviating from four or five surveys of similar type. It's the only survey of its type. It differs from a counting of deaths in media reports. There's no reason to expect these two number sets to be the same. Again, I think you're smart enough to know why.
And Jeb, I appreciate your commitment not to mix science with politics, but since this is the only study out there, it looks like all the "genuinely neutral" folk can't be bothered to get their hands dirty on the question. Thus it falls to those motivated to find out the answer.
Nobody's neutral. But everyone can perform can follow established, objective, scientific procedures. When someone demonstrates that Lancet hasn't done so, they can contest the results. But generalized suspicion- and ideological-labeling arguments without further basis only serve to unmask the person making them as not a professional.
It's funny to watch lefties wring their hands about the death toll in Iraq, since it's obvious they don't give a damn about any of the people who have died -- not Iraqis, and certainly not American soldiers.
They want the Lancet study to be true, because the higher the death toll, the larger the cudgel they can use to beat George Bush's head in. Impeach! Impeach! Hillary in '08!
Pathetic.
Posted by: RMc on October 15, 2006 6:41 PMThis is beautiful. RMc claims opponents of the war don't care about the lives of Muslims, right after a fellow supporter of the war--Dan--admits that he doesn't care about the lives of Muslims.
Get your lies straight, idiots.
Posted by: david mizner on October 15, 2006 9:13 PMThis is beautiful. RMc claims opponents of the war don't care about the lives of Muslims, right after a fellow supporter of the war--Dan--admits that he doesn't care about the lives of Muslims. Get your lies straight, idiots
First of all, the two statements don't contradict one another. The fact that the "anti-war" faction doesn't give a rat's ass about Muslim lives doesn't mean that everyone in the pro-war faction is concerned about Muslim lives. It just means that "anti-war" types are hypocrites when they bemoan the loss of Iraqi lives. You don't care about the corpses, except inasmuch as they are politically convenient for you. The same thing happened during the Vietnam war, when the Left stopped caring about dead Vietnamese and Cambodians once the United States stopped being involved in killing them.
Secondly, there are countless reasons for supporting this war, and different people are motivated by different ones. Some people really want to help everyone in the world live in free, democratic societies, and that's the goal they have for the war. Those people care about Muslim lives. Others, like me, want Muslim terrorism to stop, and see the democratization of the middle east as merely a means to that end. We don't particularly care about the body count, so long as the bodies aren't American. The purpose of the United States military is to keep Amerians safe -- not the rest of the world. In short, there's no need to "get our stories straight" because we're under no obligation to have the same reasons for supporting the war.
Finally, if you think it is a "lie" that I don't care about Iraqi fatalities, why are you criticizing me for not caring about Iraqi fatalities? Besides the obvious explanation of your being a typical leftie troll with no interest in making a coherent point, that is.
Posted by: Dan on October 15, 2006 11:26 PMYou folks might want to expand your sphere of influence some. You can pretend in your blindered-world of conservativism all that you want that Lancet's survey is flawed, but in the real world the model they used was sound and is accepted by legitimate statisticians the world over as probably close to the real number dead.
America lost over 400,000 men fighting the Civil War, with at least that many more seriously wounded. Was it worth it? It depends on how bad you think slavery is.
More than anything else I've seen here, this comment drives me crazy. Measure 'worth.' People who lived and died 150 years ago, and the value of their lives are cavalierly measured and dismissed. People whom you don't know on the other side of the world are prisoners in their own war-torn nation, risking life and limb just trying to get through another day until the U.S is gone and they can have their country back. Is it worth it to you??!?!? Our own Marie Antoinette, hiding out as Jane Galt.
The Civil War could have been avoided had the government paid slave owners for their 'property' - slaves. The government wouldn't, half a million people died, and the wounds have yet to heal almost 150 years later.
The damage that we've imposed on Iraq, before we put Saddam in and after we took him out, is going to bite us on the ass for decades to come. Our policies, as pushed on us all by conservatives since the end of WWII, of empire and an oil economy, are spelling the end of America. Conservatives can't get along with more than half of their own countrymen, much less the rest of the world. Instead of developing sustainable energy, conservatives are forcing us to stay with an energy source that is polluting the environment to death.
Why aren't any of you over there, in Iraq, with all of your so-called support for Bush and passion for his war? If you're so gung-ho for this war, and the coming war in Iran and N. Korea, why aren't you putting your own asses on the line?
You shame all of us. Americans are going to be paying, for generations, for the damages that conservatives have wrought on the world. The U.S. is the only country that has used nuclear weapons against others. For all of the rhetoric, about how nobody else can be trusted with nuclear bombs, we're the one who couldn't be trusted with them.
May God have mercy on you conservatives, for what you've done to his children and his creations.
Get your lies straight, idiots.
Gee, Davey, frustrated much? Maybe you should let Daddy back on the computer, mmmkay?
The U.S. is the only country that has used nuclear weapons against others.
Yeah, we all know neither the Nazis nor Japan would've used the A-Bomb on the US had they gotten their hands on it first. And the Soviets didn't nuke the US/Europe because they knew they'd be obliterated; they held off because they were just too darn moral.
Uh-huh. Right. Sure.
May God have mercy on you conservatives, for what you've done to his children and his creations.
FDR and Harry Truman were conservatives? Gosh, you learn something new every day around here...
Posted by: RMc on October 16, 2006 8:44 AM"The Civil War could have been avoided had the government paid slave owners for their 'property' - slaves." That deserves so many different responses:
1) Southerners keep claiming the war wasn't about slavery. (I'd say that their break with the Union was actually about pushing slavery into new lands, including places like Kansas and Nebraska where the south's slave based cotton and tobacco agriculture wasn't going to work. When Lincoln was elected, there'd already been a low-intensity war going on for several years in those territories.)
2) Where would the freed slaves go? Most of the Southern states banned freedmen. Most of the North wasn't very welcoming, either.
3) Money. The federal government was perpetually short of it in the 19th Century - except for the period when Lincoln collected an income tax while bullying the courts into not noticing that it was unconstitutional until the war was over.
"May God have mercy on you conservatives, for what you've done to his children and his creations."
There's no question that by far the most murders in the 20th century were through liberalism. Add up the deaths caused by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and other leftists, and you'll see that conservatives have far less to answer for.
Where is your anguish for North Koreans? To this day, there are children being put into concentration camps because their grandfather used the wrong toilet paper (newspaper that might possibly have had Kim Jong Il's picture on it), all in the name of liberalism. The population is down close to 10% in the dozen years since Kim Jong Il took power.
I'm not endorsing this idea of putting everyone into only one of two groups and then comparing numbers. But if we do it for the last 100 years, liberals look far worse than conservatives, even if you rank Hitler as conservative (which is questionable).
Posted by: Ann on October 16, 2006 12:43 PMAnn: you're not a smart person. In order not to embarrass yourself and conservatives in general, you should not post comments here or anywhere else. Trust me.
Posted by: david mizner on October 16, 2006 1:26 PM"Ann: you're not a smart person."
Well, that's helpful. Are you questioning the deathtoll under communism, or questioning whether communism can be considered liberal?
I was responding to Jack's claim that conservatives have caused excessive damage. By most counts, liberalism was much worse in the 20th century. If I'm wrong on that, perhaps you could explain it to me in very simple terms.
Posted by: Ann on October 16, 2006 2:26 PMAnn, sorry about my comment. I had a spasm of nastiness. It happens.
I just don't think it's honest to associate liberalism or conservativism with despotism or totalitarianism. Do conservatives own Aparteid, which took the lives of millions of blacks? I don't think so, do you?
Posted by: david mizner on October 16, 2006 2:42 PM
the US may be said to have "caused" all the deaths in iraq since the invasion in the strict sense that the world is the way it is because of what has gone before. but that tells us nothing more than the equivalent assertion that sadam caused the deaths by toying with the UN, hillary clinton caused the deaths by voting for the authority to wage war, etc.
on anything other than that fairly useless level, it seems like the vast bulk of whatever number of deaths were caused by the iraqis/insurgents/etc. they can claim that the US made them do it, just as the nazis can claim some basis for slaughtering the jews, but that doesn't make it a meaningful response.
why aren't the iraqis/insurgents/etc. responsible for the deaths they have caused directly and the US responsible for the deaths its soldiers have caused directly?
(and, yes, the left has killed far more than the right, as someone just noted, and hitler was born from the left, leaving aside where he ultimately ended up (which looked alot like the left).)
Posted by: dj superflat on October 16, 2006 2:45 PMI just don't think it's honest to associate liberalism or conservativism with despotism or totalitarianism. Do conservatives own Aparteid, which took the lives of millions of blacks? I don't think so, do you?
It depends. Personally accountable for the deaths, no; but a widely-tested philosophy can be judged by the typical results, and those who press the philosophy open themselves up for some degree of blame.
All strains of political thought invariable give a proof positive somewhere that ridiculous excess will produce negative outcomes. But at minimum, those who support far-left ideals must give account for the substantial number of testbeds that have repeatedly returned similar, negative results. It would seem that the necessary concentration of state power for implementation has almost invariably produced a corrupt and abusive state, and very high body counts.
The definition of insanity is oft quoted as, "Doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different result." And yet some people continue to propose concentrating state power toward a particular set of socio-economic ends, offering that "this time, we'll get it right."
Sure, whatever -- e.g., maybe a Swedish style social structure CAN work in a federalized, demographically-diverse country of 300 million. Maybe it IS okay to let nutcase dictators your country helped create lurk untouched in the back of the global cupboard, long past their expiration date. Just take note that the sum price for getting it wrong, to date, makes 655k (whether real or fictitious) look like pocket change.
Posted by: anony-mouse on October 16, 2006 3:32 PMDavid -
We've all said things that we regretted, or at least that we should have worded more carefully. No harm done.
And yes, I agree that it's excessive to condemn whole groups based on extreme fringes, which is why I said this - "I'm not endorsing this idea of putting everyone into only one of two groups and then comparing numbers."
I was responding to Jack's comment, which blamed "conservatives" for all kinds of damage to people and the environment. He implied that, if there were no conservatives, then Iraqis would be living blissfully happy lives under Saddam, and the rest of the world would be a happy, unspoiled paradise.
But I probably should've just ignored his rant.
Posted by: Ann on October 16, 2006 3:59 PMFour experts reviewed the paper and recommneded it for publication; how does one person's opinions about the morality of this war sow any doubts about the opinions of those four experts?
Here's another question: let's pretend - just for giggles, you know - that the report was accurate. Again, just hypothetically, okay?
If we were *pretending* that 650,000 people died over a nation that presented no meaningful threat to the outside world, wouldn't it be sensible to pretend that people who care about others would be outraged? I mean, 650,000 dead bodies, dead dreams, dead futures... millions upon millions of families and friendships hurt... untold numbers of possibilities shut down.
And it turns out that the WMD intel was never really quite as strong as was pretended.
Wouldn't that be pretty upsetting, if you could imagine that? If you could kinda-sorta-feel what it's like to have that many people die?
I suppose I could sum this up by asking this question: are you saying he's wrong for being angry at all? Or that he's wrong for being angry without sufficient evidence? If the latter, what evidence would be sufficient?
Posted by: Longhairedweirdo on October 16, 2006 4:24 PMThe damage that we've imposed on Iraq, before we put Saddam in and after we took him out
We put Saddam in? In what timeline?
'If we were *pretending* that 650,000 people died over a nation that presented no meaningful threat to the outside world, wouldn't it be sensible to pretend that people who care about others would be outraged?'
You mean if we were (a) pretending that 650,000 died, and (b) pretending that Iraq presented no reasonable threat?
Yeah, in that case, I'd be pretty steamed.
Hey, why stop there? Let's also pretend that (c) we invaded Belgium instead of Iraq, and (d) In the process, George Bush raped a puppy.
Boy, when I pretend all those things, the Bush administration looks pretty indefensible! I think you're on to something!
Posted by: Andrew S. on October 16, 2006 5:44 PMWe put Saddam in? In what timeline?
Something to do with Twin Pillars, as I recall.
Posted by: anony-mouse on October 16, 2006 5:56 PMPeople whom you don't know on the other side of the world are prisoners in their own war-torn nation, risking life and limb just trying to get through another day until the U.S is gone and they can have their country back.
"Have their country back"? They didn't have their country in the first place. Iraq has was a totalitarian fascist dictatorship until the allied forces toppled Hussein. When we leave and the Iraqi people assume self-rule it will be for the first time in history.
The Civil War could have been avoided had the government paid slave owners for their 'property' - slaves. The government wouldn't, half a million people died, and the wounds have yet to heal almost 150 years later
There were around 3.9 million slaves in 1860, with a market value of around 7 billion dollars -- about 1.5 times the GDP.
So what you're saying is that while confiscating $7 billion from a bunch of slavers was grounds for war, confiscating $7 billion from a bunch of completely innocent people in order to make sure the slavers received fair compensation for their depravity wouldn't have been. Because there's nothing people like better than being saddled with a lifetime of crushing taxes so that a bunch of evil and depraved rich people can be lavishly compensated by the government.
Interesting world-view, there.
Posted by: Dan on October 16, 2006 7:45 PMI mean, 650,000 dead bodies, dead dreams, dead futures... untold numbers of possibilities shut down
You have a strangely expansive view of the dreams and possibilities of life in a fascist state.
Several hundred thousand slaves died due to the Civil War. Were we wrong to fight to free the slaves? Think of all those hundreds of thousands of slaves' dreams and possibilities snuffed out -- all those millions of slave friends and relatives made to suffer.
Posted by: Dan on October 16, 2006 7:57 PMWere we wrong to fight to free the slaves?
Lincoln made it clear that the North was fighting the war to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery. Freeing the slaves was in 1862 a war measure to weaken the rebellion by destroying the economic base of its leadership class. Abolitionists criticized Lincoln for his failure to take a stand for the complete abolition of slavery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln
Ryan, Abraham Lincoln did not, to my knowledge, fight the war single-handedly. That he did not consider the ending of slavery to be a top priority is certainly true, but it doesn't speak to the motivations of the rest of the United States. From the letters and diaries of the people of the time we know that abolitionism was the major motivating factor of the war supporters in the North.
Posted by: Dan on October 16, 2006 10:31 PMLincoln was against slavery as strongly as John Brown was. He was just a lot smarter about how he addressed it. Politics is the art of the possible.
Posted by: jj mollo on October 17, 2006 12:40 PMWe didn't go into Iraq just to prevent Saddam's use of WMD's, nor did we go into Iraq just to promote democracy, nor did we go into Iraq just to save Iraqi lives, nor did we go into Iraq to avenge 9/11. These are all red herrings.
We went into Iraq because we had declared a war on terror, later named the Global War On Terror (GWOT), and Iraq was at the geopolitical center of international terrorism. For the uninitiatied, the "geo" part of "geopolitical" stands for "geography", so for heaven's sake, don't start hectoring me about only the political side of what I am saying. Pull out some maps of the middle east, paying attention to today's trading, economic, political, and religious threads, as well as the historical aspects of these threads.
We went into Iraq because it was the geopolitical center of world-wide terrorism, and also very importantly, because we could. We could muster the will abroad and at home to go into Iraq. (For instance, we never could have gone into Afganistan if the Taliban weren't supporting Al Qaeda, which was directly involved in the 9/11 attack. Iraq did not have such an immediate connection to 9/11, but did have a broad connection to terrorism.)
For many like me, the only question was how soon would we go in? From my point of view, Bush dithered for 14 months, but I suppose that was necessary to show the US and much of the rest of the world that we didn't have to lose the moral high ground by invading before we gave the UN and Iraq to get their acts together.
For others, it took the last of six expressed reasons, WMD's, to persuade them. (Which is why those people are so upset now; instead of rejoicing that the WMD threat was not as great as previously thought, they feel they were betrayed into supporting a war that they did not support for all the other very good reasons that had been advanced.)
So how many lives is it worth to promote democracy in Iraq? None. But that is not the goal. How many lives is it worth to give enough stability to Iraq so it is no longer the geopolitical center of terrorism? A lot, and nowhere near the sum total to date. I would be willing to spend a lot more lives, both US and Iraqi, to make Iraq stable. If we end up making Iraq stable through democracy, all well and good, but democracy itself is not the goal, only a means to the end.
Posted by: Rex on October 17, 2006 1:48 PM