October 17, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Why do the numbers of Iraqi dead matter?
Timothy Burke has some worthwhile thoughts.
Posted by Jane Galt at October 17, 2006 8:41 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>Good link. There is too much focus on the point estimate and not enough on the more basic issue. When the first study came out some still argued that there were no or very few excess deaths. Today we know that is false.
We know that excess deaths are real, they are large, and they are growing as iraq descends into civil war or something similar. Is it 650 k or is it 150 k? I agree with the post you link to, to a great extent it doesn't matter.
Posted by: gt on October 17, 2006 9:56 PMIf that’s the objective, 50,000 or 300,000 or 600,000 all strike me as deeply worrisome numbers, just as once you cross the threshold of “many millions”, the moral gravity of the Atlantic slave trade is forever established
Personally, I'd be curious to hear a description of the moral system under which "many millions" of slaves is the threshold that separates "of great moral gravity" from "not of great moral gravity". Who condemns the taking of 5 million slaves but shrugs at 1 million?
It also isn't clear what "deeply worrisome" means, or where the magic threshold is for *that* sentiment. The fact that it apparently doesn't matter how many more casualties there are once you reach "deeply worrisome" suggests that "deeply worrisome" is as bad as it can get, which seems silly. And what are we to make of the fact that the lower end of the range would represent the lowest civilian death toll of any prolonged American war since the Revolution? Was every war we've been involved in since the creation of our nation a war we should be ashamed of having participated in? Pacifists might say yes, but most moral codes wouldn't back that sentiment.
Posted by: Dan on October 17, 2006 10:37 PMBurke is certainly correct that the number of killed, whether 50,000 or 500,000, has nothing to do with the tragic nature of the war. Using it as fodder to bolster ones beliefs either for or against the Iraqi situation is deplorable.
However, much of the discussion I've read about the Lancet study seems to involve the possibility that the study was agenda driven. If so, that is exactly what Burke and Jane properly lament.
Like it or not, it's a relevant question.
Posted by: G. Hamid on October 17, 2006 11:13 PMI agree that if the Lancet study were agenda driven, that fact would indeed be troubling.
And if the war itself were agenda driven, would that be more or less troubling?
Cheers,
Posted by: Rofe on October 18, 2006 2:41 AM
Rofe, *all* wars are agenda driven. But soldiers and politicians do not pretend to the pursuit of Objective Truth in the way that journalists and scholars do. It is unfortunate that the Lancet no longer has anything to do with the pursuit of Objective Truth either. >_
Posted by: Small Pink Mouse on October 18, 2006 3:10 AMGood link. There is too much focus on the point estimate and not enough on the more basic issue. When the first study came out some still argued that there were no or very few excess deaths. Today we know that is false.
We know that excess deaths are real, they are large, and they are growing as iraq descends into civil war or something similar. Is it 650 k or is it 150 k? I agree with the post you link to, to a great extent it doesn't matter.
Posted by: gt on October 18, 2006 8:00 AMCan we even agree on the basic question? Are these numbers only an indication of how things are going to date, or do they have some deeper meaning? Obviously, to some people they do.
Treating this as a question on how many lives is it worth to accomplish our goals, I make the following observations. Keep in mind that I am speaking as a citizen of the United States who spent 28 years in the Marines, both active and reserve duty, was on active duty during Vietnam and for a decade afterwards, was called to active duty for DESERT STORM when we liberated Kuwait, and I have a son who is in the Marines and has spent one tour (so far) in Iraq this time around.
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 into Iraq? Because of my military background, as soon as Bush announced that we weren't only going to avenge 9/11 but actually commit to the GWOT, I imemdiately wondered just how long it would be before we went into Iraq. 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 I believe 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 18, 2006 10:35 AMBut they do not, in most cases, directly impact your success in achieving your objective. Whether or not you capture a bridge, a strong point, a key resource site: the magnitude of civilian casualties are a side issue if the question is, “Did we win?” in this instance.
This seems wrong to me. Every objective (military, political, personal, whatever) has an expected cost; an analysis of whether the objective was succesfully achieved includes the cost of achievement. A bridge may be worth having, but not at massive casualties.
In that sense, it is important to consider the cost of a goal: it is a factor in whether the goal is worthwhile or not.
You might argue that the costs of the war were impossible to predict, but I don't see how both the anticipated and real costs aren't germane to the decision to wage the campaign.
If you are for the war, saying that the number "doesn't matter" suggests that you were for the war at any cost. (Or, I suppose, that we just haven't approached the threshold of concern).
Posted by: Brad L on October 18, 2006 10:53 AMWell, one of the reasons that the number 666,000 is signiifcant is that there's been a far-ranging effort by the administration to conceal what's going on in Iraq. From "stuff happens" and "freedom is untidy" to today's denial of the obvious, that Iraq is in a civil war, Bush and team have tried to pretend that that the ill effects of this war are negligible. If people understand that the number of Iraqi civilians dead is closer to 666 k than, say, 50 k, it's harder for Bush to keep lying. No, let me rephrase: it's harder for people to believe his lies. By the way, let's say the # dead isn't 666 k but merely 500 k, if you add the million of citizens that have emigrated, and extrapolate to the United States population, it'd be as if we lost 18 million people. This isn't merely civil war, or anarchy, this is the desruction of a country.
Posted by: david mizner on October 18, 2006 11:06 AM
When the Iraqis themselves, as well as our military units in Iraq, all say that they don't think there is a civil war going on in Iraq, they just why do some people think that Bush is lying when he says the same thing? Is this just another case of BDS?
Posted by: Rex on October 18, 2006 11:17 AMRex: the debate (at least among reasonable people) is over: Iraq is in a civil war, and our troops are caught in the middle of it. Please try to find a definition, any definition, of civil war that does not describe Iraq. You can argue that our troops should still stay (although an occupying army has never in history quelled a civil war) but you cannot argue that Iraq is not in a civil war--not if you want to be smart or honest.
Posted by: david mizner on October 18, 2006 11:27 AMI submit into our lexicon "The Mizner Point". It is defined as the point in a comment thread where debate is replaced by ex-cathedra pronouncements and broad-brush ad hominem.
Posted by: G. Hamid on October 18, 2006 11:49 AMIs this just another case of BDS?
If it is, then Charles Krauthammer is perhaps the most unexpected victim of it.
Quote:
It is a serious argument from which we have been distracted during the past several months by the increasingly absurd debate over the meaning of the term "civil war," and whether Iraq is in one.
Of course it is. It began when the Sunni minority, unwilling to accept the finality of the Baathist defeat, began making indiscriminate war on the Kurdish-Shiite majority that had inherited the country as a result of the U.S. invasion.
Posted by: Brad L on October 18, 2006 11:52 AMG. Hamid: Well, it was Rex who accused me of suffering from BDS, and I responded.
In any case,do you disagree with anything I said, or do just disapprove of the manner in which I said it?
It'd be pleasant, I suppose, to carry on with a high-minded debate about whether Iraq is in a civil war, and from there perhaps we can move on to a civil, respectful discussion about whether the earth is flat.
Eventually, I am going to learn to italicize paragraphs separately. Both paragraphs below "Quote:" are from CK, not just the first one.
Posted by: Brad L on October 18, 2006 11:55 AMAll you post modernists trying control the nature of debate by changing the language itself... A baby isn't a baby, it's just a fetus, or a clump of cells. And now you say it's a civil war cause somepeople are killing others and they don't agree with the government.
A civil insurgency perhaps? Or just call it what it is. Terrorists. Maybe these terrorist hotbeds are just getting a taste of their own medicine. Don't like the Jews? blow up their pizza parlor. Don't like the governement, blow them up. Public discourse there is virtually non-existent and it seems to be gradually trending that way with some of us too.
Anyway, back to the point. Is Isreal in a Civil War? Or would you suggest since it's supposed to be two seperate countries they are actually "at war" and should therefore invade their warring aggressors?
The terrorists in Iraq are not at civil war, at least according to my familiarity with the term. You've got some people rising up trying to inflame the population with violence and perhaps make it a civil war, but it seems to me it's an issue with terrorism. Hamid is trying to go to work and some guy blew up a car in front of him making his day miserable. That sounds like an extreme case of terrorism to me.
Of course, if these post modernists called it what it really is (abortion = murder, albeit a lessor, more convienent form) and iraq = terrorist hot bed (albeit an whole lot of terrorism and not the once every few years stuff we're used to) then they'd have to admit their positions were on the wrong side.
We can't leave Iraq if its a hotbed of terrorism, but hell if its in the middle of a civil war, why, then no army in history has survived in the middle of that. I'm glad no once ever used that wonderful logic on our generals before. "But sir, no army in history has ever sailed across the pacific and conquered dozens of islands entrenched with ships, canon and machine guns".
Keep cheering the defeat on my post modernist friends.
I realize this post can't possibly convince any of you since you are virtually unable to seperate yourself from the positions you hold. And the same is likely for you and me too...so why are we doing this? Oh well...
Posted by: war? on October 18, 2006 12:26 PMDavid,
I disagree with the form of your argument. As far as your conclusions, they are your opinion to which you are fully entitled.
Posted by: G. Hamid on October 18, 2006 12:35 PMThis seems wrong to me. Every objective (military, political, personal, whatever) has an expected cost; an analysis of whether the objective was succesfully achieved includes the cost of achievement. A bridge may be worth having, but not at massive casualties.
That depends on the objective and the achievement. I submit D-Day for your consideration. Although obviously everything possible was done to prevent Hitler from learning the real landing site, this was purely practical. Once it was time to execute, there was no regret for the cost until later; they simply threw bodies at the problem until enough of them broke through the front line and shut down the enemy artillery.
Posted by: anony-mouse on October 18, 2006 12:50 PMG. Hamid, I'm sorry you don't like my form of argument. I guess I have no patience for passivity and false politeness when people are dying. And I wasn't stating my opinion: I was stating a fact, a fact that might unsettle you but a fact nonetheless.
Here's what I don't like: when someone is asked a direct question and he or she doesn't answer, so I'll ask you again: do you think Iraq is in a civil war?
Regarding Rex at October 18, 2006 10:35 AM.
Thanks Rex. It's nice to hear other people say that once and a while.
Posted by: aaron on October 18, 2006 1:01 PM
define: civil war.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/100-20/10020gl.htm
civil war: A war between factions of the same country; there are
five criteria for international recognition of this status: the
contestants must control territory, have a functioning government,
enjoy some foreign recognition, have identifiable regular armed
forces, and engage in major military operations.
Iraq is not at civil war..
Posted by: talking head on October 18, 2006 1:03 PMDavid,
I'm not being falsely polite. I think you're flat out wrong, endangering our country, and enabling the enemy.
But I can still speak politely to you and not get all huffy puffy and have it ruin my day. I have to deal with people like you on a regular basis because unfortunately more and more people are buying into the concept of, "gee let's just change the definition of things even though it's always been something different for thousands of years".
That bothers me, but its more and more the case and it makes it easy to believe things so nice and neatly like you do.
It's not a civil war. It's not a fetus. It's a marriage, etc. etc. etc.
I could keep going, but the simple FACT as you like to point out you're arguing with, Iraq is not in a civil war by any leap of the imagination. As the previous poster pointed out, the otherside does not claim to have a government. Does not claim to have forces representing it. And is not engaging in armed military armed conflict in the usual sense of the term.
The are engaging in frequent acts of terrorism. Which once again puts us back to the question. If terrorism is so frequent, and it's not a "civil war" with two factions/governments fighting it out that means WE CAN NOT just sit back and let them beat each other up. It's terrorism and we have to do something about it "over there" so it doesn't make it "over here".
Posted by: hamid-war? on October 18, 2006 1:17 PMI notice another unstated assumption in the discussions of casulty figures - a curious inversion of what I consider the motto of the average American (from SW -"It's not my fault").
Whatever the number is, 100K or 800K, it's all the fault of the US. The Lancet study quite specifically asked *NO* questions about the cause of death; was it old age, infection - was that infection treatable?- hit by a bus, killed by a neighbor over a long term feud,killed by a IED, shot by a competing militia, shot by the Iraqi police in the commission of a crime, shot by the Iragi army in a attack on them, Shot while attacking US forces, killed by a piece of unexploded ordinance, or mistakenly shot by US Forces.
All of these instances are intrinsically ascribed as the "fault" of the US, despite the varying degrees of influence and/or culpability.
The Lancet authors may make noises about how this is an objective study, but it's obvious to anyone who thinks about it that, given the structure of the study (did *anybody* die?) and the pronouncements of the lead author, that the study is anything but objective, and the purpose is to heap vitrol on the US.
Posted by: bud on October 18, 2006 1:37 PMDavid,
As per talking head, I do not believe it's a civil war. I think it's a long standing feud.
Posted by: G. Hamid on October 18, 2006 1:39 PMTalking Head: by that ridiculous definition that you dug up, any civil war involving Al Qaeda would not be a civil war, and speaking of Al Qaeda, did you see that George Bush's creation--Al Qaeda in Iraq--has declared a huge chunk of Anbar provence an Islamic Republic?
I've only engaged in this debate about whether Iraq is in a civil war because of the political implications: Bush and his enablers understand that the more people come to see that the civil war is in fact a civil war, even fewer people will support it, because they understand that no occupying army has ever quelled a civil war. Indeed, the number of Americans who oppose the war, sixty five percent, corresponds almost exactly with the number of people who understand that Iraq is in civil war.
But you can call the civil war a cheese danish if you want, or, to be even more precise, you can call it ethnic cleansing: it's a disaster by any name.
Posted by: david mizner on October 18, 2006 1:51 PMmmm...cheese danish. Why would anyone want to leave in the middle of a cheese danish fest?
Posted by: yum on October 18, 2006 2:29 PMRex
You are getting Iraq and Saudi Arabia confused.
1. It was Saudi Arabia that was supporting the Afghans against the Russians, not the Iraqis.
2. It was Saudi Arabia that provided the terrorists that struck on 9/11, not the Iraqis.
3. It was Saudi Arabia that was financing the PLO against the Israelis. Though, to be truthfull, the Iraqis were third (fourth till after the first Gulf WAr) in supporting the PLO.
4. It was Saudi Arabia and not Iraq that was supporting Sudan against the Christian blacks in the South until the oil money started.
5. It was Saudi Arabia that was financing the Kashmir fighters, not Iraq.
6. It was Saudi Arabia that was financing the Mindanao fighting in the Phillipines, not Iraq.
7. It was Saudi Arabia that was financing the Indonesian terrorists that blew up the tourist spots in Hindu Bali, not Iraq.
Saudi Arabia is the one we aren't invading, yet.
I think some commenters are missing the point.
Shrub claimed only some dozens of civilians died. Or thousands. Some smallish number.
The Lancet proved zillions died. Or billions, millions, something. A largish number.
The particulars don't matter, the POINT is that Shrub's estimate is off by a factor of a million percent, (or billion, or something). The difference between the Shrub's claim and the experts proof further proves, to anyone who still needed proof, that Shrub is either an idiot, or a liar, or someone very very VERY bad at math.
All this, for very loose values of the verb "prove", of course. Your mileage may vary.
Now, it may be that Shrub is better at math than many think, and it is the Lancet that is very very VERY bad at math.
How would you convince either side of either proposition? The signal to noise ratio in the debate has gotten so low ... I have no analogy sufficient.
Posted by: pouncer on October 18, 2006 4:31 PM
Was every war we've been involved in since the creation of our nation a war we should be ashamed of having participated in?
With the exceptions of WW2 and the War of 1812 (where we had no choice but respond to attacks), I'd say yes. Perhaps ashamed is the wrong word in some cases (WW1, Korea), but we'd have been better off staying out.
Well, we just passed 300,000,000 Americans yesterday.
If you actually believe that 650,000+ Iraqis died since 2003, what I would like to know is the growth rate in Iraq still positive given that casulty rate? Are they still "growing" or are they in "decline" because of these dead?
Posted by: Paul on October 18, 2006 4:56 PMRex Little,
To clarify, does that mean that the US should have been ashamed, or at least better off, if it would have stayed out of the Revolutionary War, or are you only counting wars after the US was fully internationally recognized?
Thanks,
Tom
Posted by: Tom on October 18, 2006 4:59 PMThank you wkwillis for telling the truth.
Rex, you are completly wrong on Iraq being the center of the terrorists movement. And repeating the disproven neocon talking points does not change the truth.
Saddam made a few payments to the families of sucide bombers in Israel. Great propaganda, but
beyond that of no practical importance.
Saddam was a toothless tiger that did not even have enough power to keep control of all of his own countries -- the Kurds-- with no ability to project his power beyond his own borders.
That was one of the reasons we attacked him --
because he was so weak that we could.
But in no way was he a threat to the US.
But because of the incompetent way the post-war peace has been conducted this administration has done much more damage to the US then Saddam or Ben Laden ever dreamed. Ben Laden thanks God several times a day he has an enemy like Bush.
I for one have no idea how accurate the Lancet
study is. But the real point is that it is an example of how badly the occupation of Iraq was managed.
And Jane all your complaints about the study will not change that.
Posted by: spencer on October 19, 2006 10:32 AMTom,
I exclude the Revolutionary War. The original quote included the phrase "since the creation of our nation"; the earliest date I'd accept for that event is the ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781.
wkwillis and spencer,
Please read my comment again and this time pick up on the fact that I described Saddam's Iraq as the "geopolitical center of international terrosism." Key in, please, on the geographical part. You guys are concentrating only on the political part. Iraq was where both parts came together.
I agree that the Saudi's have a lot to answer for. But they are not "invadeable" at present, and maybe never. So we use other tactics. Not every victory comes from a military invasion. Personally, I think we should be concentrating on a cultural and economic invasion, but those aspects of American life are not controlled by the government, but darn it all, the government ought to be able to help some. We lost a great chance to introduce capitalism into the former Soviet Union countries when the democrats refused to provide government insurance for the puspose of having private companies enter into business in the former S.U.--they were upset that the private companies stood to profit, and all good democrats know that profit is a dirty word, even though the benefits to the U.S. as a whole would have been tremendous. (If you don't know of the strong link and reinforcement between capitalism and democracy, you should read some Milton Friedman. Anyone who comes up with the same theory I came up with (long after he did, by the way, but I was totally unfamiliar with his work and developed my theory solely from my general military and business experiences and from my training as a lawyer), is someone worth reading.)
Posted by: Rex on October 19, 2006 4:32 PMRex,
You seem to be saying that the geographic location of Iraq's territory is so advantageous to hold if you want to project power in the middle east that it was worth invading the country to seize that territory, regardless of the lack of political connection between the state of Iraq and the terrorists who attacked us.
If that's what you're saying, I'd disagree on a few grounds.
(1) It's unjust to start a war for the main purpose of seizing someon else's territory (as opposed to reclaiming your own)
(2) It is far from clear that we will be able to use Iraq's territory to project power in the Middle East, or that, if we can, the costs of doing so make the bargain worth it
Imagine the same situation happening in, say, Switzerland. The country has basically split into factions based on ethnicity and religion. The Italian part of the country is pretty uniform in ethnicity, and it's being run (reasonably well) as a de facto country, with Germans and French ethnically cleansed out. Other parts are becoming segregated into single ethnicity/religion neighborhoods or regions because it's unsafe to be, say, a German in a French-speaking area. Massacres of Germans by French, and French by Germans, happen daily. In some places, informal checkpoints are set up by one faction or another, and any member of the wrong group who tries to go through gets shot. Churches are bombed all the time. Within the French and German groups, various factions rise and fall, each with their own private armies. There's a weak formal government that's trying to restore some kind of order, but the ministers in that government probably have less power than many of the faction leaders, as the soldiers and policemen tend to be loyal to their ethnic group rather than the nation, and are apparently riddled with spies for the faction leaders. A small but technically much superior force of Russians holds a few big cities and occasionally clobbers militias that get too annoying, and keeps threatening France and Germany to stop helping their sides.
We'd call that a civil war, right? I mean, if we didn't have anything to do with it, we'd look at this situation and we'd call it a civil war, in the same way that we call what's happening in Darfur genocide. But since we got rid of the monstrous tyrant who was holding the place down, and now we're pretty much helplessly watching the place go up in flames, we try to come up wiht a different way to describe it. It's not a civil war, it's just a few dead-ender ex-Regime types, isn't that the line? Or that it's a few foreign jihadis stirring up trouble? Growing pains of a new democracy?
Posted by: albatross on October 20, 2006 3:35 PMNo One,
I'm not saying we have to hold it in order to project power, but rather that we have to deny it to the enemy.
Note in my original comment post that I said that we did not go into Iraq because they had a direct connection with 9/11. The Iraqi connection was with terrorists, even including al Quaeda, but there has never been a connection between Iraq and 9/11, nor has the Bush administration ever claimed otherwise.
Posted by: Rex on October 20, 2006 6:29 PMThank heavens none of the pollers died. Walking around strange neighbourhoods, knocking on doors, residents answering their doors and inviting the pollers in and showing them the death certificates.
Sounds peaceful to me. If it happened.
Posted by: Thomas Esmond Knox on October 20, 2006 10:04 PM