My bad argument on Iraqi casualties
Wednesday, October 11, 2006 at 4:31AM Here's what I now regret arguing in my last Sunday column:ARTICLE: "Iraqi Dead May Total 600,000, Study Says," by Sabrina Tavernise and Donald G. MacNeil, New York Times, 11 October 2006, online
ARTICLE: "3rd Iraq Death Has One Town Shaken to Core," by Peter Applebome, New York Times, 11 October 2006, Times Select
ARTICLE: "Baker, Presidential Confidant, Hints at Need for New War Plan," New York Times, 9 October 2006, p. A1.
Unacceptable casualties?Here's why I wrote it: I am constantly dismayed at how our nation and the West in general blithely write off widespread preventable death inside the Gap, in effect accepting the long, slow pile-up of bodies rather than risk the inevitable short-term plus-ups associated with interventions (for example, watch Sudan unfold for several years or go in and do the killing required to stop this slo-mo genocide).The United Nations estimates that, thanks to our economic sanctions, we sentenced 50,000 Iraqis to death annually throughout the 1990s, mostly kids and old people. That's half a million in a decade, not counting all the citizens Saddam kept killing. Our best estimates say fewer than 50,000 Iraqis have died since March 2003. Continue containing Saddam in the meantime, and over 100,000 additional Iraqis would have died - thanks to our realism.
WRT Iraq, it's always bugged me how many Iraqis we killed through sanctions or by allowing Saddam to continue in power following the first Gulf War. Stopping that loss of life by taking down Saddam struck me as a very good argument in 2003 and still does to this day.
That war was justifiable on all sorts of moral grounds, but how we've conducted this postwar has not been justifiable.
A complex argument to some, ass-covering to others. But to me, they are legitimately separated, just like the decision for surgery versus the course of care post-surgical. If the operation needed to be done, then you do it, but once you commit to that, you have to commit to the follow-up care. Don't bother to win the war if you're not going to bother to win the peace.
But the direct comparison comes off badly in the column, so I regret it.
Yes, the article on the new death estimates in Iraq pushes me to make that statement. I do think the estimate is wildly inflated for a lot of reasons, and that admitted margin of error that runs from 400k to 700k is sort of stunning, but it did get me thinking about the arguments that need to be made and the arguments I want to make, and it made me realize that I don't want to be associated with arguments like the one I made above.
The sacrifices made by the Iraqi people have been great, as have ours.
There are the mistakes we've made on our own in the reconstruction. Some are forgivable, but many are not. They all tell us we need to get better on the postwar or we'll soon--and legitimately--be out of the business of interventions inside the Gap.
There are the mistakes the military has made, but they are learning. This learning, given the long-term bias we've had inside the Defense Department against postwar reconstruction and stability ops and counter-insurgency, was inevitably going to require a high level of pain to occur. That's just the reality of large bureaucracies and military culture: victory is a poor teacher, as Jim Mattis likes to say.
But in the end, I do believe that our worst mistakes with the postwar have revolved around the Bush Administration's making this fight far harder than it needed to be by not getting enough allies on board and by deciding not to do exactly what Jim Baker is now proposing (and which I have been proposing on Iran for almost two years)--namely, we need to be talking to Iraq's neighbors about how they and we are going to stop the fighting. Compared to our in-country mistakes, our inability to stem the what's flowed into Iraq via Syria and Iran is far more damaging.
You walk into a bar and you decide to set the tone by fighting the biggest, baddest guy in there. What you do not do is try to fight the entire crowd all at once--much less announce it before landing your first blow.
Getting Iraq right was--and remains--crucial to the Long War. That was my main point in the column. But arguing the casualty statistics, as TheJew pointed out so well in a subsequent comment, was not a good idea. It doesn't point in the direction of the solution set, and that's all that matters, no matter what the death tolls really are.
Reader Comments (17)
I recall a study by the same institute, which reportedly was conducted by many of the same people (and, amusingly enough, was released just prior to the '04 election) which in the headlines claimed "100,000 Iraqi dead" from the war.
Read in detail, however, the estimate actually ranged from 8,000 to 200,000...
No thanks.
I'm not sure I buy the 600K is accurate. The study was conducted by having physicians survey 2000 households throughout IZ. I'm not saying there's any agenda, but I am skeptical of the methods. Asking how many people were killed in your family is dangerous when the lines between family, clan, and tribe are very much blurred in Arab culture. I'm sure the good researchers at Johns Hopkins tried to control for this, but taking such western research questions and asking people of a totally different culture is as absurd as the CIA predicting capitulations of entire Iraqi army divisions during the invasion of '03.
Many of the same people who support such studies now are the very same people who opposed American containment of Saddam in 2000, citing such 50-100K per annum death tolls in Iraq as a result of sanctions. These people have no credibility.
Bottom line, the US wasn't satisfied with the status quo in 2001 or 2002, and wanted to change it for a variety of reasons, many of which are humanitarian. Though some others are no doubt dead now as a result of American actions/inactions, no doubt lives have been saved.
It's not called Leviation for nothing. Leviathans make grim choices that many aren't equipped or willing to make. But life is better with the Leviathan than without.
Tom,
"Stopping that loss of life by taking down Saddam struck me as a very good argument in 2003 and still does to this day."
The problem with that argument is that by 2003, Sadaam was killing hardly anyone. Excess childhood and other deaths caused by the sanctions had pretty much been eliminated by the Oil for Food program. There was no ongoing humanitarian crisis as there arguably is in Darfur.
There may be a the moral and political argument for starting a war to remove an evil dictator for his past crimes and the possibility that he might "re-offend" in the future, but it is a far weaker one.
We attacked Sadaam because we viewed him as a dangerous military and political threat or to create some "big bang". The humanitarian claim was primarily rhetorical support and not the primary motivation.
As you point out, good intentions only gets you so far in a war. Failed security has created a dire humanitarian situation as highlighted by this new excess deaths study. If our primary motivation is humanitarian, now is the time to increase the number of our troops.
"Getting Iraq right was--and remains--crucial to the Long War"
Why? And how do you get it "right" without a whole lot more troops?
I find it difficult to believe you are still suggesting that Bush could have convinced more countries to join a coalition before going into Iraq. How long would you like to have waited? The first Gulf War ended the way it did precisely because of the great coalition.
Likewise, the suggestion that we bring Iraq's neighbors into the negotiation is equally ludicrous. These countries are actively or clandestinely supporting those who attack the current Iraqi government.
These countries have no desire to see a democratic country sitting on their border.
You are correct and so is James Baker, but any change in Iraq policy, no matter how well intended, will probably fail. The problem is one of worldwide overview.
I think you used a chess analogy before. This makes some sense, but winning a few pawns or even a major piece may not be worth exposure of one’s king.
The US’s king is it’s economy. At this point in history, the economy is vulnerable in that foreign interests who can bring it down overnight.
With the US committed to (1) free trade and (2) to peace, this vulnerability becomes minimal.
The first part is well established. The second part is not.
A worldwide peace should be the foreign policy goal. This can only be done by actions consistent with the policy. The most recent aberration here was the destruction of the infrastructure in Lebanon. Next is the threat to nuke North Korea, as was the 2001 threat to nuke Pakistan.
The peace initiatives need to be extended to Cuba, Venezuela and China. North Korea should be left to isolation and the inevitable economic collapse of that failed state.
With peace initiatives in place, the Barnett/Baker approach is the winning one.
Tom,
I'm somewhat bewildered on how we are or are going to convince Iraq's neighbor's to get on board when I doubt it is in their interest to do so. I'm sure Iran and Syria have 0 interest on stopping things when they are doing quite well in bleeding us. Woudln't they feel if they help us in Iraq they are next on our list? The longer and more painful they make Iraq for us the less likely Bush or his successor will be able to make the case for going after them.
admitted margin of error that runs from 400k to 700k is sort of stunning
Ah, the Kaplan Fallacy.
I think the raw humanitarian concerns are largely irrelevant WRT Iraq. He was a pain in the ass for the rest of the world and we sorted him out. Deaths before and after are inevitable in the underdeveloped, corrupt, and hegemonic Middle East.
It may be a feel-good reason to act (where regime change was not), but in essence, pure humanitarian concerns dictate regulated inaction (the typical UN model of political pressure and troops with no ROE) whereas international politics concerns dictate direct action (US ala Leviathan-SysAdmin).
That all said, I agree with Tom's ideal scenario. Drop an economy on them and things start to change. Dropping bombs changes nothing without the follow-up.
By doing just what I said in the post. Both Syria and Iran have actively fueled the violence with people and materials.
Neither state wants continued trouble there over the long haul, and would prefer to see U.S. troop levels greatly reduced. But we talk to neither and have openly targeted each for regime change. So long as that goal is on the table, we've got two extra enemies on our effort in Iraq--two who can make or break us collectively.
The rapid pull out isn't feasible because of the chaos it will leave behind. Plussing up troops in general would be great, but just sending in more Americans is unlikely to make things work better. So help from the neighbors is #1.
We have to socialize this problem. Keeping it ours and basically ours alone isn't working and won't work.
On the humanitarian issue, the delay in our actions doesn't lessen its argument. Number 1 in most American polls right up to the war was "Saddam is a bad guy who's killed a lot of people and continues to be a threat" (or words to that effect). WMD was never the prime reason most Americans gave. That mythology was generated months after the invasion, once the insurgency took root.
>>You walk into a bar and you decide to set the tone by fighting the biggest, baddest guy in there. What you do not do is try to fight the entire crowd all at once.
You do, it seems, also risk that the "biggest, baddest guy" in there is the thuggish, criminal bouncer who hitherto had prevented a "bar brawl". And that his replacement will be a clerical regime with a substantial nuclear program (ie, "baddest guy").
"Number 1 in most American polls right up to the war was "Saddam is a bad guy who's killed a lot of people and continues to be a threat""
Whatever rhetorical humanitarian arguments the Bush administration made to whip up support for the war, and whatever good intentions the American people may wish to tell themselves, the Bush administration did not go to war to stop the killing of innocents by a dictator. That would have been too feckless and too Clintonian. Ir was the WMD's and his threat to use them against us.
In any case it's not whether some Americans may have had good humanitarian intentions, but the factual justification for the humanitarian need which I question.
I don't disagree that we have a humanitarian obligation to the Iraqi's now that we have blown their country apart. But I won't rewrite history to claim that was the basis of our intervention in the first place.
to all,
this all comes reminds me of a saying ( cliche? ) -- "out of sight, out of mind"
vinit
p.s extremist alert...extremist alert...extremist alert
a closed mind is not open to the possibilities
Excellent comeback, Eric.
I've been out of bars too long.
The environmentalist movement perfected the tactic of creating a more outrageous group to make previous extremists look moderate. You see the tactic here in spades. Iraq The Model has interesting local take. Even after a quick look at the study, it's clear that this is biased and the Lancet was not served well by rushing it into print right before a national US election.
One of the hardest things to forgive the anti-war left and right is that their political use of mistakes to try to discredit the entire enterprise short-circuits our normal learning process, making us slower to admit and correct mistakes, less willing to talk about them openly and fix them. The anti-OIF coalition have tried to impose a zero defect mentality. That's something that will ensure the Gap never gets shrunk.
TM Lutas
"The anti-OIF coalition have tried to impose a zero defect mentality."
A fair criticism. But on the other hand the pro-OIF partisans use their "good intentions" as an excuse to ignore uncomfortable facts and evidence.
Bush is on a fantasy island all his own, and you can't blame the critics for his refusal to dip his toe into the reality pool or correct his mistakes.
Tom and others have made claims about the thousands killed by the evil doers in Iraq, Darfur, and elsewhere based on evidence no better, and probably far worse, than this new Johns Hopkins study. Indeed, I've read that the Darfur estimates use the same methodology as this Hopkins study.
The Hopkins study simply asks a statistical sample of households in Iraq about how many died in the household, in the year before the war (the baseline) and in the periods after the war. They find that the death rate is far higher in the periods after the war. Their findings are in the same ballpark as two prior studies using similar methodology. It's not definitive, but it's reality based evidence. Iraq the Model on the other hand is merely bleating.
Daniel Davies points out that focusing on the "600K" number is a fault of the way studies like this are promoted. But the 2000 households included over 12,000 individuals. And that death certificates were found for these claims in 92% of the cases. So the basic research structure is solid, and broad.
And regardless of what the "actual" number of deaths is, it's clearly a lot more than than the Bush Admin. would admit to, and significantly worse than before the invasion. I would say "unacceptably worse", since I think the point of a humanitarian invasion is be to make a country safer to live in than likving under a dictator. But either way it supports the argument that TPMB was making, that the "peace" has been fucked up.
The thing I most appreciate about Thomas P.M. Barnett is his optimism. That, and his repetitive statement that the point is to "win the peace" while not focusing on winning the war I equally appreciate. The role of such positive thinking in improving the condition of individuals is beyond question. One only has to contrast someone (must I name names here?) who ranted off on an axis of evil, clearly enunciating his candidates just a few short years ago. Today, those very countries have become the worse nightmare of that individual. I cannot but wonder how many of these bad dreams he brought on himself. Spiritual literature is full of admonishments warning about focusing on what you do not wish to arrive, not even if one prefaces such comments with “I do not wish.” A straightforward example would be resisting evil. One must pursue and approach evil to resist it. Much better would be to move towards the good. Mother Teresa was famous for not attending antiwar rallies and offering instead that if anyone gave a peace rally then she would attend. She got it. I myself am doing all the work I am capable of to rid my language of negativities and replace them with their positive linguistic equivalents. I know that on one level this only seems like a word game or capricious artifice. However, on the spiritual level such distinctions are all important. If one wishes to believe that the universe is capable of responding, then one is recommended over and over again in spiritual literature to implement such distinctions. Thomas P.M. Barnett, to all appearances, consistently does this and for this reason I read everything of his that comes my way. That he makes it a point to correct himself in public speaks highly of him.