Number Crunching
October 20, 2006, 10:29 pm
Posted by J. Peter Nixon
Slate magazine’s Fred Kaplan takes a hard look at the statistics behind the Lancet study on Iraqi deaths due to the war. The study’s figure of 655,000 has proved controversial. Kaplan lays out a case why we should treat the number with some skepticism. He also makes the following point which is, I believe, well taken:
Here lies the danger of studies that overstate a war’s death toll. The
war’s supporters and apologists latch on to the inevitable debunkings
and proclaim that really “only 100,000″ or “only 200,000″ people have
died. It’s obscene—it sullies and coarsens the political culture—to
place the word “only” in front of such numbers.
According to this morning’s NYTimes (October 21), the Iraqi government has told morgues and hospitals to stop reporting the number of the dead. No doubt a political and not a public health decision. The consequences are that at least the lower figure for number of death will no longer be available.
Kaplan’s critique of the Lancet report is worth reading, but so is the Lancet report (which Grant helpfully posted somewhere and I can’t now find). Kaplan’s critique should be read with the same skepticism as he recommends for the Lancet report.
The Lancet report gives a low and high of which 650,000 is an average. So perhaps their lower figure, in the 400,000s is more accurate. In any case, it is far higher than “official” figures previously reported. For all the obvious reasons the official figure certainly underreports the number of deaths (not because there is a conspiracy, but because under war-time conditions and Islamic burial practices, many of the death’s are never officialy recorded.
Of course, this does have to do with politics. Excessive civilian deaths raises the question of proportionality. So, in addition, to all of the other excesses of this invasion, at least several hundred thousand civilians have died.
With respect, Margaret, I simply cannot bring the same degree of skepticism to Kaplan’s critique as to the Lancet study. The study’s numbers are several degrees of magnitude higher than most other estimates. That simply -has- to invite more critical scrutiny.
In its story on the Lancet study, the LA Times reviewed some other recent estimates, including the Bush Administration (30,000); Los Angeles Times (50,000); the UK based Iraqi Body Count (43,850 to 48,693). There are certainly reasons to believe that studies based on morgue data will undercount civilian casualties. But I don’t think we can accept an estimate 13 times higher than these figures without skepticism. This press release from Iraqi Body Count provides some sound reasons for approaching the Lancet study with caution:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php
I think that one of the biggest temptations that Christians (and others) face in public life is to become more concerned with the victory of our cause than with the victory of truth. And whether it’s a President selectively using military intelligence to build the case for war, or an anti-war activist using exaggerated statistics to build the case for peace, it’s a temptation we need to resist. We have not merely a prudential but also a moral obligation to seek the truth, even if the embrace of that truth hinders our efforts to achieve an otherwise just cause.
I agree with Mr Nixon, but I also wonder at what point do civilian casualties become “excessive”?
Mr. Nixon:
I read everything with skepticism; Fred Kaplan as well as the Lancet study. For example, Kaplan cites a UN, pre-war death rate of 10 per thousand rather than the 5 per thousand in the Lancet study. Why assume the UN study was accurate? Or, any more accurate than the Lancet.
My point was not to defend the Lancet/Johns Hopkins study but to suggest that I put no more credence in Kaplan’s run on the expert talking heads he quotes than I do in the Lancet’s claim about random selection.
I will say I particularly disliked the high moralistic tone he takes, and which you quote, as if he (and we) were above falling into the “Only 40,000,” or “more than 700,000″ camps of the war’s supporters and critics.
Could we all agree that any civilian death is “excessive?” 40,000 certainly seems so. And so does 400,000. Is it possible that another question is implied here. How many more deaths: Iraqi civilians, Iraqi soldiers, and U.S. soldiers should we tolerate whether we are critics or supporters of the Iraq war?
To get back to Mr. Nixon’s point, I join Peggy and “Unagidon” in their contention that any civilian casualty is “excessive.” What’s arguably much more troubling is President Decider’s rhetoric about civilian deaths, which has become ever more clumsy and callous. At a press conference last week, he marvelled that Iraqis are willing to “tolerate” constant fear and atrocity in order to be free — not “endure,” “tolerate.” Another doofus moment, perhaps, but not an isolated doofus moment. Then, yesterday, he tells us that we’re going to remain in Iraq until “victory” — that’s the word he used. Apparently, he’s willing to keep us there even if only Laura and the dog are with him.
What does anyone think of this idea, though: that the Bush Administration has privately decided that Iraq is lost, that they’ve dragooned James Baker et. al, to come up with a respectable exit strategy, and that the “victory” rhetoric is for the base in the November elections? Cynical, but after David Kuo’s revelations, you can’t put anything past these people anymore — if you ever couldn’t.
You know, y’all can call me Pete if yah like…:-)
Okay, some random thoughts…
I count myself among the fans of Fred Kaplan. For my money, he has been one of the more thoughtful and balanced writers on foreign affairs that I’ve come across. For what it’s worth, he’s also been a rather strong critic of the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq.
I’m not sure what we’re trying to say when we say that even one civilian death is “excessive.” Does this mean that any act of war that results in a single civilian death–even if unintended–is morally illegitimate? While I understand the attraction of this position, we should concede that it is considerably stricter than the Church’s traditional just war doctrine.
Having said that, I don’t think we need to embrace the “rigorist” position to conclude that the cost in lives in Iraq has been vastly disproportionate to the goods that have been obtained so far. We should realize, though, that this position probably commits us to a general strategy of leaving many authoritarian regimes in place and trying to modify their behavior through non-military means rather than risking the evils of war. I, for one, do not have a problem with that position, as it seemed to work with the Soviet Union and South Africa, to name only two.
Finally, I agree with Gene that Bush has probably privately concluded that Iraq is lost. I think you can see it in his eyes and in some of his more unguarded statements. I’m not sure how his rhetoric really helps him with his “base” given the unpopularity of the conflict. I think they are looking for a way out that doesn’t end up strengthening Iran’s influence over Iraq, or give Al-Qaeda a stable base of operations within the country. I think they may well fail at these objectives as well.
I think the supporters of the war tend to juxtapose the civilian casualties to the idea that they “died for freedom”. [Insert picture of grizzled old veteran staring hopefully off into the future]. So the slaughter of these civilians is equated to martyrdom and the question is reframed as “at what point do the number of martyrs become excessive.” And of course, no good moral movement can have too many martyrs.
Unfortunately, the US is the one that is making all these martyrs. Even our own troops, who could be considered real martyrs, are giving up their lives for our freedom, not the Iraqis.
We are Caesar.
Most civilian casualties are caused by civilian factional fighting. Iraqi government officials, police and soldiers seem especially targeted, making it hard for Bush’s people and the military to shore up a central government that can deal with this kind of chaos.
The Lancet article describes the conditions under which it had to collect numbers and posits reasons for why the numbers might be high or low. I think that discussion is a more compelling outline of how problematic the situation is than the numbers themselves.
Our military has never been good at sniffing out grassroots insurgencies, as we learned in Vietnam, which we pounded nearly to oblivion with conventional weapons and WMDs like napalm.
Mr. Bush might be wise to consult history. Robert McNamara is still alive.
Well, Mr. Nixon, maybe Peter.
Not to parse things too finely, but part of the assessment depends on what you mean by “unintended.” The deaths of Iraqi civilians that are not directly caused by battles, sniping, gun shots, grenades, etc., that is, by the war and by U.S. military are presumably unintended by us, and sometimes such deaths may be “accidental.” That leaves all the people who have died from lack of clean water, basic medical care, malnutrition, anxiety, etc. That also leaves all the Iraqis directly killed by other Iraqis (which is probably more than that of the U.S.–though I don’t know that, probably no one does). The vast majority of deaths would seem to be, in that sense, “unintended.” Still, at some point they become disproportionate to the war aims (whatever they may now be).
This same issue arose during the NATO intervention in Kosovo. Tthe electric grid in Belgrade was bombed with consequences for Serbian civilians. Intentional? Jean Elshtain and I once had a friendly debate about this. She considered it unjustified; I thought it was justified as a way of bringing the Serbian army to a standstill in Kosovo, and the civilian fall-out was “unintended.”
Sanctions are not free of the same consideration. Kenneth HImes, OSF, some time back wrote an article for Commonweal applying Just War strictures to sanction regimes. It’s worth looking up. South Africa seems to be justified because the “civilians,” i.e., Black South Africans were behind the sanctions. But look now at North Korea and Iran both under decades of sanctions. Have they worked? Or have they created untold civilian suffering (especially in North Korea)? Have they further isolated the regimes that “invited” the sanctions and made the situation even worse?
And then the really ugly question, to what extent are civilians who elect leaders like Slobadan Milosevic (and others unnamed) responsible for the havoc they cause? That may get us too close to home and it certainly doesn’t fit under any Just War rubric. But how should civilians answer for the excesses and disproportionality of their elected leaders?
And oh… about Fred Kaplan
Yes, I read him from time to time, and I always know more. But like many pundits he also has a strong debunking gene, which may be good for critical thinking but does not necessarily provide the “truth,” Christian or otherwise.
Re: Kaplan
I meant to write, I always know more after I read him!
Off to Mass.
Worth reading:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/10/slates_war_on_epidemiology_con.php
The Lancet study measured not “excessive” but “excess” deaths–that is, deaths that would not have occurred (at least, putatively would not) had there not been a war. This can mean anything from an ambualnce that doesn’t reach a hospital because a road has a bomb crater in it, to a kidnap victim being beheaded when the family can’t or won’t pay the ransom.
Peter makes a point that is at the least open to dispute: “the cost in lives in Iraq has been vastly disproportionate to the goods that have been obtained so far. ”
Which goods? And for whom? I suspect if you are a Kurd living in the North of the country, you would dispute this very vigorously indeed. I suspect if you are a shiite, the question is more complex, but not straightforward. Speaking only for myself, I can say that if I had to choose between the chaos of today and the absolute evil of 5 years ago, as my only two possible modes of existence, I would choose the former, not the latter.
The point is this: hate the war, if you choose to, and be pleased with your choice. But it is a distortion (and not one the bit I quoted from makes, nor one I have ever known Peter to make, going back to Sursum Corda), to imagine that the choice between war and not war was a choice between evil and good. It was a choice between two evils. Some deaths are objectively better than others: Christ’s death on a cross is better than the execution of a criminal. And the death of people fighting for their freedom is better than a rape and evisceration in the basement of the dictator’s palace.
For those who missed that college statistics course, B. Kerr’s post above is very helpful at least in looking at the problems in Kaplan and thereby in the Lancet article as well. Worth reading.
JB: Another way to look at this from the Iraqi pov is the devil you know (knew) is better than the one you don’t know. Which reminds me of the scripture passage about the ten devils you throw out of a house being replaced by ten devils even worse. Or is it twelves devils???
Good to have you back, Brian…
I would agree that a decision not to intervene in Iraq would mean that certain evils would have to be tolerated. On the other hand, I see no enthusiasm among the families of the United States for sending their sons and daughters to disloge every government that tortures its own citizens. Humanitarian intervention was -not- the primary basis on which this war was sold to the American. people.
Are the Kurds better off? On balance I’d have to say yes. Are the majority of the residents of Baghdad better off? I think that is a much tougher call given the level of violence that currently prevails in the city and the collapse of many basic services since the beginning of the war. Are Iraqi Christians better off? Almost certainly not.
When I said the costs have been disproportionate to the goods obtained so far, I added the last two words for a reason. If, in 5-10 years, the violence in Iraq has largely abated, basic services have been restored and a modest level of basic freedoms obtain, it may well be that the price paid in blood will be deemed by Iraqis themselves to have been worth it. If, on the other hand, the violence continues at its present level, if Iraq as an integral nation essentially ceases to exist, or if its integrity is secured through the use of the same brutalities the Iraqis experienced under Hussein, then I think it would not be unreasonable for the Iraqis to wonder if other means might have been available. I think the best we can say at this point is that the jury is still out on whether the benefits of this venture exceed the costs.
I take no joy in this analysis. I consider myself an internationalist and I believe the freeing of people from tyranny should be a goal of U.S. foreign policy. But there are limits on what we can ask the citizens of our country to sacrifice for that goal. And we should not be surprised if the international community wants to place limits on our ability to make unilateral decisions about where “regime change” is warranted.