Nothing to See Here - Mass Graves edition
I apologize for my absence the last couple of days. I’ve been collecting links, but finding it difficult to post on this new schedule. I’ll sort it out soon. In the meantime, here’s a few days worth of things you should be reading if you know what’s good for you…
- The medical journal Lancet has published a peer-reviewed study of Iraqi civilian casualties (Kuro5hin has a link and password) and estimates that 100,000 Iraqis have died since the start of the US invasion. I hesitated to link to this at first, since the number is an acknowledged guess, but after reading a bit more about how this study was published, it seems to me that the only thing for certain is that the exact number of Iraqi dead is both unknown and very high. The study was heavily peer-reviewed and so it’s not likely to be far too high.
I’m having trouble dealing with this number. Does anyone think this is an appropriate response to the threat we faced prior to the war? Do you feel more secure now that the blood of 100,000 Iraqis is on our hands, not to mention over 1,100 US troops? If not, what number of dead will satiate your bloodlust? 200,000? 1,000,000? Where does it end?
- Another shout out to Josh Marshall for the great work he’s been doing lately. The man’s been on fi-yah. See this on Bush’s failure to keep his campaign promise on troop readiness. And this on the missing explosives spin. And this on CNN’s impossible standards.
- The Poor Man also has a thing on the al Qaqaa thing. Especially helpful is the explanation of the Four Pillars of Shrillness: mendacity, malevolence, incompetence, and disconnection from reality.
- Michael Bérubé (who really needs to get rid of those snobby, elitist diacriticals) has a couple worth reading. First, he quotes from and comments on a reality-based assessment of the situation in Iraq. Second, he has a good sum-up of something the left-wing blogosphere in general has been talking about: Slate’s feeble endorsements for Kerry. Michael’s assessment of how the progressives and liberals habitually—almost reflexively—trash their own candidates is worth a read.
- Even if liberals can’t seem to muster reasons to vote for Kerry, conservatives can. (Shrillblog) So can this guy.
- Adam Felber pretty much nails the “WTF?!” Question of the Decade.
- Dr. Cline at Rhetorica notes that the press is a little shaken that bloggers are upsetting their journalistic apple carts. Like all intelligent folk, journalists will try to rationalize their position, to defend the status quo. Over at Jay Rosen’s PressThink, Doug McGill mounts a defense that sounds a little like, “It’s not that wife-beating is wrong, per se, but perhaps beating your wife with a closed fist as opposed to an open palm is wrong.”
- First Draft notes the civil suit brought by four former inmates of Guantanamo. Go get ‘em boys. It’s embarrassing that this is what it takes to get some justice. Where has our government been? Where are our values, fer the love of Pete?
- Love this “Simple Answers to Stupid Questions” from the National Geographic, via The Talent Show.
- The Daily Show hit this theme very well last night, but Wesley Clark got there first.
- Kevin Drum admires the chutzpah.
- There’s an interview with Seymour Hersh over at AlterNet. He pretty much hits on the same themes has has other interviews lately, but they’re vitally important to be aware of, so if you haven’t caught his stuff recently, read this. What he has to say about the war, Abu Ghraib, the NeoCons, and the press is worthy of your attention.
Friday, October 29th, 2004 @ 2:25 pm 
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October 29th, 2004 at 4:24 pm
Do you feel more secure now that the blood of 100,000 Iraqis is on our hands
Especially considering the Iraqis weren’t behind 9/11. Kind of stinks – respond to an attack by killing a great many of any people.
October 29th, 2004 at 4:38 pm
Too right, Graham.
I’m not a flaming pacifist or anything. I accept the sad reality of military and “collateral” civilian casualties. I just think that if we’re going to respond lethally to an attack such as the one on 9/11, it should, more than anything, be an appropriate response. Ie., targeted at the people responsible for the initial attack. That we’ve killed such a large number of Iraqis in a misguided response to 9/11 is almost unbearable. It just doesn’t connect with my image of my country as caring and just.
October 30th, 2004 at 5:51 pm
Stu, you’re right to be cautious about that number. There’s some very serious doubts about it.
Also, just to be clear, as a supporter of the war, I never saw it as a response to 9/11. It was a response to Saddam refusing to cooperate regarding his weapons programs, and the UN refusing to enforce its own rulings. In other words, the Iraq invasion was preventative, not responsive.
And in the broader context of the Bush doctrine, Iraq was a sponsor of terror, and liberating it from its dictatorship was designed to start the process of freedom in the middle east, as a means of removing the root causes of terrorism (ignorance, poverty, tyranny, propaganda, intolerance, corruption). With a free Afghanistan and a free Iraq, a free Iran cannot be far behind. As Muslims in the region see their Muslim neighbors improving their lot in life freely, Democracy will spread and terrorism will fade. This is a long, long term goal, but I rarely ever hear Democrats mention it, even to dispute it.
That having been said, of course reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom or folly of the invasion. That’s cool. All I’m saying is, no war supporter that I know personally has ever believed we were responding to 9/11 by attacking Iraq. We were trying to prevent something far worse than 9/11.
Might be semantics on my part, but I just wanted to put in my two cents.
October 30th, 2004 at 6:32 pm
I know that there is an argument accepted by many (not all) that Iraq was not a response to 9/11, and that the underlying aim is to spread peace via democracy. However there are also arguments that Afghanisan was basically a failed attempt to nail Bin Laden, and that Iraq was for domestic political consumption, and to even old scores.
Personally I find the second argument much more compelling. I see the sequence:
I also observe that the US has a long history of attacking very small, weak contries. I also observe that it is far easier to attack states than nebulous organisations, and I buy the argument that the Bush administration found this to be a compelling argument.
Many countries have democracies that are very oppressive – Haiti, South Africa under the National Party, Sudan (currently suspended) etc, etc. Not hard to find examples. Therefore I argue that the notion that democracy will fix problems of poverty and corruption by itself is fairly Pollyanna-esque. Democracy requires reasonable prosperity to work, and even then can get threatened quite easily. I buy the argument that it is the “least worst” system. But that’s another story…
And this doesn’t even address the argument that the death toll in Iraq is due to the incompetent management of the war. Easy to invade, not so easy to manage and rebuild.
Finally, whether it is 10,000 (which I think most could agree on as a minimum figure) or 100,000, it is still a tad disproportionate. Sure, we live in dangerous times, people are going to get killed, and it is not going to stop soon. I am not a peacenik, I don’t object to people being killed in wartime per se. Shit happens. But it is high time the US stopped invading small countries and killing people needlessly so that voters in small mid-western towns can feel they have a strong leader who is doing something.
As a postscript, there is a (well, I found it to be) very sensible and comprehensive assessment of the inappropriately named “War on Terror” called “Defeating the Jihadists” at http://www.tcf.org. Provides a seemingly more sensible strategy.
October 30th, 2004 at 8:50 pm
Graham,
Here’s a Slate piece that pretty much destroys the 100,000 number. You’re right in your estimate of around 10,000 I think.
The Bush Doctrine may be Pollyana-esque. Only time will tell. I happen to believe it’s the only real option we have. I’ll check out the link you provided , though.
I must take umbrage with your assertion that the US invades small countries to bolster a particular President’s popularity “in the Midwest”. The US invades when the US thinks there is a national interest in doing so. Just look at how much damage the Iraq invasion has done to Bush’s chance for reelection. Look at how Vietnam destroyed LBJ. The Gulf War didn’t help Bush 41 at all. And if you’re talking about oil, then I would say oil (energy) helps to make freedom possible. Yes, we depend on it too much. But until there is a viable alternative, this is the reality we face.
As for the countries being “small”, Iraq had one of the largest standing armies in the world at the time of our invasion last year. There are few countries as large as the US, and to imply that we’re merely picking on “small” countries is frankly a silly notion. Tiny North Korea has a far larger military than gigantic Canada. North Vietnam was armed to the teeth, with a huge force. And even though Afghanistan had a small force by conventional standards, there was a huge guerilla factor which neither the Soviet Union nor the British Empire could conquer.
For your assertion to be valid, one would have to believe that the Communist threat of the Cold War was overblown and that the threat of radical Islam sponsored by rogue states is an overblown threat now. That’s an honest position to take, I just disagree with it.
October 30th, 2004 at 9:52 pm
JWR,
That’s an honest position to take, I just disagree with it.
Likewise
The communist threat was only a little bit overblown, there were certainly times when the line had to be drawn, as in Korea, although it is hard to say if North Korea had taken over the peninsula, whether it really would have mattered. And it too was a very expensive war in human costs.
The degree to which there exists a current “threat of radical Islam sponsored by rogue states” is a matter of interpretation. I think certainly there is a threat, a real one, posed by radical organisations who profess Islamic beliefs, who are able to flourish in failed states. Afghanistan, certainly could have been judged a rogue state and the invasion of it was certainly justified. The US fought a smart war, just failed to finish it off. Iraq was a roque state posing no real threat, is now fast approaching a failed state supporting ever increasing numbers of real threats.
There is also a problem with rogue states like North Korea, but then current administration doesn’t seem to want to do much about it yet, apart from sling insults. Iran? Gee, but Iran is a democracy! Now how could a democracy possibly be a threat to anyone. Course, they rig their elections a little, but I hear there is some controversy over past elections in Florida, so I guess they are not alone.
Regarding “small” countries, Iraq prior to invasion had a large army, but one which was severely degraded – this was very widely known, and subsequent events proved it. Even Rumsfeld, bless his rabid little socks, was convinced only a small force was required to make it collapse, and he was right. I suspect – with no proof at all – that the Bush administration was confident there would be no battlefield poison gas or other WMD used against them, otherwise they would not have invaded.
Tiny North Korea? Are you crazy, man – they have NUKES!! AND they’re crazier than Bush!
Vietnam? LBJ and all the rest throught it was tiny. Over 1 million people had to die there to prove them wrong. OK, that’s subjective, I admit it.
Grenada? Panama? They were big? And what about the proxy wars in central America?
The US took on Germany and Japan in WW2, and we all owe a great debt. They took on Korea and China (with some assistance) and won, and we all probably owe a debt. But since then, the record is not exactly full of honour. I live in a small country and frankly, some of us get worried that one day the US might think WE will be convenient to invade.
I guess a lot of what I am saying is pretty irrelevant. I have to admit that prior to the Iraq invasion I did on occasion wonder that maybe Bush was right. What convinced me to oppose Iraq was my perception of the US government’s record of lying – about Vietnam, about Chili, about its involvement in Central America, and more. And, funny thing, after the invasion, despite all the blustering, there were NO WMD, NO mobile laboratories, NO credible links to Bin Laden, nothing, just a big mess the Bush administration suddenly wants the rest of us to help clean up. Frankly, I think they started the mess and insisted they had to go it alone, so let them go it alone cleaning it up. It will take a decade and deficits even Reagan would have been proud of.
The US invades when the US thinks there is a national interest in doing so.
That is so obviously incorrect. The US is controlled by the administration, and the administration decides on a mixture of the administration’s political interest, the personal interests of the people near the top of the food chain, and, a poor last, the national interest. The rest of us just have to hope that (a) it is also actually in the US national interest, (b) it is not going to result in yet another pointless slaughter like Vietnam, and© let it be someone else they pick on this time. Also bear in mind that US National interest and natural justice are not necessarily synonymous.
Getting too angry, aren’t I. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, and I am not anti American, just anti Bush and the current administration…and some of the similar administrations in the past.
October 30th, 2004 at 10:53 pm
Worth doing a little bit of analysis on the report that “100,000 Iraqis have died since the start of the US invasion.”
Firstly, the report referred to in the Lancet does not say that 100,000 Iraqis have died since the start of the US invasion, they say:
Note the “excess deaths” phrase. This is not just saying that 100,000 died, but there were 100,000 MORE over what could otherwise have been expected had there been no invasion. We also have to keep in mind that people were dying there before the invasion due to the combination of sanctions and Saddam’s low priority on civilian well being. It was not a healthy place to be, the US simply made it worse to the tune of the estimated 100,000.
Secondly, applying a “reasonableness” test, I note the following sites which tend to corroborate it:
Putting this all together it seems quite reasonable that a figure of 100,000 excess deaths could have occurred. Some supporting arguments:
Before the invasion, Iraq, for all it’s faults, did not permit a high level of lawlessness. Since a benevolent US government corrected that oversight by disposing of the admittedly nasty regime, gun ownership and anarchy has soared, and fairly obviously the murder rate has gone with it. The Lancet report attributes most deaths to air strikes, but if the level of gun ownership and gun usage has increased at the observed rates, it would be no surprise at all if there were not another 100,000 civilian deaths due to this alone.
In view of all these factors, I find the Lancet report credible, and the estimate of 100,000 extra deaths probably conservative. War kills people. That’s why we try to avoid it.
October 31st, 2004 at 4:27 am
In an earlier post, JWR said: Here’s a Slate piece that pretty much destroys the 100,000 number
The article referred to at http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2108887&; does not in fact destroy the 100,000. It slings some mud and takes some cheap shots, but does not destroy it.
Look at the raw data in the sample of 7868 Iraqi people at time of first interview – 46 deaths in the 14.6 months before invasion, 142 deaths in the 17.8 months after. Applying statistical analysis, they conclude with a 95% confidence interval that this means between 8,000 and 194,000 extra deaths. Slate chooses to call this a dart board, because it might mean only 8,000 extra deaths. But there is an equal chance that it might mean 194,000. We should not ignore the survey report simply because they are being rigorous with their statistical method.
The report stated that the very high Falluja sample was excluded because it was so high. Look at the detail in the report: “In Falluja, 23 households out of the 52 visited…were either temporarily or permanently abandoned. Neighbours interviewed described widespread death…”. They left this out for the sake of a conservative estimate. So quite possibly the real count is over 200,000.
The survey report quotes the same widely respected iraqbodycount.net that Slate quotes. The report says: “Passive surveillance systems often have low sensitivity, and the fact that the estimate of coalition casualties from http://www.iraqbodycount.net is a third to a tenth the estimate reported in this survey should be of little surprise.” In other words, it is difficult if not impossible for a count based on rigorous fact checking to count deaths by massive bombardment in no-go areas and come anywhere near an accurate count. Slates chooses to ignore this and call the figures on iraqbodycount.net “more solidly rooted in reality”. It is, if you keep your eyes and ears shut and don’t want unpleasant news.
October 31st, 2004 at 9:44 pm
Thanks for the stimulating discussion, guys. There’s a lot I’d like to respond to, but let me share just a couple of thoughts for now…
JWR: “Also, just to be clear, as a supporter of the war, I never saw it as a response to 9/11. It was a response to Saddam refusing to cooperate regarding his weapons programs, and the UN refusing to enforce its own rulings. In other words, the Iraq invasion was preventative, not responsive.”
You’re right, of course. The Iraq War was not a response to 9/11, which maybe makes it worse. We supposedly invaded that country because of the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction and Sadaam’s purported links to al Qaeda. As neither of those arguments turned out to be valid, the loss of life is a worse embarrassment.
Sadaam’s refusal to cooperate with the UN was a supporting argument in the run-up to war, but I find your touting of it now problematic for two reasons: First, Sadaam apparently had cooperated with inspectors to the extent that his WMD programs had been dismantled, so this only again points to our failure of intelligence and destroys our rational for the war in the first place. Second, even though I agreed with his point in the original context, you ridiculed Kerry’s “Global Test” statement at your blog, so how can you pretend that we engaged in a preventive war on the basis of defending the honor of the United Nations?
Further, invading Iraq because it was a state sponsor of terrorism is terribly weak argument to make in defense of the war for two reasons: One: (take your pick) either Iraq had no operational ties to al Qaeda (according to the 9/11 Commission Report); or there are other countries in the region who were bigger supporters of terrorism (how many of the hijackers were Saudi?). Two, al Qaeda is not a state, and we cannot defeat that organization by attacking states, even if they do sponsor terrorists. A war against a pan-national organization of dangerous zealots needs to be fought more the way we fight organized crime, by using special forces, police authority and cutting off sources of funding. We cannot declare war on 60 different nations. We can’t even successfully prosecute a war in one.
Graham: It’s interesting that you mention Haiti. Democracy in Haiti has been thwarted by US intervention time and again over its history. We installed and propped up the Duvaliers and likely supported the recent coup against Aristide. In Iraq, Sadaam was once our guy. Now we’ve ousted him and installed Chalabi. If democracy is going to work in Haiti, Iraq, or anywhere, it must truly be run by the will of the people. We cannot impose democracy on a country that doesn’t want it or isn’t ready for it. (I also think you have a valid point that democracy will manage a lot better in the midst of prosperity.)
Also, I’ll post this on the blog later tonight, but Body and Soul has a similar response to the Slate article here. I’m no statistician, so the discussion of the analysis is, frankly, beyond me. However, what persuaded me to put some stock in the Lancet study is that it was in Lancet and not in Slate. Lancet is a respected, peer-reviewed medical journal. To my knowledge, Fred Kaplan’s piece was subjected to no peer review whatsoever.
October 31st, 2004 at 11:59 pm
Stu
what persuaded me to put some stock in the Lancet study is that it was in Lancet and not in Slate. Lancet is a respected, peer-reviewed medical journal. To my knowledge, Fred Kaplan’s piece was subjected to no peer review whatsoever.
A good point, and the Body and Soul article said it better than I did. I particularly like the point they made, as did the Lancet article, that it is high time the US military started counting the bodies they leave.