The only good Iraqi is a dead Iraqi

This is the impression I get when I study Iraq War civilian death count statistics: that people really just don’t give a damn. Years ago, it finally struck me that I didn’t give a damn either, and I decided to find the actual statistics of how many people died. The results, or lack thereof, was shocking. I have been anti-War ever since. The total wars of our day are usually only contests of how many people you can blow up. My count so far is zero. Thank God.

I first went on to Wikipedia. The results were astounding:  the lowest toll was from US Classified logs at about 66,000…and the highest was 1.2 million. That is twenty times more. Many other estimates, and mind you all these estimates were at different time spans, ranged from a hundred thousand to six hundred thousand. To give you an idea of proportions: 3,000 American civilians died in 9/11, and 5,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Imagine if no one had to die.

The highest estimate at about 1.2 million from the Opinion Research Business agency ( ORB) is extremely controversial, and I wouldn’t put too much stress on it. The second highest number – the estimate that I am most fond of – is from the The Lancet, a two hundred year old peer reviewed science journal. This estimate has also been controversial, but my emphasis is on the fact that we hardly know how many died, and not on how many died.

I highly recommend you check out the abstract of their survey. You need an account to read the whole thing (it’s free), but I’ll post a chart or two soon to give you an idea of their numbers. Basically, these guys (the only other statisticians to use this method were the ORB pollsters) actually went to Iraq, randomly selected 50 clustered blocks of 40 households from all of Iraq, and surveyed them. They asked them who they knew that died, and they tallied up the numbers. To confirm the accuracy of random Iraqi households, 87% of the time they asked for death certificates. 92% of the time certificates were produced. The other 8% is excusable: in some places at certain times death certificates were not issued, and young children weren’t always  documented. The journal has been criticized for the small poll group of 2,000 and for the polling method, but the polling was random and the death certificates were almost always provided. Perhaps their critics should be asked why they didn’t use polling numbers. Sitting on the other side of the Earth in front of a computer documenting deaths somehow seems a bit more sketchy to me.

So the Lancet Survey is quite interesting. It shows us the shocking disparity of numbers between government run statistics (the United Nations, the Iraqi government, the American government…) and independently run statistics. It shows us the shocking disparity of numbers between computer analysts that have never been to Iraq and pollsters that risked their lives. It is an awful thing for so many people to have died – and for people over here to not even care, know, or even have the ability to know. I intend to post a bit more on the Lancet Survey and what it teaches us…especially about the demographics of who was killed and when. If the survey numbers are true, the coalition forces that invaded Iraq may have caused more deaths then Saddam Hussein. If they aren’t true, they still killed a damn lot of people – and I am confident that there were better but possibly more pricey ways to not do so.

 

 

 

TO BE CONTINUED.

I Know why the Terrorists Terrorize (Part 3)

Continued from Part 2

The social causes of terrorism are aggregated by the historical situations of the Middle East. The political destruction the Islamic World has faced are due to a wealth of reasons, and only some of which will be discussed. Much of what I say here is drawn from the book Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis. I have written a review on that book if you would like to check it out. The political chaos in the Middle East today is due to both interior and exterior reasons, and all too often the Middle East fails to recognize the problems it has created for itself while the outside world fails to recognize the problems it has created for the Middle East. Both of these forces have worked to destroy the political, social, economic, academic, and cultural fabric of a civilization equally rich in history and tradition as ours.

We can empathize with the problems the Middle East has unwittingly been forced into, but we must caution ourselves from forgetting the problems it has caused on its own. We must also caution ourselves from removing the blame of terrorism from the perpetrators to the victims, like America. Certainly, this country has seriously failed in Middle Eastern foreign affairs when it comes to the field of terrorism, but we cannot forget who did the bombing on whose soil.But that was before the real warring started. The real warring started with our 43rd President, and I’ll talk about him later.

The real warring started when Britian betrayed the Arab nations . The real warring started when France and Britain occupied the Arab states. The real warring started when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, or when the United States supported Saddam Hussein. The real warring started was when the United States supported a coup in Iran, or when Nasser came to power in Egypt.  These things that happened in the Middle East, that traumatized the masses  and angered the intellectuals, are what brought the violence and the despair in the region. The regimes that oppress the people of that world day by day are practically puppet regimes implemented by western powers.

And thus the terrorism took root. It took root in an anti-western ideology that stemmed from the oppression of regimes and colonial powers. The soviets invaded Afghanistan  – and lost -,  and collapsed soon after. This wasn’t all too correlated, but the masses of the middle east saw that as the hidden power of its people. These strong armed, violent revolts brought down a superpower, in their mind. USSR was a paper tiger, in their perceptions. The US has now inherited that role. As we have adopted a new idol of the “other”: Islam, to replace Communism, the Middle East has adopted us as the enemy likewise. We are wrapped in a chaotic, complicated world, in which we adopt a dualistic worldview just to satisfy our simple minds. The Axis of Evil that Bush so delightfully remarks about, is nothing but scared nations trying to survive in a chaotic world of dangerous bullies. Thus they bully their people, an d load themselves with weaponry and military strength in the hopes of survival. We as a nation eliminated Iraq, one of the three nations of the axis. It is not surprising North Korea and Iran are attempting nuclear weaponry: for fear of elimination too.

The warring continued when we bombed Iraq day after day, massacring hundreds of thousands of people just like us. We criticize the Boston Bomber’s face on the Rolling Stones Magazine, and yet we turn a blind eye when Bush shows up in our newspapers and our books. The warring continued when we bombed Afghanistan day after day, massacring just like we did before. The warring continued when we drone attack Yemen and Pakistan day after day, killing teenagers as “collateral damage” for their parents. The warring continues day after day. The terrorist ideology is like the Greek Hydra: every one of them we kill a number grow in his place. We must get to the root of the ideology, this anti-Western contempt, and fix that, for a long term solution. Else we are just beating around an ever growing burning bush.

How we deal with the people around us is how they deal with us. To treat Muslims as crazy and their regimes as hostile is for them to treat us likewise and for them to become hostile. To be hypocrites day after day by preaching democracy while funding dictatorships isn’t something no one realizes. The people of the Middle East remember the coup in Iran, or the support of Saudi Arabia, and the current lack of action in Syria. When we terrorize people, they terrorize back. Sometimes worse, with more violence, and more ruthlessness. In our own interests, we must stop. We cannot kill ideology with bombs – only with ideology. We terrorize them day after day, and they terrorize us likewise. That is why the terrorists terrorize.

Continued with Part 4/4.