Keeping Casualties in Perspective
Our good friend and frequent commenter too many steves recommended this Power Line piece to me, and it’s truly a must-read. John Hinderaker points out the many sins of the media regarding the Iraq War, most glaringly the omission of what objectives our soldiers are dying for:
Not only do news outlets generally fail to report the progress that is being made, and often fail to put military operations into any kind of tactical or strategic perspective, they assiduously avoid talking about the overarching strategic reason for our involvement there: the Bush administration’s conviction that the only way to solve the problem of Islamic terrorism, long term, is to help liberate the Arab countries so that their peoples’ energies will be channelled into the peaceful pursuits of free enterprise and democracy, rather than into bizarre ideologies and terrorism.
Then there’s this jarring bit of context:
The media’s breathless tabulation of casualties in Iraq–now, over 1,800 deaths–is generally devoid of context. Here’s some context: between 1983 and 1996, 18,006 American military personnel died accidentally in the service of their country. That death rate of 1,286 per year exceeds the rate of combat deaths in Iraq by a ratio of nearly two to one.
That’s right: all through the years when hardly anyone was paying attention, soldiers, sailors and Marines were dying in accidents, training and otherwise, at nearly twice the rate of combat deaths in Iraq from the start of the war in 2003 to the present. Somehow, though, when there was no political hay to be made, I don’t recall any great outcry, or gleeful reporting, or erecting of crosses in the President’s home town. In fact, I’ll offer a free six-pack to the first person who can find evidence that any liberal expressed concern–any concern–about the 18,006 American service members who died accidentally in service of their country from 1983 to 1996.
It’s a given that one death is one death too many, particularly to the family of the soldier, but how can we hope to persuade our fellow citizens of the rightness of our cause if the casualties are all they hear?
The Administration has been showing signs lately of taking the selling of the war more seriously; they should miss no opportunity to do so, because God knows they won’t get any help from the casualty-obsessed media…
UPDATE 08/25/05: Columnist Jack Kelly: Americans are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the war in Iraq, because all news about Iraq is presented as bad news, even when it isn’t.
I find a number of problems with this thesis:
1) The phrase “media’s breathless tabulation of casualties” implies that somehow the media are gleeful in reporting US war dead. This is both offensive and incorrect.
2) Are you suggesting that military deaths are too insignificant to report? I remember during the VietNam war, the 10:00 news every night would have something called Honor Roll, where that day’s fallen soldiers were named in a scroll. My guess is that during earlier wars the local newspapers would also report war dead. Is there something wrong here?
3) The post is about US war dead. Of course, nobody knows how many Iraqis also die every day, or how many Iraqi civilians were killed during the invasion. The fact is that the death toll of this war continues from day to bloody day — is your suggestion that this should just be ignored and swept under the rug?
4) The deaths of US soldiers from training, accidents, etc. is irrelevant. Any organization of over a million people will have a death rate, and nobody denies that military training and service are high risk activities. This is regrettable but expected. If you would calculate the deaths from an equivalent number of truckers or factory workers or fireman, presumably it would be similar. However, there is no moral context here — they did not die because of the willful decision of the President and his men. They died for the military equivalent of natural causes. The question is whether the number of US war dead is justified, not how it compares in scale from soldiers who die from “natural causes.”
5) “How can we hope to persuade our fellow citizens of the rightness of our cause of the casualties are all they here (sic)?” Simple: on one side of the ledger is 1800 dead, 10,000+ wounded, x dollars spent, US prestige squandered, etc. These are indusputable facts. The only way you can justify the “rightness” of the war is to make the argument that whatever good comes from the Iraq invasion justifies what is on the other side of the ledger.
Sorry, indisputable. Not indusputable.
peter –
Number 1. I agree with you, wouldn’t have been my choice of words…
Number 2. Absolutely not; war deaths are certainly news; so are the dozens of good things that happen in Iraq every day that wouldn’t have happened under Saddam; there’s not time for everything, and we know when it comes to news, death and sex sells – there’s no sex here, so death it is…
Number 3. The Iraqi War dead are primarily the result of suicide bombings and other terrorist-related activities, at least by this stage; every one of their lives is as important as every one of ours, and I don’t ever want to perceived as minimizing them – but let’s remember who’s trying to save lives and who’s doing the murdering (and yes, we’ve killed innocent Iraqis – but we make it a matter of policy to kill as FEW as possible, whereas the policy of the terrorists is to kill as many)…
Number 4. Yes, and I believe there is a morally sound reason for these unfortunate deaths in Iraq; there’s no morally good reason that people get killed in industrial accidents or car wrecks, but when people die for a cause that is noble, and a cause they volunteered for, we get Camp Cindy 24-7 (even after Cindy left!)…
Number 5. Thanks for catching the typos; I’d love to make the argument that the other side of the ledger more than balances the bad, and in fact I do my best to; unfortunately my audience is somewhat limited. I said that in the context of a discussion of large media.
Thanks as always for the comments…we may not always (often?) agree, but it’s always interesting…
1) Great, thanks
2) Agreed — bombs make better copy than how the Baghdad sewage system is working — but I wouldn’t infer from the lack of good news in the mainstream reporting on the war that it necessarily follows that there is good news. If there is, let’s hear it —
3) In total agreement
4) Well, whether the cause is noble is arguable — I don’t think this is an a priori truth here. As for Camp Cindy — well, I have some steaks on the grill, if I got into that they would start to burn…
5) Agreed and thanks
Incidentally, I recommend the current issue of the Economist to you — there is an interesting thesis which compares Islamic terrorism to the anarchist movement of 100 years ago — which was fought vigorously by the governments of the time to little effect, and which ultimately died on its own — interesting parallels which I would love to repeat but it is time to get back to the coals –
Hey, I love the Economist, so I’ll check it out…and by all means, don’t let me keep you from a steak!…
But the 1,800+ figure does not include Afghanistan or training injuries, so I think that the argument is sorta apples and oranges.
And I think it is purely insulting, but not necessarily surprising, that there continues the slur that Democrats (or liberals) don’t care about the military. As I recall in the 90′s it was usually the GOP who was slamming our military actions in Kosovo and Serbia.
John appears to have the same problem with Iraq that the administration is having: admitting that any mistakes were made. At this point, this is obvious to most of the American public (see the recent ARG & Harris polls), but the administration and its supporters can’t make such an admission.
Believe it or not, this hurts the cause more than the casualties. The public just doesn’t believe what is coming out of the White House any more.
Hey, Mark…the new blog looks great. I’ll chime in here by saying that, first and foremost, a single lost life in defense of our country is sobering and worthy of our deepest respect and gratitude. My family lost a wonderful young man — just 21 years old — in Vietnam when his tank ran over a mine just three weeks after he left the states. I’ll never forget how heartbreaking that was for his mother and father, my grandparents, and our entire family. However the story that is not being told about Iraq is the utter military success it is. Never before in the history of warfare has one country completely defeated and occupied an aggressor at so little human cost. I do not say this to diminish the lives of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice. I say it only to point out that this war will be looked upon and studied for generations to come as a stunningly successful model and a testament to the training and technology of the American military-industrial complex. Without it, this war would have cost many, many thousands more American lives.
BSR
BSR, no doubt…but the occupation…I’m not so sure. In retrospect (20/20 hindsight, gotta love it, right?) we should have declared martial law and put a tight grip on things until the security situation got under control better; and God bless the memory of your family member who sacrificed it all…SoloD, I don’t defend the sort of comments about liberals and/or Democrats not caring about the military; I think a very far-out ‘progressive’ branch does not particularly care what happens to the tools of capitalist AmeriKKKa, but the vast majority of Democrats care as much about our troops as the next guy.
Mark,
I wasn’t attributing those feelings to you, but it does get a bit tiring to try and make the distinction on too many sites. There can be a vigorous debate on where we should go, but extremists on both side seem too eager to hijack those discussions.
(And I think we really need to have this national discussion.)
Agreed, and don’t worry, I didn’t take it as directed at me personally, but thanks for the clarification…
Mark—Thanks for the link.
Just to chime in on what’s been written above, I do not think America’s political left will ever regain the credibility to embrace “our troops” after the way the left vilified and demonized those that fought in Vietnam. John Kerry “reporting for duty” and the stage of the DNC festooned with Vietnam kitsch was enough to make me gag. As I watched it all, I turned to a friend and said, “since when does the left embrace military accomplishment?”
We should not let the left forget the hateful and untrue things that were said and, in fact, continue to be said. For instance, how many on the left “knew” that what happened Abu Ghraeb was not an aberration but was “business as usual” as dictated by “Rummy”?
I will unflinchingly look any so-called progressive square in the eye and question their sincerity on this matter.
The sad yet undeniable fact is: casualty statistics are merely one more thing that opponents of the president, his secretaries and the war in Iraq will gleefully exploit and exaggerate to gain whatever political advantage they can.
Taunting Wounded Heroes
As I posted here yesterday, the far left liberal fringes have ignited into action. Fed propaganda from the democrats for decades, through comparisons of conservatives to Hitler and all other forms of evil, the democrats created a boiling cauldron of …
Unfortunately, I see that Greg does not take the same opinion about Democrats and the military as you do Mark.
Greg, you can disagree with policy decisions made by politicians without hating the military. But instead of having a discussion about policy, you have run away from the actual debate to make inflammatory statements about the other side. I imagine that you are capable of defending your views, instead of merely launching stereotypical character attacks. You should try it, you might actually persuade someone.
[...] The harbingers of death. Too bad they do no know about the context of the death tolll as we see here, where it does not exceed the loss of life in the military during times of peace. But an anti-war fanatic would simply say it is time to disarm then. They have become so obsessed with their cause to the point where the cannot muster a minimal level of respect. Luke accused President Bush of “exploiting American soldiers” while “oppressing the other nations of earth.” The president “has killed far too many people,” he added. [...]
SoloD–I am ready, willing and able to have a discussion about “policy decisions made by politicians” if at any point you would like to initiate one.
You wrote, “John appears to have the same problem with Iraq that the administration is having: admitting that any mistakes were made.” This is a point made often by Sen. Biden, which seems to me to be more of a political ploy than a sincere attempt to “reconnect” the public to the war effort.
I will dispute the extent to which it would do any good for the president to publicly state that “mistakes” have been made while the fight against the Iraqi insurgency and al-Qaeda continues. There will be time for an overarching public assessment of what went wrong and right in Iraq; that time is not now. Which is not to say that tactics aren’t being adjusted all the time; they certainly are. But for the president to make a blanket, public statement, as Sen. Biden has called for him to do, would not now be strategically sound, IMO.
That’s my take on the “policy” of the matter.
The soldiers that fought in Vietnam and, to a large extent, the ones that now fight in Iraq, are indeed “hated” by the left, certainly if you figure the international component of the left into the equation. Again, revisit the recent, broad accusations about military “thuggery” and the certainty of the allegations of “massive war crimes” being committed by “US soldiers.” By this point, there have likely been close to half a million US soldiers rotated into and out of Iraq. How many have been accused of, tried and convicted of abuses? 20? 50? This is not to apologize for those criminals, but the entire military should not be smeared for the actions of a few deviants. yet it is, ongoingly and relentlessly.
Greg,
You apparently are doing exactly what you ask not be done in you last sentence. Taking the actions of a few and projecting them on to the many. I think that you misinterpret the criticisms of places like Abu Ghraeb as being directed against individual soldiers when I think most of the thoughtful criticism was more directed the policies that allowed for the situation to occur. As for your criticisms of the left, I think there are very clear distinction between what is said internationally and here in the States — intermixing the two is not fair.
As for admitting mistakes, why is it the end of the world to admit that there were intelligence mistakes or policy mistakes? Part of the biggest problem the President faces right now is that his support is plummeting, in part because he keeps saying the same thing over and over. Honesty, remember that what this guy said he was bringing back to the Oval Office. An honest assessment of how we got where we are is the first step to figuring out where we want to be. If something doesn’t change he will lose the war over here, only in part because of what is going on over there.
[...] AJ Strata has a sane and more evenly-toned post than mine on this story. Mark at Decision ‘08< ?a> also has a good post. [...]
SoloD—Let us not forget that it was none other than Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), the minority “whip,” and, post the recent stoke of Harry Reid, perhaps the most powerful Democrat in the Senate, who likened the US to Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Why? Primarily, because of his perception of current White House and Pentagon “policy.”
So if, in your opinion, the likes of a Sen. Durbin is so wildly outside the mainstream or unrepresentative of what you perceive to be the position of the Democrats–or the strictly-American “left”–I’d suggest you rethink either your party affiliation or your argument.
Calls for the president to admit mistakes are merely political ploys, IMO, because: there is an obvious and concerted effort on the part of many in the MSM, the Democratic Party and the left, to whatever extent those things are or are not distinct, to portray the president and his advisory team as bumbling, unprepared, arrogant “cowboys.” A sincere admission on the part of the president of a “mistake,” if in fact he has made one, a point I am not willing to concede, would only add fuel to the collective critical fire, which obviously sustains itself without additional executive additives.
You wrote, “If something doesn’t change [the president] will lose the war over here, only in part because of what is going on over there.” My rebuttal to this point is simply this: all will like us when we win.
And, clearly, winning is what we are now doing.
Greg,
I would suggest that you actually go back and read Sen. Durbin’s comments, not the furor that followed. I think that you would see that your characterization is a bit off.
Regardless, if you believe that “clearly, winning is what we are now doing” then there is no reason to change. Fortunately, you are in a increasingly shrinking minority in this view point. It is this type of thinking that increases the danger to our country, a critical eye is always important, even when it is your guy making the policy.
What you don’t seem to realize is that this stay the course attitude is failing. Approval ratings of 36% or 40% will not only cripple a Presidency, but also make it hard for us to actually accomplish anything in Iraq.
SoloD, I know you and Greg can speak for yourselves, so I’m content to watch from the sidelines (and please feel free to continue…this blog belongs to the readers as much as it does to me). I just have to insert one little quibble: I know this isn’t quite what you meant, but approval ratings don’t affect the situation on the ground…that is a political concern, no doubt, but not a military one…though I understand your point to be that Bush’s low approval ratings may force some sort of action, such as premature troop withdrawal, perhaps?
Mark,
Thank you for correctly clarifying my remarks. The President’s approval ratings have an effect on how we percieve the efforts here. If the public turns against the war, it will be more dificult to be effective over there, because of the political desire to “shake things up” as well the fact that it could result in a much more hostile Congress. I think it will also effect recruiting and reenlistment rates.
In that way Vietnam is instructive, it was when the American public turned against the war that we had real problems.
SoloD–Well, unfortunately this discussion has moved each of us into what Joan Didion refers to as “the standard fencing positions.” So this will be my last comment and I’ll let you have the final word if you’d care to have it.
I have no doubt that, despite what you may hear, inside the White House and Pentagon there is a relentlessly critical eye being given to what is going on in Iraq and in the larger War on Terror. No one is rigidly or dogmatically “staying the course.” Critical adjustments are being made all the time. Staying the course, in this instance, means riding out low points, like the recent spike in casualties, because the overall mission is clearly succeeding. Pulling out now, if that is what you are suggesting, would be a disaster of unending global proportions.
My suspicion is that if you—or anyone else—were to read, for instance, Arthur Chrenkoff’s 100,000-word account of “The Good News from Iraq” you would not be so angst-ridden over the undeniable progress in Iraq.
It has become obvious to me, as I pointed out in a recent column, that the “strategy,” for lack of a better word, on the part of the Democratic Party and the left, is to deny any and all progress or success in Iraq. This, in an attempt to make it harder for the Republican Party to win again in ’06 and ’08. It is a flawed plan; call me an optimist, but I do not believe this collective exercise in truth denial will be enough to stop the Republican Party in either election.
The president’s personal “approval rating” is largely meaningless, I think, because neither he, nor his vice president, will ever run for office again. As a measure of how things are actually progressing in Iraq it is entirely irrelevant. Again, these numbers and their supposed significance are simply another “thing” that can be exaggerated and exploited to keep the Angry Left and “the base” engaged. Whoever next runs for office on the Republican ticket will not in any meaningful way be either hailed or criticized for President Bush’s Iraq/GwoT record. It will forever be his and his alone.
Thanks for an interesting debate. You have a nice ‘blog, BTW. Cheers.
Greg,
Thak you for the compliment, I enjoyed some of your essays (even if I didn’t always agree with them). I concur that we have reached the point where polite people “agree to disagree.”
However, one quick point I would mention, I think that you disregard “approval ratings” too quickly. In today’s Washington, “approval rating” is a currency that you can take to the bank. It allows you to keep people in line when their instinct may be to go the other way. I think you have seen in the past week or so an increasing number of Republicans who are worried about what the war. I would expect this to only increase when Congress comes back from recess. The fact that this coincides with falling poll numbers is, I think, not coincidental.
Thanks for the last word.