Posted by
Andrews on Monday, December 07, 2009 7:55:02 PM
I was reading
a post on another blog that mentioned that deaths in Iraq are lower than traffic casualties. I was thinking about that, and came up with an idea.
When I lived in Baltimore it was a city of about 300,000 more or less, and yet suffered between 300 and 350 murder deaths a year. Of course, as those deaths occurred almost entirely in a smaller subset of city neighborhoods, it really was about 300 deaths in a population of 100,000, but let us be generous. At the time (and for the most part since) Baltimore suffer about 1-1.2 death per 1000 every year.
There are about 150,000 troops in Iraq, more or less. They have been there for 7 years, give or take. At Baltimore homicide rates, that would result in 1050 to 1260 deaths. As of the most recent numbers I can find, US casualties are about 4350. Meaning that it is less than 4 times more dangerous to be a US soldier in Iraq than live anywhere in Baltimore.
If we take the more stringent figures, assuming there were about 300 murders a year in a sub-population of about 100,000, we end up with a move form the worst neighborhoods of Baltimore to Iraq increasing one's chance of death only about 30-40%.
And actually, those numbers are unfair. US fatalities in Iraq are not 100% combat related, while I am counting only homicides in Baltimore. If we included non-homicide deaths in a similar age groups (say 18-35), then the comparable risk of death in Iraq is lower still.
None of this is meant to say that soldiers in Iraq do not face dangers. I have not been in combat, but know innumerable people who have, many in the much more fatality-rich combat of Wolrd War II, Korea and Vietnam. What I want to point out is not that Iraq is safe, but that by obsessing on what is, by any reasonable standard, an incredibly low number fo casualties, the media is making us think that war should be casualty free. It reminds me of the first gulf war, in which losses of pilots were lower than for comparable number of training missions, yet once again were treated as unacceptable by the press.
It is an absurd standard.
We cannot fight war if we cannot be allowed to suffer any casualties. Just as our obsession with civilian casualties ("
Civilian Casualties", "
A Question for those Deploring "Civilian Casualties"in Iraq", "
Just Angry") and with according Geneva Convention rights to terrorists ( "
Goodbye Geneva", "
Why Nuremberg?", "
Last Thought on the Topic"), not to mention civilian criminal rights ( "
Guilty Until Proven Guilty", "
Somehow The Media Missed This", "
Questions Raised by Boumedine", "
Confirmation, If It Is True"), does nothing but hamstring us, making each casualty sound unacceptable will do nothing to make our nation, or our soldiers, any safer. It will simply make it ever harder for politicians to take military action, no matter how dire the need.
Think about the Normandy landings. We suffered as many casualties in some hours as we have in the entire 7 years in Iraq, yet no one called them unacceptable. We understood then that war may entail deaths.
The truth is, the media is obsessing on casualties because they know their target audience largely supports military action. As they can't convince the general public it was a bad thing to attack Saddam, they will try to leverage the public's fondness for the military into anti-war sentiment. By treating every soldier's death as unacceptable and unnecessary, they hope to turn the public against what the public largely sees as necessary military action. And, sadly, they seem to be succeeding, at least with some.
Unfortunately, there really is no rebuttal. Saying that soldiers die in war will be portrayed as heartless by those heartlessly using soldiers to promote their own agenda, but that is the truth. Until the public comes to realize that deaths, while regrettable, may still be necessary, we will be confronted with this disgusting tactic every time we engage the military. Again and again we will hear about "mounting casualties", see the death toll posted every night, and see newscasters gloating over every death while shedding dishonest crocodile tears. It has worked so well, they will never give it up, not until the public finally sees through the dishonesty.
Unfortunately, I doubt that will be any time soon.