There is a new Knight Ridder article called "Iraqi Civilian Casualties Mounting." This is the first news article that I've seen in a long time in which the headline actually understates the case significantly. To wit:
Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.
While most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, especially of insurgents, are never reported, so the actual number of Iraqis killed in fighting could be significantly higher.
During the same period, 432 American soldiers were killed.
Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of innocent civilians. Some say these casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim government.
Whatever side you're on of the war debate, this is very disturbing.
Here's the bit with the numbers on how many civilians are being killed by which group:
Iraqi officials said about two-thirds of the Iraqi deaths were caused by multinational forces and police; the remaining third died from insurgent attacks. The ministry began separating attacks by multinational and police forces and insurgents June 10.From that date until Sept. 10, 1,295 Iraqis were killed in clashes with multinational forces and police versus 516 killed in terrorist operations, the ministry said. The ministry defined terrorist operations as explosive devices in residential areas, car bombs or assassinations.
Let's discuss this. The United States' response to civilian casualties is twofold and is something like this (all spoken by DoD officials): 1) "We have taken every possible step to avoid civilian casualties, to make sure that the U.S. military response is carefully targeted," but 2) "That's just a fact of warfare that unfortunate things are going to happen" or "But when it comes to pass that we are forced to or we engage in military operations, both of these types of damage [collateral and unintended] will take place."
Now, I don't think I doubt the sincerity of this logic. Which is to say, I'm sure that Secretary Rumsfeld really does think he's trying his best to avoid casualties. But I think he, and his DoD people are applying a different kind of standard from the one that the rest of might apply. When we hear the phrase "We have taken every possible step to avoid civilian casualties," we might believe that in fact "every possible step" has been taken, when that's not actually the case. Consider this fact: in the recent Iraq war, an airstrike that was estimated to cause more than 30 civilian casualties had to be directly approved by the Secretary of Defense. Given that the SecDef approved all 50 odd missions, it seems hard to take the claim seriously that "every possible step" was taken to avoid civilian casualities. By the DoD's own calculus, 1,500 or so civilians must have been killed in those raids, half the number of civilians killed in the WTC terrorist attacks.
So, the argument that they're taking "every possible step" is clearly misstated. The argument is obviously something more like this, and I'm paraphrasing: "in the long run, we'll save more lives with a short war, etc., and accomplish our military objectives faster, if we do these missions, even if a few civilians die."
It's a more utilitarian argument than what they actually admit -- the basic premise is that the (future) good of the many outweighs the good of the few civilians that die.
And it is precisely the situation reported in Knight Ridder that reveals the flaws in such an argument. Because in order to make such an argument, you must be pretty confident in your calculus. Estimates of total civilian casualties since the beginning of the war range from 13,000 to 15,000. A pro-war person might put it in these terms (again paraphrasing): "Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, and a threat to US national security; even though it's regrettable that 14,000 innocent people had to die to rid the world of him, more people would have died in his own country and in the US if he had been allowed to remain in power." President Bush has made a similar, though less elegant and less burdened by evidence, case before: "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
Of course, it's not clear to me at all that leaving Saddam in power would have resulted in the deaths of 14,000 more innocent people. And if you are certain that it would have, you had better be pretty certain.
When looking at a short term time period, and the fact the US military killed more civilians than the insurgency it's fighting (and not just more -- twice as many), it seems very hard to me to maintain the fiction that this utilitarian calculus of lives really works. To people who say the Iraq war was worth it, I have this question, and it's one to search your soul about: Given that our country is killing twice as many innocent people in Iraq as the terrorists are, can you still say with confidence that our actions are strategically and morally right? Are you willing to accept responsibility for those 14,000 lives? Do you still believe the benefits outweigh the high cost of innocent life?
-- Michael
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