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Casualty estimates should give pause
By Rich Lewis, October 12, 2006
The Sentinel, Carlisle, PA
A few weeks ago, we learned that the heads of the 16 spy services within the federal government had unanimously concluded that the war in Iraq has bred “a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world.”
The much publicized “National Intelligence Estimate” written in April concluded the war is “cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”
Yesterday we were given one horrifying explanation of why that is so.
The British medical journal, The Lancet, has published the results of a survey by Johns Hopkins University showing that an estimated 655,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a consequence of the war.
That number is more than the combined populations of Cumberland, Perry, Adams and Dauphin counties.
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The study estimates that 601,000 of the “excess deaths” resulted from violence and the other 54,000 from disease and other causes. By “excess deaths” the study means people who would not have died if the war had not taken place.
About a third of violent deaths were “directly attributed to coalition forces.” In many other cases “the responsible party was not known, or the households were hesitant to specifically identify them.”
President Bush was quick to deny the findings, saying he did not believe the report was “credible” — but he gave no reasons for that conclusion or offer an estimate of his own. A year ago, Bush put the death toll at 30,000.
But his remarks came within hours of a report from the Iraqi Health Ministry that more than 2,660 Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghad alone in September, an increase of 400 over the month before. The Hopkins study indicates that similar levels of violence occur in many other cities, including Mosul, Ramadi and Falluja. In light of those numbers, the Hopkins estimate of 15,000 deaths a month across Iraq is hardly incredible — and is certainly way beyond the president’s estimate.
The Hopkins study (available at www.thelancet.com) is far from perfect. It was, after all, conducted in a war zone. But the authors are very clear about their methods, which Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, told the Washington Post are “tried and true.” Waldman called the study “the best estimate of mortality we have.”
The Hopkins researchers also acknowledged a margin or error that would put the number of “excess deaths” in Iraq between 426,369 and 793,663.
Whether you choose the high end, low end or middle, these numbers are shocking.
Most Americans are rightly appalled that 2,754 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the war — but it was our national decision to place our own citizens in harm’s way. We chose to make the sacrifice — and must take responsibility for it.
But we must also take responsibility for the deaths of these hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, most of whom did not ask for or welcome the war.
It is a heavy weight on the conscience because it is not clear that Iraqis have received anything of value in exchange for the sacrifice we forced them to make.
One of the Bush administration’s oft-stated reasons for invading Iraq was to liberate the country from a “brutal dictator” and thus improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis.
This argument became increasingly important after it was clear that Iraq had no connection whatsoever to 9/11 — and that Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of “weapons of mass destruction” was a fantasy written by people who had decided upon war long before 9/11 and who deliberately buried evidence to the contrary.
If we couldn’t explain or justify the war in terms of making ourselves safer, at least we could take comfort in the belief that we had “freed” the Iraqis to enjoy the blessings of “democracy.” They would, we were told, dance in the streets and greet us with flowers.
It was a pleasing but false bit of self-congratulation.
The war we instigated has killed ordinary Iraqis at a rate far surpassing Saddam’s. The most widely cited statistic about Saddam’s brutality comes from The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq — an anti-Saddam organization based in Iran and an organization with clear motive to put the worst possible face on the pre-war situation. The center estimated that Saddam had conducted 600,000 “civilian executions.”
But it took Saddam 24 years to kill that many. The Hopkins study says the war has achieved that body count in just four years.
And in the decades before the war, Iraqis led relatively normal lives — people had food and electricity, jobs and social lives; schools, museums and stores were open; crime rates were low.
Now? Just read the news. The country is a disaster area. Baghdad is hell. Mass murder is a daily event.
Jan Egeland, the United Nations under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said yesterday that about 2,000 people are fleeing Iraq for Syria every day, bringing the number of Iraqi refugees abroad to as many as 1.5 million. Another 1.5 million Iraqis are now displaced within their own country, the UN estimates.
It’s not hard to understand why Iraqis are running away. They didn’t need a Hopkins study to tell them that the prospects for staying alive in Iraq are very poor indeed.
Nor is it hard to imagine that they feel “deep resentment” toward the country that started it all.
Rich Lewis’ e-mail address is:
rlcolumn@comcast.net
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