The publication of new survey estimates suggesting that there were 150 000 violent deaths in Iraq in the first three years after the invasion, and as many as 400 000 excess deaths (relative to the death rate immediately before the war) has provoked a predictable flurry of blog activity. The main concern has not been the figures themselves, but whether and to what extent these results are consistent with previous, even higher estimates, by Burnham and others, often referred to as the “Lancet survey”. You can read the Crooked Timber view, with which I broadly agree, here and here, and follow links to others on all sides. For an opposing view from Oz, you can go to Harry Clarke.
It seems to me that most of this debate is, like most blog and media wars, is missing the main point. The central fact is that the Iraq war has turned out worse, on almost every count, than even the most pessimistic critics suggested .
As regards war deaths, there were few precise predictions, but suggestions that the death toll would amount to more than a hundred thousand were at the upper limit. Here’s a piece written two years into the war saying that such estimates were way off the mark. If the latest estimate of 150 000 violent deaths in the first three years of war is correct, the pessimists had already been proved right by then, and we’ve had nearly three more bloody years since. Almost certainly, the war has, by now, caused the deaths of well over half a million people who would be alive if the policy prevailing in 2002 (sanctions, but with essential imports of food and medicine permitted under Oil-For-Food) had continued. That includes over 4000 US and Coalition troops killed, along with tens of thousands severely wounded.
The UN suggested war would drive 1 million refugees from Iraq, and internally displace another million. The true figure could be twice as large.
While Treasury Secretary Lawrence Lindsay was sacked for predicting that the war could cost $100 to $200 billion, extreme pessimists like William Nordhaus were projecting a total cost of $1 trillion. It’s already clear that the total cost will be closer to $2 trillion, and it could well be more.
This war has been a disaster for everyone involved*. Quibbling over how large a disaster seems pretty pointless.
* With a handful of exceptions: mercenaries and contractors on the US side, Shia radicals like Sadr in Iraq, and the Iranian government waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces.
John Quiggin 
“Actually Ian, you’ll find most of the US couldn’t give a rat’s proverbial about the rest of the world.”
Yes, we know this because Americans keep telling us so at every opportunity.
Ken (31) makes a good point: it might be best for the world economy if the oil reserves in Iraq could get back into the market.
OTOH, one assumes that the high price of oil is helping to reduce consumption, which can only be good for global warming.
And restricted oil production should also be helping to drive progress towards green fuel alternatives.
If there IS a silver lining in the dark, blood-smattered cloud of Iraq, maybe that’s it…?
Democracy is America’s success.
The trouble is, since the FDR years, America has forgotten it. Instead now the US is a national security state that has stripped democracy out of its own governmental system and has replaced it with a cynical farce of democracy.
In 2006 under the provisions of the Defense Authorization Act (2006) the US Congress conceded to Bush the right to declare martial law unilaterally. Congress did this by allowing the President to waive unilaterally the Insurrection Act (1807) and the Posse Comitatus Act (1878).
Both of these Acts had severely limited the power of the President to declare martial law domestically. In fact, the latter act prescribed a prison sentence for anyone who used the military within the United States without the express permission of Congress.
Thus the legislature has surrendered more of its authority to the Executive. (There were some states rights issues involved as well, but they aren’t particularly relevant.)
The Insurrection Act (1807) allowed the President to deploy troops within the United States only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.� The 2006 law allows the president to decide unilaterally when troops may be deployed without any stated limit.
The US president since 2006 has an enabling law that allows him unilaterally to impose martial law over the entire nation.
This state of affairs arose out of the circumstances of Bush’s strategy in fighting the so-called GWOT.
Whether or not the GWOT served as a pretext is a moot point.
The point is that Bush’s Awfully Big Mesopotamian Adventure has terminated popular sovereignty in the United States. If the president decides to declare martial law, the only way popular sovereignty can be won back is by violent insurrection.
I’d call that An Awfully Big Disaster for democracy.
#53, somebody above said that Reid and Pelosi couldn’t organize a root in a brothel. I think that’s exactly what they’ve done!
With respect to Reid and Pelosi, the 2006 legislation was passed when the Republicans still had a majority in both Houses.
However, it is true that very few Dems voted against it.
This legislation is close to the final piece in a slow-motion putsch.
Katz, I’m sure that much of what you say is true but are any of the current Acts worse than, say, the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798); Johnson’s defiance of the Supreme Court (1832); Lincoln’s suspension of Habeus Corpus and press censorship; the stealing of the 1876 election; the Sedition Act of 1918 and so on?
Again, the extraordinary character of American democracy isn’t its perfection, it’s that it survives the regular assaults on it.
IG, the Alien Act was oppressive, but only against enemy aliens. The Sedition Act was draconian, but at least it required a legal proceeding for a person to be found guilty under it and it had a sunset clause written into it.
These Acts pale into insignificance in comparison with the scope the of the Defense Authorization Act (2006) for untrammelled abuse of executive power.
I said:
“With a bit of give and take Israel could have solved its problems in 1948.�
Mugwump said:
That’s 20/20 hindsight if ever I saw it. 1948 was 3 years after WWII ended. You might want to put yourself in the shoes of an Israeli Jew whose entire race had just nearly been wiped out before preaching about “give and take�.
– – – –
So I take it you agree with me, Mugwump? You agree that had there been give and take they could have solved it then?
And you agree – well, more than agree, you sort of illustrate it – that someone who has been hit has to hit back. Never again! And just to prove we mean business we will expel Palestinians to refugee camps. You’re probably right: if I’d been in their shoes, I’d have done the same. Whether that excuses their bloody-mindedness (as you seem to think) it has not proved a successful policy.
So on September 11, 2001 do we have to do the same? Well yes, because we are delivered up to the vengeance culture of the USA, to the same sort of retaliatory attitude that operates in Israel and which is going to have the same results for the whole world as it has had for the Middle East.
I sheet it home to inadequate democratic institutions. I note that presidential democracies always fail and the prez turns into a dictator – except one, which has lurched on for 200 years. Erratic trip but still on the road (now in deep trouble if Katz is right). I have long puzzled over its survival and put it down to federalism and the president having a power-base in a state, rather than nationally. Whatever, because of it and because of their Dirty Harry culture, there is a lot of trauma – otherwise avoidable trauma – to come.
Pepper notes that the US has a “vengeance culture” and Israel has a “retaliatory attitude;” both countries appear to be guilty of defending themselves from violent attack by unreasonable and iniquitous tyrannies.
“The US faced near-certain defeat in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812” – IG, the US did not exist during the former but came into existence as a result of it (with considerable outside help), and it was defeated in the latter (it gained absolutely none of its war aims, although the end of the Napoleonic Wars put an end to impressment at about the same time, which leads some people into the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy).
I don’t know enough to say one way or another. But I think the counterfactual is about as useful as “had Newton known about differential geometry he would have discovered General Relativity”.
No-one had the information at the time to predict what was going to happen. The information they did have said Israel should be defended at all cost.
It is not vengeance. As a state, the US is the ultimate pragmatist. They don’t want another 9/11; they will do what it takes to ensure there isn’t one, and the world will be a better place for it.
Mugwump,
I imagine an “ultimate pragmatist” is willing to sacrifice anything to achieve her ultimate ambition.
Thus, I take it that you are arguing that the Bush administration is prepared to sacrifice everything, including democracy, to the cause of preventing another plane from crashing into another building.
Benjamin Franklin, a person not unconnected with the foundation of the United States (check him out, he’s on the $100 bill if happen to have one of those close-handy) warned:
This can reasonably be paraphrased as meaning:
Has ol’ Ben been wrong all these centuries?
From Rog #59
“Pepper notes that the US has a “vengeance culture� and Israel has a “retaliatory attitude;� both countries appear to be guilty of defending themselves from violent attack by unreasonable and iniquitous tyrannies.�
No. They have FAILED to defend themselves. Israel punishes Arabs for the German holocaust; the US punishes Iraq for Saudi Arabian fanatics.
Mugwump (#61) virtually admits that Israel hasn’t, in hindsight, acted successfully in its own interest yet thinks the US is pragmatically doing what it takes to ensure there isn’t another 911. No. The US is doing what it takes to up the ante, to make the US (and the whole world) less safe, not more safe.
Benjamin Franklin, like many of the American rebels, often advised other people to do what was in his best interest.
PML, he wrote it in 1758, long before there was any thought of rebellion.
Unless of course you subscribe to some sort of conspiracy theory on the origins of the american Revolution…
“No-one had the information at the time to predict what was going to happen. The information they did have said Israel should be defended at all cost.”
The myth of nascent Israel standing up to the regional Arab bullies in 1948 and merely defending itself isn’t even accepted among Israel’s academic apologists, mugwump. In fact Israel embarked upon a policy of military aggression and ethnic cleansing in 1948. On the off chance you’re interested in an analysis of the intellectual debate, including a critique of Israel’s modern history doyen Benny Morris, see
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer230/230_beinin.html
To clarify: Benjamin Franklin was the sort of person who became an American rebel in due course. Many that did so had character traits in common. These included a certain measure of double dealing, whether through convenient self deception or conscious hypocrisy – it does not particularly matter which, for present purposes. It is quite likely that Benjamin Franklin was set in his ways – those ways – as early as 1758, when he wrote the passage in question.
How is it a disaster? We got the oil, didn’t we?
[…] in the first three years of the invasion, liberation and occupation. The reignited arguments underway about ‘ends’ and ‘means’ miss the original point all over again: […]
I never said they didn’t. But given their then-recent history, it was the right thing to do. Note that their “ethnic cleansing” as you describe it was not genocide.
Today we have a strong Israel that makes a significant contribution to the global economy, particularly in IQ-intensive industries. In contrast, their bordering Arab states have barely advanced beyond their 1948 state.
I know who I want to win the culture war.
How does “history” justify anything? Or to put it another way, how can “history” not justify everything?
You can use the same argument to justify radical Arabist and Islamist demands that the state of Israel cease to exist. Note that this demand is neither genocidal nor does it necessarily involve ethnic cleansing.
But that is a subsidiary point.
My major point is that “history” justifies nothing.
On the contrary, folks use “history” to justify their own actions and to condemn the actions of others.
The history in question was the not-yet three-year-old holocaust that wiped out most of Europe’s Jews. That justified building a Jewish nation. Seems pretty simple to me.
It is just as simple, mugwump, to the people in power in Israel and in the US.
The US will keep on lashing out on the world stage as Israel has in the ME. The result will be the same, magnified to global proportions. But of course it will be “justified”.
Thank you for illustrating my point so well.
So I notice.
And it’s equally self-evident that if displaced Palestinians want their property back they will have to evict the present occupiers of that property.
If trespassers don’t go peacefully then they must be evicted by force.
“History” also provides that lesson.
So you see “history” can provide contradictory “lessons”.
That isn’t simple at all, is it?
“I never said they didn’t. But given their then-recent history, it was the right thing to do. Note that their “ethnic cleansingâ€? as you describe it was not genocide.”
I’m sure the families of the thousands of Palestinians they killed along with the Palestinian women who were packraped appreciate the difference.
Have you actually read Bennie Morris?
“The history in question was the not-yet three-year-old holocaust that wiped out most of Europe’s Jews. That justified building a Jewish nation. Seems pretty simple to me.”
Well for starters the Holocaust didn’t wipe out “most” of Europe’s Jews.
Proportionately the Nazis and the Ustashe killed more Serbs than the Nazis killed Jews. Does this justify the criems of Tito and Milosevic.
Secondly, the Irgun were attacking and killing both Arab civilians and British soldiers before the holocaust.
As a Jew, I often think that if our supposed wellwishers in the west would just leave us alone we’d have a better chance of a peaceful accommodation with the Arabs.
Ignorant parrotting of Likudist propaganda does not make you a friend or ally of Israel or the Jews, it makes you a parrot.
Re the holocaust museum there were ~9.5M jews in euroe prior to WW2, ranging from Scandinavia to USSR to the Med.
If ~5.5M were killed by the Holocaust quibbling over the semantics of “most” is an infantile waste of time.
This image from Wikipedia puts the pre war total at 8.86M and the deceased at 5.9M with a mortality rate of 67%.
“If ~5.5M were killed by the Holocaust quibbling over the semantics of “mostâ€? is an infantile waste of time.”
Thank you so much for your lecture on the evils of the Holocaust. It’s not like I’ve lived every day of my life with the knowledge of it or anything.
Actually I missed your initial reference to the Jews “of Europe”.
On a world-wide basis about one third of us were killed.
Ian Gould:
wiki:
Ian Gould:
Clearly I am not the ignorant one here. Willful denial of the holocaust does not make you a friend or ally of Palestine or the Arabs, it makes you a denialist.
I guess that seeing this discussion about the magnitude of the disaster in Iraq has veered off into yet another discussion about the holocaust, the consensus is that the disaster of Iraq is of the same magnitude as the disaster of the holocaust.
And that’s not far wrong. About one half of the pre-war Sunni populaton of Iraq is now either dead or refugee in squalid camps somewhere in the world.
This process of genocide didn’t start until about two years ago. That’s 4 million Sunni in two years, which is quite comparable to the number of Jews whose lives were either terminated or totally disrupted by the Nazi regime in the early 1940s.
Now I can already hear the Bush apologists sputtering on the screens of their Commodore 64s. “Bush didn’t mean to do this!”
And this is partially true. Yes, Bush’s own incompetency is an odd form of exculpation. Like you can’t blame the kid with Down Syndrome when he opens the plane door in mid-flight. His guardians are the blameworthy parties for not exercising more restraint.
But that is only part exculpation. Believe it or not there are a few responsible adults with imput into US policy in Iraq. This appalling ethnic cleansing and genocide in Iraq was carried out by government-employed or government-sponsored troops and militia. And who bankrolled and armed this action? Why, Uncle Sam, of course! This genocide was US policy.
Let’s get a bit of perspective here. Recent events have proven that it is relatively easy for Iraqis to flee the country. Even 200,000 US troops can’t seal borders. Yet, under Saddam Hussein, as brutal as he was, relatively few Iraqis ran away. It took George Bush to show Iraqis just how terrifying life in Iraq could be.
How big a disaster is Iraq? It could hardly be any bigger.
So you are saying that there were no Iraqi refugees pre invasion?
Fafo estimate that there are currently 450-500K Iraqi refugees in Jordan of which >20% of fled the effects of the sanctions, persecutions or conscription prior to invasion.
Are you capable of reading for meaning?
Only a dolt would read “no Iraqi refugess” for “relatively few”.
You’re not a dolt, are you rog?
Since Bush’s Iraq disaster at least 2m Iraqis have fled the country.
On those figures, crudely stated, Iraq is four times worse under Bush than it was under Saddam.
Again the thread moves further into the absurd; by the unskillful use of bizarre semantics and wrong arithmetic Iraq transcends the Holocaust.
What do you understand about the difference between relative and absolute values rog?
For you, zero is an option.
Easy, fellas. Breathe.
“The central fact is that the Iraq war has turned out worse, on almost every count, than even the most pessimistic critics suggested”
Sounds like a challenge. Can anyone find a serious pessimistic prediction from before 2003 that hasn’t been surpassed? There must be some, surely.
One such pessimistic prediction pre 2003 was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They didn’t. Good news surely. 😉
Terje’s remark reminds me of the scene in the film ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ where the fascist officer beats one peasant to death and shoots his father on the basis they were armed with a rifle and could have been partisans, deaf to their entreaties they were hunting rabbits. Having killed them, he then searches their bag, only to discover… rabbits! As Terje says, ‘Good news surely’.
Another pessimistic prediction was that the US troops would be treated with chocolates by the grateful locals when they “liberated” Baghdad.
They weren’t.
One extra source of America’s obesity crisis averted!
That’s gotta be good news!
Where were the locals going to get actual chocolates, considering sanctions? Clearly the thought could have been there.
Here’s a story of some Baghdadis who had chocolate for Christmas in 2002, months before the US troops arrived.
http://www.islamonline.net/english/news/2002-12/24/article01.shtml
Oh, they had chocolate alright! they just didn’t wanna give it to their “liberators”.
PS The article also shows these Baghdadis buyin Christmas trees from an open-air tree lot. I bet that doesn’t happen in Bush’s New Iraq!
PPS. And every now and again I like to remind folks about Bush’s dreams for “The New Iraq” as embodied in the really very attractive flag he thoughtfully had designed for the country. So here it is again:
Cute, isn’t it?
Re 87. Good one, Terje. Solving a problem which does not exist is one way of creating a problem; well a disaster is this case.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The more I think about that little story I dug up, the more tragicomic it is.
http://www.islamonline.net/english/news/2002-12/24/article01.shtml
Here is a Christian woman who ran a shop selling small luxuries. In the very jaws of war, she is driving from Baghdad to Beirut to stock her shop with chocolates and festive caps.
These items find a ready market in Baghdad. I wonder how many of those buyers of chocolate and caps are still alive and/or still in Iraq in 2008.
And there is a Muslim trader selling Christmas trees to Christians taking time out to pray to his own God.
And there is the family taking their tree home to decorate, maybe for the last time.
It is quite clear that this Christian family could have left Iraq at any time had they felt threatened by the Saddam regime. The woman drove, probably alone and unaccompanied, to Beirut for chocolate. And then she returned unmolested.
Their world is now shattered.
Think about this world next time you pop a choccy in your mouth and especially when you buy your next Christmas tree.
Our taxes helped to crush their lives.
Evil wicked life destroying taxes!!
Taxes don’t kill people.
People kill people.
A little known website – Unknown news has been tracking this data quite faithfully some time.
Here is the url if you would like to check out their data and figures:
http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html
Back to Pr.Q’s post, I think knowing the magnitude of the disaster is important – failure to acknowledge the real damage can only result in further erosion in confidence that the US and allies can see clearly enough to carry out their intentions successfully. For future military and policy planning purposes, to have grossly wrong estimates of the what happened embedded in historical accounts of previous actions can only lead to future failures.
I don’t know that the US pulling out and leaving Iraq to it’s own (and other interfering nations’) devices is the best course. Is the UN capable of taking on the challenges presented? Probably not, but then, but it could well be better than the ongoing intervention of the fracturing COW.
I wonder if UN inadequacy is something the US has deliberately fostered- certainly you get a lot of anti-UN rhetoric from there. Can the world afford a weak and ineffective UN? It may be long past a thorough overhaul and I for one would welcome it, since it was always compromised in allowing the “Great Powers” to veto when they couldn’t bribe or bully. A UN that simply does what the US (or other powerful nation) wants or is ignored when the US or other nation does something the UN opposes is not good enough. That the US administration is legally bound to put US interests first is given. Sometimes those interests are congruent with international ones, but that isn’t a given.
Ken Says: “failure to acknowledge the real damage can only result in further erosion in confidence that the US and allies can see clearly enough to carry out their intentions successfully”; however, the inference drawn is a mathematical impossibility. There’s a New York saying, “when you’re at the bottom, there’s only one way to go – sideways”.
I think you’ve made some excellent points Ken.
Certainly, successive US administrations have done nothing to support the credibility of the UN. Of course, given the present structure of the UN, as you have described it, the potential credibility of the UN is probably not great.
But given that the permanent members of the Security Council have both veto rights and a vested interest in the status quo, it would appear to be extremely unlikely that the UN will reform itself in any significant way.
You are also correct that the US administration (like many other administrations) is legally bound to represent national interests.
But the interesting question is who in the US determines what national interests are? Constitutionally, the answer is clear: it is Congress. Congress can impeach anyone and everyone in the administration for high crimes and misdemeanors.
The Congress needs only to convince itself what constitutes High Crimes and Misdemeanors. There is no appeal of the decision of Congress to the Supreme Court or to any other body.
Thus, if the Congress decides that the US administration is not pursuing the interests of the US, its principals can be removed.
Of course, this description of the options of Congress ignores domestic political considerations.