Much controversy has transpired over what the actual death toll of the current war in Iraq might be. But that's not really much of a moral conversation. I mean either the people are dead or they're not. We can't really attach a number to it although it makes sense to try. What's more interesting than the 'how many' question is the 'who and whom' question. Geeks such as myself want to know how, and the ultimate questions must be 'why' and 'to what ends'? But the point of this post is the question of who and whom following up on something interesting over at Drezner:
UPDATE: Tyler Cowen posts on The Lancet study as well -- and highlights another important fact that explains a large part of my disenchantment with the Bush administration:
[T]he sheer number of deaths is being overdebated. Steve Sailer notes: "The violent death toll in the third year of the war is more than triple what it was in the first year." That to me is the more telling estimate.
A very high deaths total, taken alone, suggests (but does not prove) that the Iraqis were ready to start killing each other in great numbers the minute Saddam went away. The stronger that propensity, the less contingent it was upon the U.S. invasion, and the more likely it would have happened anyway, sooner or later. In that scenario the war greatly accelerated deaths. But short of giving Iraq an eternal dictator, that genie was already in the bottle.
If the deaths are low at first but rising over time, it is more likely that a peaceful transition might have been possible, either through better postwar planning or by leaving Saddam in power and letting Iraqi events take some other course. That could make Bush policies look worse, not better. (emphasis added)
I'm not so sure about that and the thing that convinces me is that we know that slowly but surely the Iraqi Insurgency has been getting more organized and more lethal. A lot of opponents of the Bush policy have rightly said that shying away from the term 'civil war' is a mistake. Michael Yon independent of such partisan concerns has been suggesting that the term is more or less apt for a long time now. If we are to accept the arbitrary figure of 500,000 KIA, then we have some extraordinary explaining to do with regard to the direct or indirect culpability of American forces who have suffered roughly 2800 KIA to date. A simpler explanation is in order. Iraqis killed Iraqis.
Who And Whom?
According to Samir Haddad and Mazin Ghazi in 2004 there were a whole laundry list of militant insurgent groups ready to do battle, each for their own reasons. I want to list those enumerated by Wikipedia. And I'm going to do it so it takes up a lot of space.
- Mujahideen Shura Council
- Mahdi Army (Jaish-i-Mahdi)
- Badr Organization
- Fedayeen Saddam
- Al-Qaeda in Iraq (Tantheem Al-Qaeda fi BiladirRafidain)
- Jaish Ansar al-Sunna
- Mohammad's Army (Jaish Mohammed)
- Islamic Army in Iraq (Al-Jaish Al-Islami fil-Iraq)
- Iraqi National Islamic Resistance (Moqawama al-Islamiya al-Wataniya, "1920 Revolution Brigades")
- Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat Al-Moqawama Al-Islamiya)
- Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (al-Jabha al-Islamiya lil-Moqawama al-Iraqiya - JAMI)
- Jaish al-Mujahideen
- Jaish al-Rashideen
- Asaeb Ahl el-Iraq (Factions of the People of Iraq)
- Black Banner Organization (ar-Rayat as-Sawda)
- The Return (al-Awda)
- Nasserites
- Wakefulness and Holy War
- Mujahideen Battalions of the Salafi Group of Iraq
- Liberating Iraq's Army
- Abu Theeb's group
- Jaish Abi Baker's group
- Islamic Salafist Boy Scout Battalions (Kataab Ashbal Al Islam Al Salafi)
That's a lot of arms, and it takes a whole lot of arms to kill a lot of people. Common sense would dictate, as well as the likely results of any accurate parsing of the various activities of all those groups, that it highly improbable that attacks carried out by those 23 odd group are coordinated in any substatial way. They are not a coalition, they are not a centrally directed command and control style army, they are insurgents each with their own agenda, each doing their killing and destruction in the wake of the destruction of the Baath Party.
But who are they killing?
They're obviously not killing US and Coalition forces. They're killing other Iraqis. I'm not going to brave a guess at the why question, that's outside of the scope of this one post. But as for culpability in a civil war, the first step is to identify the parties who are fighting. It seems to me that if we are to take the weight of the Lancet study seriously and say that half a million Iraqis have been killed, then it's time to ask the serious question of who did the killing and how. This seems to me to be the most serious import of such a high figure.
So let me be partisan for a moment. If these 23 groups are doing the bulk of the killing of Iraqi civilians, one has to wonder under what conditions their killing will end. The question begged by the presence of civil war is under what governmental organization will it be resolved. I find it very difficult to believe that some new constitution will be written and Sunni parties have not been able much to the surprise of many, to block the new Iraqi federalism. The point is that our policy has been to establish a constitutional democratic republic in Iraq and it is moving forward. The ire of the insurgency against the new Iraq is insufficient to stop the momentum of the majority, even as the majority is put in mortal danger by the killings throughout the country. The power of democracy is triumphing against the militancy of those trying kill Coalition and Government forces. And yet they continue to take it out against Iraqi civilians.
Unless you are willing to believe that it's just Americans that are doing all the killing.
UPDATE: McQ has some interesting developments. I am momentarily speechless. I don't trust the Wanker.
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