September 18, 2007
Dying in droves
Research released today suggests that about 1.2 million Iraqis have died by violent means since April of 2003, almost half by gunfire, and another 20% by car bombs. Aerial bombardment seems to account for 9%, with 12% from accident or other explosions.
Several conclusions here. First, though the sample does seem to be fairly representative, if more than one person from a household responded, that'd magnify the numbers pretty drastically in ways that are really hard to account for. It's possible that the pollsters took this into account by only taking reports from one person in a household, but this could be really hard to do if done over time.
Second, the difference between weighted and unweighted results is rather drastic, almost half a million. As n is rather small--only one out of 1500 respondents reported either four or six people killed--and weighting results is always guesswork, saying that 1.2 million Iraqis have died cannot be said with a high degree of certainty. The official estimate is around 650,000, which is almost certainly too low. I think it's pretty clear that the poll indicates that the result is somewhat higher than this, perhaps 750,000 or 850,000, but I'm skeptical about their upper figure.
Third, any way you slice it, that's a lot of people. This is an event of historic proportions. The Rwandan genocide, Armenian genocide, and Khmer Rouge are each estimated to have killed somewhere between 800,000 and 3 million, so we're talking an event on that scale.
Finally, Iraqis (or, more properly, Muslims, as many of the insurgents aren't Iraqi or even Arab) are killing each other in massive numbers. Aerial bombardment only accounts for 9% of the deaths. Car bombs account for a full 20%. Gunfire is the largest offender, but as there have never been more than 300,000 Coalition troops on the ground, Coalition forces are only thought to be responsible for about a third of the total casualties (more data here, but bring your salt-shaker). If we left today... Madness.
If one were to look at nothing but this report, it would actually seem to indicate that the more involved the United States is, the more death and destruction there is. You can clearly see that the further you move, geographically, from US troop activity, the more peaceful the area seems to be.
Surely, if one were to argue that the United States is bringing peace and freedom to the Iraqis, then one would expect to see the opposite effect.
Posted by: Ben at September 18, 2007 02:49 PMUmm... the hell? You correlate your claims with verified troop positions and movements and I'll give you time of day.
Posted by: ryan at September 18, 2007 03:09 PMWell, the majority of troop activity is in Baghdad. That's fairly common knowledge. For any of the questions, compare the numbers for Baghdad with the numbers for any of the smaller provinces in which there is little known troop activity. My point was that if the result of the US occupation was greater stability and less death and destruction, then one would expect that the higher the troop levels in an area, the lower the number of deaths. Instead, it would appear that the opposite is the case.
Posted by: Ben at September 18, 2007 04:29 PMYour assertion only follows if violence is evenly distributed throughout the country. But the reason there are more deaths in Baghdad than anywhere else is that there are more people in Baghdad than anywhere else. Just under one in five Iraqis lives in Baghdad. I would assume that Coalition troops are distributed along population lines, not evenly dispersed across a country which is mostly vacant desert.
Talk sense.
Posted by: ryan at September 18, 2007 06:11 PM