New conservative game: comparing Iraqi violence to U.S. violence

June 1, 2006

On Tuesday, Red State, the far-right blog, noted a series of shootings in Milwaukee and, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, argued, “After 175 years of occupation, we are seemingly unable to extract ourselves from the quagmire that apparently is Wisconsin. I say it is time America cut its losses and pulled out of [tag]Wisconsin [/tag]NOW.”

Apparently, it’s the new tactic for supporters of the war in Iraq. Rep. [tag]Steve King[/tag] (R-Iowa) followed a similar tack yesterday, releasing a “report” claiming that the civilian [tag]violent [/tag][tag]death [/tag]rate in [tag]Washington[/tag], [tag]D.C.[/tag], is actually lower than it is in [tag]Iraq[/tag].

Using Pentagon statistics cross-checked with independent research, King said he came up with an annualized Iraqi civilian death rate of 27.51 per 100,000.

While that number sounds high – astonishingly, the Iowa Republican discovered that it’s significantly lower than a number of major American cities, including the nation’s capital.

“It’s 45 violent deaths per 100,000 in Washington, D.C.,” King told Crowley.

None of this makes any sense. First of all, it’s absurd to compare a country of nearly 30 million people to a city of 600,000 people. Second of all, many of Iraq’s provinces are relatively secure thanks to thousands of U.S. troops who patrol the streets. If they weren’t there, there’d be more [tag]violence[/tag]. The District of Columbia is not a police state.

And as Think Progress noted, King’s numbers themselves are faulty.

1) The King report uses 2002 data for Washington, D.C., finding a violent casualty rate of 45.9 deaths per 100,000 people. That number is badly outdated. Using the most recent 2004 data, the violent casualty rate in D.C. is 35.8 deaths per 100,000. There were 198 homicides total in D.C. for the entire year.

2) According to Pentagon’s own data released today, there have been 94 violent casualties per day in Iraq between February and May of 2006. (see p.33). That translates into 34,310 deaths per year in Iraq. For an Iraqi population of about 26.7 million, plus another 150,000 coalition forces, the violent casualty rate in Iraq is 128 deaths per 100,000.

3) Lastly, the King report is trying to conflate the data for one urban area in the U.S. with the entire country of Iraq. As OpinionJournal writes, “The comparison with U.S. cities poses a problem of scale. Just as some municipalities here have high concentrations of crime, Baghdad and some other Iraqi cities have high concentrations of military, guerrilla and terrorist activity. A comparison of Baghdad with Los Angeles or a similarly sprawling U.S. city would be more enlightening than a comparison of Iraq as a whole with cities of well under a million people.”

The truth is, the comparison itself is a desperation move. Car bombings and IEDs kill people in Iraq every day. Of course there are going to be more violent deaths there. There’s a [tag]war [/tag]going on.

I realize conservatives are anxious to defend the war and justify our ongoing military presence, but if they want to be taken seriously, they should make serious arguments.

Any politician (or pundit) who busts out an argument should be greeted by everyone in the room with, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  • “I realize conservatives are anxious to defend the war and justify our ongoing military presence, but if they want to be taken seriously, they should make serious arguments.”

    Why start making serious arguments now? They have gotten multiple passes at multiple times from both the press and the public. The press will and does continue to treat such meritless arguments seriously. Until the press does its job, crap like this will continue, and our citizens will remain ignorant.

  • I’d invite anyone making this argument to go to Baghdad themselves and walk the streets without an armed escort. Just to be fair, I’ll offer to do the same in Washington DC., since it’s apparently so much more dangerous. See if they take me up on the offer.

  • You’ve actually understated the problem of violence in Iraq by referring to bombs. Although we mostly hear about killings by car bombs and IED’s, which remain I believe the biggest threat to our troops, an under reported and extremely ominous fact is that more Iraqis are dying by assassinations, most of which are presumed to be based on tribal and religious vengenance. Check and see if I am right. I believe it can be found in a few reports. Every day — every day — many bodies are found, hands tied, often bearing signs of torture. I don’t think it’s possible from this distance to comprehend what our foolishness has wrought.

  • Okay, so let’s look at the number. RedState wants the United States to pull out of Wisconsin. If they do this, then would the people of Wisconsin be free from federal intervention in state/local affairs? Would they no longer have to send “their” Guardsmen to Iraq and Afghanistan? Would they no longer have to pay federal income taxes? Could Wisconsin immediately ignore all of the unfunded federal mandates? (NCLB comes to mind quickly.) Would Wisconsin be free to establish its own diplomatic accords with foreign governments, rather than cowtowing to the whims and tantrums of the Beltway?

    Sounds like a win-win for the good people of Wisconsin. I wonder—would RedState be so kind as to make the same suggestion for Ohio?

  • Maybe if we spent $6B a month on police and security in Wisconsin the number of homicides would be greatly reduced. Tough to say. I wonder what the DWI rate in Iraq was. What about the GDP of Wisconsin versus Iraq? What about the unemployment rates? Poverty rates? How do Iraqi school voucher programs compare to Milwaukee?

    This guy is abviously seriously disturbed.

  • Great points Steve. The U.S. gov’t should pull out of the whole U.S. and move it’s operations to…ummm…a decommisioned minesweeper anchored somewhere near the coast of Venezuela where it could then be used as target practice by the Venezuelan navy.

    There would really be very little downside to such a scenario right now.

  • Don’t get lazy on us and just phone something in taken from RedState, Steve. Next thing you know, you’ll be cruising the Freepers for something to talk about, and that’ll rot your brain for sure.

  • It’s ironic, how posts #7 and #8 mesh together so nicely. Burro, suppose we put David W’s Freepers aboard that same minesweeper? We’ll bill it as “The Ultimate Freeper Cruise.” Then, we’ll “loan” Mr. Chavez one of our submarines—and he can “torpedo the whole mob to Davy Jones.” We might even include a certain Mr. Robertson (Hugo would just love that, I think—might even repair US/Venezuelan diplomatic relationships). But, of course, we’d also have to “challenge” Mr. Robertson to “leg-press” the sinking minesweeper….

  • Rep. King should feel safer walking in Falluja than Washington DC. He should follow the logic of his words and take
    a walk in downtown Falluja.

  • I get so many GOP emails regarding my Iraq Quagmire chart, challenging me to compare those US deaths with, e.g., the highway deaths in this country, or urban shooting deaths in this country.

    My standard response is to point out they could make even more extreme comparisons – for example, with deaths due to cancer or heart attack or, for that matter, deaths due to aging. There’s no question our losses in Iraq hardly compare to those.

    But there is a difference: we chose Iraq (or rather, Bush lied us into Iraq so he could look like a “war president” and Dems and press let him get away with it). We can, by spending a lot more money, lower age-specific death rates to levels obtaining in all other industrial nations. We could, no doubt, find ways to lower the automobile death rate. We could, if we really wanted to spend the money, find something for urban dwellers to do other than shooting each other. But Iraq is entirely of our own (Bush’s) making. It could be dropped to zero by another act of will.
    (Editing disabled while spellchecking)
    Stop spell checking

  • The comparison is apples and oranges. Figures for the United States are ordinary crime statistics. For Iraq, we are talking about violent deaths as a direct result of the invasion, occupation and subsequent chaos. I don’t think the Pentagon has any figures on ordinary crime in Iraq. Where would they get them? I don’t think the Iraqis even know anymore.

    One also has to ask: If ordinary crime is so horrific in the United States, why are we spending all our federal money and resources fighting terrorism over there? After all, only 2700 Americans perished in 9/11. Far more die here from violent deaths every single year from ordinary crime.

    For that matter, haven’t studies shown that hospitals kill somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 a year through
    neglect and malpractice in the United States? That ought to
    scare the bejesus out of us, but it hardly provokes a yawn.

  • Hi Carpetbagger —

    Your point 2 — “According to Pentagon’s own data released today . . .” shouldn’t be used in this context. Page 33 of the report refers to casualties — that includes injuries as well as death.

    I’m on your side — it is important though to not use bogus arguments.

  • PK, I’m not sure what those numbers are. The government and the media seem to use “casualty” to mean “death” a lot lately, and the numbers seem clearly too low to include all injuries. But the “coalition” numbers at least are too high to be deaths.

  • I’m finally glad someone has pointed out the problems those IEDs are causing on our country’s road network. I can’t go two miles without one taking out the five cars in front of me, then I have to sit there for half an hour for the mess to get cleaned up.

    Not to mention the six roadblocks I pass through every day.

    Or the sniper fire I have to dodge in the parking lot.

    Or how I have at least one relative who get kidnapped or turns up executed in a creek somewhere every week.

    I almost wish I was in Iraq right now

    Or the the fact I can’t watch Everybody Loves Raymond, because it comes on when the electricity is out.

    Or that we have brown sludge coming out of our faucets, and don’t even get me started on the plumbing.

    Yep, them’s some lucky bastards over there

  • Hi KCinDC –

    I’m looking at page 33 of the report right now — the blue bar for coalition casulties looks to me to be about 16-17/day. At The Iraq Coalition Casuality Site, deaths are about 2.5 per day for the period in question but injuries (in 2006) are running about 5.2 to 1. Therefore 2.5 plus (5.2 x 2.5) = @ 16 — This matches up with the page 33 chart pretty well. I’m almost positive casuality refers to both death and injury.

    That the Pentagon data low balls Iraqi deaths and injuries surprises me not in the least. I am much more inclined to believe the Lancet study — which by now would mean over 200K deaths.

  • So I’m guessing Red State is going to come out in favor of heavily restricted gun ownership now? Gun control advocates have been making this argument for decades now, violent deaths occur at a far higher rate in the U.S. compared to every other civilized country. All these conservative comparisons prove is that Republicans are just as inept at “law and order” in this country as they are at everything else.

  • I wish i could remember more accurately….

    This “Iraq is safer than the US” started a year or two ago with Special Report by Brit Hume. He compared the number of deaths in California to Iraq, claiming that it was a lot safer for an American to be in Iraq, since the total number of American deaths was so much lower in Iraq. A clear case of ideology poisoning.

    Also wanted to mention, several weeks ago the NYTimes ( I think) had an article about daily life in Bagdad, and quoted an American as saying that ‘it was suicide” for an American to step one foot outside the security perimeter after dark.

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