The WaPo had an interesting article today. Written by David Brown, it described the publication of the 2nd edition of a book called Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries (DCP), which provides useful info for policymakers who want to save and improve peole’s lives in a cost-effective way in low- and middle-income countries (LIMC’s).
The article tells us that over a million deaths are now caused worldwide every year by traffic accidents– many of them in LIMCs. Simply installing speed bumps on roads, especially near dangerous intersections, can prevent many of these deaths. The epidemiologists working with the DCP project estimate that this simple measure costs about $5 for every year of a person’s life that is saved, making it one of the most cost-effective life preservers available anywhere…
The DCP has its own website, through which all kinds of really interesting information can be downloaded.
… Anyway, thinking about traffic-slowing speedbumps and the power they have to save lives got me to thinking about the more political kinds of “speedbumps” that can slow down any nation’s rush to war, since wars cause just as many– or more– avoidable deaths around the world these days as do traffic accidents.
Someone called Matthew White has done a huge amount of work compiling a website that charts the Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century. Luckily, he does go a bit further than just the 20th century– including, he has this compilation of stats about the casualties attributable to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
That page was last updated in June 2005. Of course those numbers would be quite a lot higher today. White refers to the Lancet epidemiological study of October 2004 which found 98,000 excess deaths in Iraq since March 2003. But his own estimation, as of June 12, 2005, was that around. 43,000-58,000 had been killed as a result of the war at that point. (He was using the Iraq Body Count numbers that I use on my sidebar here. However, I note that IBC counts only the reported deaths due to direct physical violence. It misses completely all the deaths caused by war-caused degradation of the water system and other vital infrastructure, war-related degradation of the health services in Iraq, etc etc… Those broader figures were picked up in the Lancet study.)
The epidemiological approach has also been used in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is similarly (or even more so) a place wracked by terrible inter-group violence and the related social-political breakdown. This report from October 2000 tells you about the main methodology used in such circumstances, which is to make the best possible estimate of the “crude mortality rate” (CMR). In stressed societies the CMR is typically measured in numbers of deaths per 1,000 people per month. Dr. Les Roberts, cited in that report there,
- estimated the Democratic Republic of Congo’s CMR at 5.7. For comparison, Kosovo had a rate of 3.25; Liberia was 7.1; Somalians in Ethiopia suffered a rate of 14.0. However, most of the conflicts with very high rates of mortality lasted from 30 days to as much as 90 or 180 days. The conflict in the DRC, however, has lasted for two years…
And it has continued, even since October 2002. In Dec. 2004, the total death toll attributable to wars and conflicts in the DRC was put at 3.8 million.
So here’s my simple proposal. We know wars kill and maim people in unacceptably large numbers. There is no such thing as a “humane” or “humanitarian” war. This DCP website tells us that in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, the war-related fatality rate in 2001 was around 28 deaths per 100,000 people, far higher than in any other part of the world.
So why can’t we put political “speedbumps” on the roads that lead to war?
Hey, we could even create an organization that, in order to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, might do some or all of these things:
- # take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
# develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
# achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
# be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
What do you think? Might that be a good idea?
What’s that you say– you, over at the back there? You’re telling me there already is such an organization? And that it’s called the United Nations?
So if such an organization, and such mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of outstanding disputes, were already well established in March 2003– then why on earth did the Bushites gratuitously go to war against Iraq that month?
I think it’s definitely time to revive and strengthen the principles and all the mechanisms of the United Nations. (Including, maybe we should reinstitute harsh punishments for people committing the crime of aggression, which was a crime that was prosecuted at Nuremberg.) We have to save the world from any re-eruption of US aggressivity. We have to carefully put in place real, effective speed-bumps that can not merely slow any rush to war, but also halt it. People’s lives– perhaps hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of them– depend on it.
And the great thing is– not only would such an approach be extremely cost-effective, if we could prevent all this arms-buying and other forms of military spending, then we’d all actually be saving huge amounts of money!. And we could take all those sums saved and invest them in building up the lives of needy people, rather than by killing them…
It is not really honest of you to reference the Lancet study of deaths in Iraq when you know how controversial and disputed it is. The authors of the study themselves, when they put it into statistical terms said the had “95 per cent confidence that the true death toll from the invasion was only somewhere between 8000 and 194,000”.
The methods of the Lancet study were to interview people in battle zones and ask them about deaths before and after the war. As if Fallujah were a statistically valid sample of Iraq. And they used statistics of child death rates that have been contradicted widely, by people on the left and right.
My issue isn’t with the Lancet study. My issue is with Helena for referencing it as authoritative when she knows it is no such thing. At some point in your life, Helena, you probably promised yourself you would always be a truth-seeker and present facts as objectively and fairly as possible. Now is a good time for some introspection on this question.
For further info, just google on (Lancet study iraq supported discredited)
Warren, I believe the Lancet study has good credibility for what it does, which is to try to chart the increase in CMR attributable to the war.
I don’t for a moment believe the statement you cite, that The authors of the study themselves… said the[y] had “95 per cent confidence that the true death toll from the invasion was only somewhere between 8000 and 194,000”. Most likely you or someone left out a zero from the figure of “8000” that you give there. Could you please link to a source for your statement there. (Leaving out a zero is also a really basic and childish mistake for anyone to make in an argument about statistics.)
The Lancet study’s credibility is actually enhanced by the Iraqi Body Count’s figures, given that it’s a wellknown fact that in any situation of prolonged war and war-induced social/ infrastructural breakdown a far larger number of people die due to breakdown of safe water systems, spread of normally prevented diseases like TB, breakdown of health systems, etc than die from direct phsyical violence. In DRC, the proportion was actually estimated by Roberts and others at around 72 to 1.
The IBC is currently reporting deaths from duly reported direct physical violence in post-invasion Iraq at between 33.8K and 37.9K . One good way to estimate the proportion, in Iraq, of ‘degradation-of-infrastructure’ deaths to directly homicidal deaths would be to take a snapshot of that proportion as of the time the Lancet people had completed their household-by-household survey, and then extrapolate using the same proportion today.
The Lancet report covered roughly the first 18 months of the post-invasion order. Since then, there have been another 18 months of the post-invasion order– 18 months in which the public insecurity situation and basic infrastructure situation have not gotten significantly better anywhere except in perhaps the north. It would be quite reasonable to estimate that another 98,000 people might have died deaths that were otherwise avoidable during that time…
For example, see this report from the UK ‘Independent’ or others like it in recent days, that told us that the US Army had completed the RE-construction of only 21 of the 142 Iraqi health clinics they had been planning to rebuild. That contract, the article says, was intended to restore Iraq’s healthcare system, once considered the best in the region.
The reporter also writes: The US Agency for International Development says that in Iraq “diarrhoea, measles, respiratory infections and malaria – compounded by malnutrition affecting 30 per cent of children under five – contribute to excessive rates of infant and child mortality”. Child malnutrition has doubled since the invasion, according to Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission’s expert on the “right to food”, and now stands at around 7.7 per cent.
These are precisely the kinds of deaths that are not counted by the IBC, but are counted by the epidemiological method.
So here’s what you can do, WW: First, produce and link to any evidence you have that credibly questions the figures the Lancet study produced. (No, your own little quote there doesn’t do that.) Second, could you tell us what political agenda you are following intrying to paint a picture of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq that is far rosier than the reality?
So if such an organization, and such mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of outstanding disputes, were already well established in March 2003– then why on earth did the Bushites gratuitously go to war against Iraq that month?
In part because the ‘peaceful mechanisms’ of the UN (sanctions/containment) were failing to curb Hussein’s military program and were killing Iraqis by the hundreds of thousands. Were the ‘anti-war’ movement to have addressed this issue seriously, the US may never have invaded.
Most likely you or someone left out a zero from the figure of “8000” that you give there.
Warren didn’t leave out a zero. 8,000 is the lower bound of the study’s 95% confidence interval, given in the study summary alongside the 98,000 mean estimate, plain as day. Of course the study omits fallujah which skews the distribution and renders any symmetric/parametric confidence interval meaningless (the fallujah sample suggests that 200k died in Anbar province alone — do you imagine this to be a credible estimate?)
http://www.slate.com/id/2108887/
discussed here at greater length.
By the way Helena, I’d be careful quoting the IBC to prove points about US war crimes. Most of the deaths catalogued there are attributed (by the IBC itself) to guerrillas, as their database makes quite clear.
iraqbodycount-dot-net, click view entire database.
Regarding infant mortality rates – per UN estimates Iraqi infant mortality has dropped since 2001.
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2003/indicator/indic_290.html
2001 infant mortality is given as 107 per 1,000 live births.
http://www.unicef.org/sowc06/pdfs/sowc06_fullreport.pdf
infant mortality rate for 2004 is given as 102 per 1,000.
Great post, Helena.
In part because the ‘peaceful mechanisms’ of the UN (sanctions/containment) were failing to curb Hussein’s military program and were killing Iraqis by the hundreds of thousands. Were the ‘anti-war’ movement to have addressed this issue seriously, the US may never have invaded.
The UN sanctions killed hundreds of thosands of people because of the US. We fought every attempt to relax or eliminate them, and as a member of the sanctions committee was responsible for more than 90% of the holds or denials on import requests. Anyone who has honestly studied the issue knows that the US was mainly responsible for the draconian nature of the sanctions. So for an American to say that we had to invade Iraq to save it from sanctions is quite hypocritical.
vadim, the invasion and disastrous occupation triggered the current situation in Iraq. Violence generates hatred and more violence. That’s the logic of war, which is why intelligent people try to avoid it. Helena is quite right to point that out.
The UN sanctions killed hundreds of thosands of people because of the US
The UN is the agency responsible for the sanctions, which were put in place with unanimous approval in the UN security council. They’re part of international law whether you like them or not. They also lie at the core of ‘containment,’ a policy Helena seems to have endorsed, because many chemicals used in public health (chlorine eg) are also weapons precursors. Sanctions were implemented because of Hussein’s weapons programs & history of belligerence, not out of the blue for no reason or as ‘punishment.’ And the fact remains that UN sanctions (by any measure) killed many more people than this war. It’s hypocritical to invoke only those articles of international law you find humane or necessary — the UNSC is the international body responsible for this judgment.
for an American to say that we had to invade Iraq to save it from sanctions is quite hypocritical.
governments aren’t people; they dont act according to coherent motives. terming the behavior of governments ‘hypocritical’ isn’t a serious criticism (even applied to people its a shallow tu quoque.)
Vadim, your ability to participate in a reasoned discussion seems a little limited. You say, By the way Helena, I’d be careful quoting the IBC to prove points about US war crimes. Most of the deaths catalogued there are attributed (by the IBC itself) to guerrillas, as their database makes quite clear. But nowhere in the above post was I saying anything about “war crimes”. I did write about the crime of aggression, which is a different order of crime– a jus-ad-bellum issue rather than a jus-in-bello issue, which is what a war crime is.
In other words, I wasn’t for a moment claiming that the US directly committed all the homicides counted by the IBC. But the US launched the war that triggered the gross breakdown in public security which was the context in which those homicides were committed. Also, as the occupying power the US is responsible under international humanitarian law for the maintenance of public security in the areas occupied. The Bush administration was criminally negligent in having failed to take any adequate measures to ensure public security.
Similarly, before you replied to No Pref with this: terming the behavior of governments ‘hypocritical’ isn’t a serious criticism … You might have noted that he wasn’t calling any government hypocritical. What he wrote was, for an American to say that we had to invade Iraq to save it from sanctions is quite hypocritical.
I wonder why you find it so hard to read a straightforward proposition in English and understand it?
… So anyway, about the bigger issue of the morality of war and the need to use much greater energies to search for peaceful, non-coercive ways to resolve outstanding disputes: what do you think about that? Do you still think war is a pretty good way to reach desirable outcomes?
Oh,lord. Anyone interested in the controversy about the Lancet study should go to Tim Lambert’s site deltoid and start reading–he’s been posting on it since late 2004 when it first came out and all the statistically illiterate critics came out of the woodwork. One of them later retracted (Mark Galasco at Human Rights Watch). You can also google for some of what Les Roberts has said in response to his critics. (Roberts is one of the authors of the study.) There was also an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education back in early 2005, I think.
I’m not saying that the Lancet study is right–I’m agnostic. All I think one can say for sure is that the Iraq Body Count estimate is too low and their methodology can’t help but be biased against collecting information about deaths caused by US forces. Reporters usually don’t see the killings firsthand–they get their info largely from officials and morgues and we know there is pressure to suppress information that makes the US or its Iraqi allies (the Shiites, until recently) look bad. So we are likely getting a pretty full picture of the atrocities committed by the Sunni insurgents and foreign terrorist element, but until the US started turning against the Shiite death squads you’d hear very little about those killings in the Western press, and even less about civilian casualties from US air strikes. The website medialens has carried some interesting articles criticizing the inherent biases of the IBC methodology. One thing that is really striking is that we know there have been hundreds of US air strikes in 2005, but medialens went through the IBC database and found very few reports of any that caused civilian casualties. Believe that if you want–if you do I have some high precision weaponry to sell you, 500 pound bombs that you can explode in urban areas and only kill insurgents.
You evade my point entirely, vadim.
Yes, the sanctions were put in place by the UNSC, but the US fiercely resisted any attempt to relax or drop them.
The US was responsible for the fact that the sanctions killed so many, because we put holds on everything except food. IIRC in the 16 nation sanctions committee, the US was solely responsible for over 90% of the holds put on imports, and the US & UK together for another 7%. In addition to chemicals required for clean water, we put holds on everything needed to maintain as a modern society, including equipment to maintain the electrical grid, agriculture and transport. This had a horrific impact on public health.
As far as the UN in general was concerned, the sanctions may not have been intended as punishment, but that was certainly how the US viewed them. We said openly that the sanctions would remain in place not until Iraq had given up WMD, but until Saddam was no longer in power. That was a perversion of the intent of the UN, but the US the veto power to keep the sanctions in place.
I stand by my description of your remarks as hypocritical. And this:
the ‘peaceful mechanisms’ . . . were failing to curb Hussein’s military program
is untrue. Hussein’s military was totally crippled by the first Gulf war and sanctions.
Warren W, I’ve just done a bit more online research and you (and those you cited) were indeed right about the lower limit of the 95% ‘confidence interval’ there. So I’m sorry I wrote that you or those you cited must have left out a zero. (My recollection had been that the lower limit of the CI was 80,000. But it was 8,000.)
There’s a good review of the whole Lancet study controversy in Wikipedia. From there, you can go to the original text of the study. The Wikipedia entry reviews the criticisms of the study and discusses the CI issue in some detail. You can also find a link there to this followup article in the Columbia Journalism Review.
You can also read this interview with lead author Les Roberts, who had also been the lead author of the DRC study.
All of these sources and professional explanations provide a much more robust body of evidence and argumentation than Fred Kaplan writing in “Slate”.
I just read vadimv’s post above. It’s a perfect example of what’s wrong with the IBC approach and why there are some antiwar critics who are losing patience with the IBC website. You can’t use the IBC data to prove anything about who is killing more civilians in Iraq–what it is good for is providing a rock-bottom estimate for the civilian dead. But as I just said above, the reporters are forced to rely on secondhand sources and those are subject to political pressure (and outright death threats) –they simply aren’t able to go all over Iraq and determine who is dying and who killed whom. The count is not only an underestimate–it’s highly unlikely to be a random unbiased sample of the civilian deaths if you are trying to determine who has killed whom. The problem with the IBC people is that they’ve lost sight of their original goal–if you read their two year study or John Sloboda’s more recent slideshow (which is on the website) you can see people who are in love with their methodology and willfully blind to the inherent weaknesses. Personally, I’m sick of them.
Again, I have no idea how many people are actually dying in Iraq or how many have been killed by US air strikes. But just common sense would let you know that IBC numbers can only be an underestimate and probably a biased underestimate at that.
As for the sanctions, the US originally intended them to hurt the civilian population. The US destroyed civilian infrastructure and used the sanctions to prevent their repair. This was supposed to put pressure on Saddam, or even lead to his overthrow. The logic is the same that the Iraqi insurgents use when they target infrastructure now. Barton Gellman laid it all out in a June 23 1991 article in the Washington Post.
Do you still think war is a pretty good way to reach desirable outcomes?
Maybe we can attend remedial reading classes together, Helena. I don’t think I’ve ever claimed anything like this in my entire life. Whereas your strengthen[ing] the principles and all the mechanisms of the United Nations puts you in the awkward position of having to defend peaceful, non-coercive, genocidal UNSC-imposed sanctions. I understand the temptation to deflect attention by questioning my partiality, reading ability, hawkishness etc, but it’s not working.
So how about it…any comment on the UN infant mortality stats I cited above (107-2001, 102-2004)?
Thanks in advance.
Helena, if you want to place speed bumps in the path of future US aggression, the UN is the wrong place to look. It’s a valuable forum for dialogue, but as we have seen, it will never be capable of stopping a powerful nation like the US from unilaterally attacking other countries.
How do you stop a dog from eating too much? Take away its food. Lecturing the dog on the dangers of obesity will not be effective. The right-wing “starve-the-beast” strategists understood this much. They’ve managed to place a number of speed bumps in the way of progress on social issues in this country. What they failed to grasp is that it is not possible to isolate social spending from the rest of the federal budget in applying this kind of regimen. It’s like diet and exercise – you can’t just fix the spare tire and the love handles, you have to deal with the whole body.
We all know that a health care crisis is looming in this country. The percentage of the population demanding an immediate and comprehensive solution to the problem is growing every day. Any way you slice it, the solution will involve massive government spending. We are not going to be able to borrow enough money to pay for it. Americans will be forced to choose between affordable health care and maintaining a massive offensive military capability. There is no doubt which they will eventually choose. Distracting issues like gay marriage and immigration will only work for so long. For everyone who lives long enough, health care eventually becomes the number one issue.
We like to think of ourselves as a young, vigorous, athletic nation, but we are in fact an aging, decadent, couch potato nation. We will quickly tire of the empire game, which takes a lot of effort and doesn’t return much immediate gratification. Of course, the country may descend into tyranny for some period of time, but barring that, I think the days of dominance by the military-industrial complex are drawing to a close.
There is a wonderful Taoist quality in all of this – the eye of good at the center of the body of evil.
Vadim, I find your idea that “‘strengthen[ing] the principles and all the mechanisms of the United Nations’ puts you [Helena] in the awkward position of having to defend peaceful, non-coercive, genocidal UNSC-imposed sanctions” hard not to comment upon. Unstated assumptions are often the most revealing. And you do not seem able to escape yours even after several people try to point them out to you. Do you really see no alternative to sanctions or war? How about just (a) lifting the sanctions and and (b) following “The Secret Plan to Not Attack” aka the UN Charter and just not starting a war of aggression? If, as you say, and I agree, the sanctions were genocidal, they were hardly consistent with the principles of the United Nations (an important phrase in Helena’s post you seem to have missed) and thus not valid international law at all. There should be a legitimate reason for sanctions. What is it? The only remotely reasonable ones – containment/WMD have been shown to be lies. The US reason – regime change – was entirely illegitimate. The same goes for the war, even more so.
Sanctions were implemented because of Hussein’s weapons programs & history of belligerence No, sanctions were imposed because Saddam was still in Kuwait, having just invaded it. WMD , looming so large later, was an afterthought. IIRC, there was debate on lifting them as soon as Iraq withdrew.
Were the ‘anti-war’ movement to have addressed this issue [the purported “failure” of sanctions and their genocidal nature] seriously, the US may never have invaded. makes very little sense. The ‘antiwar’ movement was partly built on the anti-sanctions movement, which had achieved real successes over the years. As others have pointed out, one of your assumptions is wrong – the sanctions were successful in curbing Iraq’s military programs.
Sanctions were implemented because of Hussein’s weapons programs & history of belligerence
You’re right John — sanctions were implemented because of Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. They were renewed after the war by UNSCR 687 in a near-unanimous vote, and re-affirmed in many subsequent resolutions.
How about just (a) lifting the sanctions
I’m assuming that “containment without sanctions” is incoherent, just as you (maybe) think that sanctions served no constructive purpose (although you acknowledge they were effective in containing Hussein, a process not a discrete event). I think I understand the purpose of restricting the sale to Iraq of the pesticides, polymers, chlorine and other chemicals that can be converted to chemical weapons. As interesting as it might be, since neither of us sits on the UNSC, any factual discussion on this point isn’t relevant. The anti-war movement (by and large) wasn’t arguing to end sanctions AND stop the war. “Sanctions worked,” I recall was an anti-war, not a pro-war slogan.
There should be a legitimate reason for sanctions. What is it?
The reasons were detailed by the UNSC in 687 and every other post-GWI resolution addressing their renewal.
What you and I think about the evils of sanctions (or their near-total effectiveness in curbing Hussein’s chemical and bioweapons programs) is irrelevant. Neither is whether we think they violate the spirit of the charter and are “valid international law” on that highly subjective basis. Neither one of us sits on the legal body empowered to make this determination (the UNSC), which decided many times that they were valid and appropriate. Helena’s posts concerns “all the mechanisms of the United Nations,” including the genocidal sanctions we both agree were wrong and that killed (without any doubt) many more Iraqis than the recent war and that were renewed several times in near-unanimous votes. I’m interested in hearing from her whether UN sanctions are a subset of “mechanisms of the UN” and whether they deserve strengthening as a diplomatic “anti-war” measure in this or any other case.
I’m also still interested to hear her reaction to the UN statistics suggesting a decline in infant mortality since the war.
Helena,
We have to save the world from any re-eruption of US aggressivity. We have to carefully put in place real, effective speed-bumps that can not merely slow any rush to war, but also halt it. People’s lives– perhaps hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of them– depend on it.
“Last Thursday, March 30, 2006, American occupation soldiers shot dead 72 years old Professor Qais Husameldeen Juma’a as he left the College of Agriculture at Baghdad University and had just passed their check point.
He had returned from Australia to supervise a few PhD students at the College.”
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/academicsArticles.htm#Wissam
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/academicsList.htm
Part of the sanctions debate was over “smart sanctions” as a more humane alternative. The sanctions that were imposed were extremely brutal and if you’ve paid attention, you will have noticed that when sanctions are discussed as an option wrt Iran, they emphasize that these would be smart sanctions aimed at the leadership, not on the population as a whole. That choice was available in Iraq and in fact, in the period before 9/11 the US was moving in that direction. What some anti-sanctions protestors feared was that the “smart sanctions” wouldn’t really be smart, but just the same old brutal sanctions with the appearance of more humanity. We’ll never know. But anyway, it is possible to target sanctions more precisely, rather than making them a weapon of mass destruction against an entire society.