Civilians Death Rate in Iraq Less Than in Washington, DC

Basically, what is being peddled here is the "lack of resolve" argument, which was loudly touted by British imperialists after the end of the Second World War. It reached its apotheosis with Anthony Eden's ludicrous fiasco at the Suez Canal in 1956. Inconceivably, England survived . . .



Inconceivable ! ! !

I do not think that word means what you think it does

Cycloptichorn

hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe . . .

"My name eess Inigo Montoya. Djou keel my father. Prepare to die ..."


Great movie




Now, anybody here got 6 fingers?

We have engaged the terrorists, so it makes sense that the number of terrorist acts have increased, as Timber has explained. To follow a policy of no engagement would in effect be adopting a policy of waiting until they hit us at their chosen times and places, with no response from us. There would of course be periods of no engagement, but it also allows them to plan terrorist acts unhindered, and then carry them out whenever and however they please.

Another factor, which I have not heard suggested, but which I am suggesting here, if we had only entered Afghanistan but not Iraq, we may well have been seeing much more insurgent activity in Afghanistan than we have so far. I think they have decided to concentrate the effort in Iraq because it provided an easier target for them, but they would love to have disrupted efforts in Afghanistan as well. We've had more problems there of late, unfortunately. However, even the liberal Democrats have apparently always supported the war there, but I am not sure how solid or lasting that support is if they at some point decide it would be politically advantageous to oppose that effort. It is transparently obvious to me that the Democratic Party is totally focused on gaining their political power back in Congress rather than what policy is best for the country.

Your statement of Iraq being a distraction is a fair argument, however such also is a distraction to them, so that perhaps some groups spend their time fighting us there rather than being able to more effectively plan terrorist acts in other places, including here. If we had not entered Iraq and have thrown Hussein out, we would still be playing cat and mouse games with that regime, with the ongoing threat of Hussein working behind the scenes and aiding terrorist groups in various ways, potentially with WMD.

Compared to the 1.5 million person-years, that's peanuts. Concentrating on the (presumably bad) black neighborhoods of Philadelphia lowers your base, but lowers the number of people who visit there for fun and profit by an even greater proportion.


While they say it's 11% higher, that's not the claim they are providing evidence for in this paragraph. Let me quote the relevant claim to you again: "But one can also find something equivalent to combat conditions on home soil." Even after your correction, this claim stands.


But (1) you have no evidence that they didn't, except that they reach a conclusion you don't like, and (2) if he didn't make that connection, he also omitted the Philadelphians who work in the suburbs. This stream of "reverse commuters" may well be greater than the stream of regular commuters. I don't know if that's the case in Philadelphia, but I observed that it is on a recent visit to Chicago. (In the evening, the traffic jam is on the lanes heading in; in the morning, on the lanes heading out.) J_B and joefromchicago, both reasonable posters who reside in the Chicago area, confirmed this to me.


The author compared the risk to Americans of being in Iraq with the risk to Americans of being in Philadelphia. When calculating the risk of being in Iraq, the base for your percentage is every American in Iraq. That's American soldiers and contractors, and the very occasional businessman. (I don't know if soldiers on leave count as "in Iraq" or not, but even if they don't it reduces the base by 4 percent. Not enough to change the article's argument.) When calculating the risk of being in Philadelphia, your base is every American in Philadelphia. That's Philadelphia residents, plus outside visitors to Philadelphia, minus Philadelphia visitors to the outside.

For Americans (age 18-38) in Iraq, their expected death rate is x. For Americans of the same age in Philadelphia, their expected death rate is y. That's a perfectly good comparison. There's nothing false about it. (If your reply to this is "same to you", you can read upthread that my reaction to e-brown's comparison was much less friendly than my reaction to Timber's. Both comparisons supported the same political conclusion.)

And then there's what Timber said, of course. For World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam, none of the statistical details we are discussing would matter. Even the crudest of statistics would show that going there greatly increased an American soldier's risk of dying.

Mr. Thomas- Your skill in mathematics is obvious. You have eviscerated Parados. However, After reading Timberlandko's post, I feel it must be re-read since it is central to the argument:

Quote:


Service in Iraq: Just How Risky?

By Samuel H. Preston and Emily Buzzell
Saturday, August 26, 2006; A21


The consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom for U.S. forces are being documented by the Defense Department with an exceptional degree of openness and transparency. Its daily and cumulative counts of deaths receive a great deal of publicity. But deaths alone don't indicate the risk for an individual. For this purpose, the number of deaths must be compared with the number of individuals exposed to the risk of death. The Defense Department has supplied us with appropriate data on exposure, and we take advantage of it to provide the first profile of military mortality in Iraq.

Between March 21, 2003, when the first military death was recorded in Iraq, and March 31, 2006, there were 2,321 deaths among American troops in Iraq. Seventy-nine percent were a result of action by hostile forces. Troops spent a total of 592,002 "person-years" in Iraq during this period. The ratio of deaths to person-years, .00392, or 3.92 deaths per 1,000 person-years, is the death rate of military personnel in Iraq.

How does this rate compare with that in other groups? One meaningful comparison is to the civilian population of the United States. That rate was 8.42 per 1,000 in 2003, more than twice that for military personnel in Iraq.

The comparison is imperfect, of course, because a much higher fraction of the American population is elderly and subject to higher death rates from degenerative diseases. The death rate for U.S. men ages 18 to 39 in 2003 was 1.53 per 1,000 -- 39 percent of that of troops in Iraq. But one can also find something equivalent to combat conditions on home soil. The death rate for African American men ages 20 to 34 in Philadelphia was 4.37 per 1,000 in 2002, 11 percent higher than among troops in Iraq. Slightly more than half the Philadelphia deaths were homicides.

The death rate of American troops in Vietnam was 5.6 times that observed in Iraq. Part of the reduction in the death rate is attributable to improvements in military medicine and such things as the use of body armor. These have reduced the ratio of deaths to wounds from 24 percent in Vietnam to 13 percent in Iraq. Some other factors to be considered:

Branch of service: Marines are paying the highest toll in Iraq. Their death rate is more than double that of the Army, 10 times higher than that of the Navy and 20 times higher than for the Air Force. In fact, those in the Navy and Air Force have substantially lower death rates than civilian men ages 20 to 34.

Among the Marines, there is in effect no difference in the mortality risks for members on active duty and those in the reserve. In the Army, on the other hand, reservists have 33 percent of the death rate of those in active service because they are not assigned to combat positions. Members of the Army National Guard are intermediate in assignments and in mortality.

Rank: In both the Army and the Marines, enlisted personnel have 40 percent higher mortality than officers. The excess mortality of enlisted soldiers is diminished by the high mortality of the lowest-ranking officers, lieutenants, who are typically the leaders of combat patrols. Lieutenants have the highest mortality of any rank in the Army, 19 percent higher than all Army troops combined. Marine Corps lieutenants have 11 percent higher mortality than all Marines. But the single highest-mortality group in any service consists of lance corporals in the Marines, whose death risk is 3.3 times that of all troops in Iraq.

Age, sex , race and ethnicity: In contrast to the civilian population, mortality rates decline precipitously with age. Troops ages 17 to 19 have a death risk 4.6 times that of those 50 and older. Differences in rank by age undoubtedly contribute to this pattern, and so do differences in branch of service. Sixty-five percent of Marine deployments to Iraq were of those age 24 or younger, compared with only 39 percent of Army deployments. Women are not assigned to combat specialties in Iraq, although they do see enemy fire; their death rate is 18 percent that of men.

Identifying racial and ethnic differences in mortality is not straightforward because the Defense Department uses a different classification system for deaths than for deployments. Nevertheless, all attempts we have made to reconcile the two systems reach the same conclusion: Hispanics have a death risk about 20 percent higher than non-Hispanics, and blacks have a death risk about 30 to 40 percent lower than that of non-blacks. That low death rate appears to result from an overrepresentation of blacks in low-risk categories: For example, 19 percent of blacks in Iraq are women, compared with 9 percent of non-blacks, while 7 percent of blacks in Iraq are Marines, compared with 13 percent of non-blacks.

Other casualties: The number of wounded in Iraq through March 31, 2006, was 7.5 times the number of dead; the rate at which wounds are incurred was one per 33 troops per year. We do not have the same information about the characteristics of those wounded as we have about those killed. But given the overwhelming importance of hostile encounters in both wounds and deaths, it is likely that variations in the risk of being wounded are quite similar to those presented here.

********************************************************

The death rate for African-American men stands out--and, as far as I am aware they have no IED's

Another viewpoint showing that Parados is, as usual, far off the mark--



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Afghanistan more dangerous than Iraq



WASHINGTON, February 25 (Online): Despite purported military success in Afghanistan, the U.S. Institute of Peace says the country in 2005 was more dangerous for American troops per capita than Iraq.

The group also said in a new report that NATO?s imminent takeover of operations in southern Afghanistan could derail counter-insurgency operations.

"Although NATO has approved more ?robust? rules of engagement for its troops in its expanded mission, the organization still lacks the capacity and the will to aggressively root out insurgent forces," USIP stated. "Moreover, NATO foreign ministers have resisted any major role in counter-insurgency activities, insisting instead on a peacekeeping posture focused on ?stabilization and security? assistance for the Afghan government."

According to USIP, in the spring of 2005 U.S. troop casualties -- both injured and killed -- reached 1.6 per 1,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, compared with a casualty rate of 0.9 per 1,000 in Iraq.

Afghan insurgents, likely including Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, are adopting methods proven effective in Iraq.

"Prior to 2004, suicide attacks in Afghanistan were rare: Only five such bombings took place between 2001 and 2003. In 2005, however, a wave of more than 20 suicide attacks occurred -- more than twice the number of suicide attacks of the year before," USIP stated.

There are roughly 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan compared to about 140,000 in Iraq.

The year 2005 proved to be the deadliest for U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion. There were 1,500 casualties, 100 of them killed in action.

USIP said Afghanistan is more dangerous for humanitarian and non-governmental organization staff than almost any other conflict or post-conflict situation, surpassing Angola, Somalia and Liberia

While I always appreciate compliments, I don't see why you always seem to make it about "eviscarating" and the like. Parados is a rational, interesting, and civilized poster. The fact that he frequently disagrees with me doesn't diminish my benefit from discussing with him; on the contrary, it enhances it. While you are free, Bernard, to post in any style you see fit, I would appreciate it if you didn't always tangle up factual disagreements with personal put-downs.

Your point, as usual, is well taken, Mr. Thomas. I think you are one of the best informed and most balanced commentators on these threads. I take your comments seriously.
I use the words which I feel are applicable to the person I address. I can, of course, as you may have noted, indulge in the give and take on these threads, but there is one thing which I will not do--and that is participate in a one sided discussion in which I post three or four times giving what I feel is reliable evidence only to be astonished by a post from the person I had addressed my comments to which do not acknowledge that evidence has been posted.

I would never participate in a discussion with you, Mr. Thomas, in which I did not reply to a question or a demurrer from you. I expect no less from the eviscerated Mr. Parados!!!

Thomas, i see some serious flaws in the equation you are attempting to construct. However, much of the problem arises from an "apples to oranges" comparison. Apples and oranges have family resemblance as fruits, but considered individually, are not the same kinds of fruit.

This problem arises in the comparison you are constructing. Iraq is an entire nation, while Philadelphia is, discretely, an urban area. The average population density of Philadelphia is obtained by adding what are very likely small ranges of difference in population density in order to divide them by the area referred to. In determining the population density of the entire nation of Iraq, one averages very densely populated areas such as Baghdad, Mosul, Basra, etc., with areas such as the Syrian Desert in which the population is orders of magnitude "less dense" than in an urban area in either Iraq or the United States.

Furthermore, the equation is flawed in respect to the base populations considered. (Once again, i don't fault you for this, but it is inherent in making what is essentially a false comparison.) If one considers the risk to all people in an equivalently densely populated urban area, such as Baghdad to Philadelphia, the comparison is valid. But in only considering the risk to American soldiers, one has "falsified" the comparison anew. Soldiers are an essentially hostile body, and that is meant as a value-neutral statement--commanders send soldiers into an area in the anticipation of hostilities. Not all of the Americans resident in Philadelphia, nor casually visiting Philadelphia, can reasonably be said to have a potentially hostile intent. A more reasonable, but still not exact comparison, would be to examine the risk to, for example, police officers in Philadelphia to that of American soldiers in a comparably densely populated part of Iraq. (Note that i am making no contention about the relative risk, i fully acknowledge lacking reliable statistics with which to make the comparison.)

Therefore, the entire thesis is flawed at the outset. If one were to compare the risk to all persons present in two comparably, densely populated areas (of course, it needn't refer to Philadelphia, and the original thesis referred to Washington in the District of Columbia), then one would be closer to constructing a reasonable equation for comparison. One still has the problem of comparing a discrete population in a situation dramatically affectrd by known, high occupational risk to a general population for which a "baseline" risk has not (and possibly cannot be) established.

So, while i admire your effort to get at a more plausible expression of the problem inherent in the comparison, i suggest that, structured as this problem is in the original article concerning Washington, or as "re-examined" in the case of Philadelphia, it represents an attempt to reconcile a false comparison in which the risk is compared between "non-equivalent" populations.

Remind me never to disagree with you Set!


All these comparisons are nothing more than topics for debate. What is not debatable is that Iraq is a complete f@cking disaster. After more than 3 years, there is absolutely no evidence of the prosperous free democracy that the shrub and his band of merry men predicted. I'm prepared to say that 3 years from now, there'll still be no sign of a prosperous free democracy. I guess people can debate until they're blue in the face the reasons for that particular scenario. Obviously getting rid of maddaS wasn't a particularly awful aim, but they either lacked the foresight, or were just too stupid to see that something had to fill the void.

I agree with Wilso to the extent that the Shrub and his Forty Theives of Baghdad were completely wrapped up in the propaganda, and the "shock and awe," giving no consideration to what would be needed when the shock and awe wore off.

That is true. But for any given area, the number of murderers and murder victims is proportional to the population density. (There will be fewer murders in areas containing fewer people to get murdered, and fewer people to carry out murders.) Moreover, the number of soldiers you need to control a place is also roughly proportional to that number of people to control there -- or in other words, that place's population density. Thus, when you divide any of those numbers by each other, the effect of population density cancels out.


I'll grant you this point for the sake of the argument. Now, how does it affect the interpretation of the data? Although American soldiers in Iraq are a hostile body and American civilians in Philadelphia are not, the soldiers' death rate is still lower. Even without access to the data, I think we agree that Philadelphia police has a higher death rate than non-police Philadelphians age 18-38. So if I made a mistake here, your correction doesn't refute the authors' point. On the contrary, it emphasizes it!

Your equation is once again flawed, because murder is often a "crime of passion," which is only referrent to the immediate situation in which the murder occurs, and which is referrent to the perpetrator, the victim and the motivation. Military deaths are essentially anonymous occurances which result only from the fact of the victim being a member of the military. Once again, you are not comparing equivalent events.



Not at all, and i'm surprised to see you make such a fatous comparison. If one were to compare the deaths Philadelphia police officers as a function of officers to population density, do you contend that their risk is less than that of American soldiers in a comparable, as densely populated area in Iraq? Do you have data to support such a contention. In fact, in noting that the risk for Philadelphia police officers is undoubtedly higher than for all persons in Philadelphia, you serve to make my point. Once again, the comparison is flawed. To make such a comparison work, you'd have to compare the relative population density of soldiers and security personel as compared the total population. Therefore, you're going to need to include all Iraqi soldiers and police officers to make a plausible comparison.

Wilso and Setanta are right. The US never anticipated how barbaric the Iraqi people really were before liberating them. Who could have anticipated an entire population being no more mature then the average 12 year old American? So much had been written about the stoic, proud people of Iran, but it turns out that they need a disciplinarian government to keep them in line. Bush definitely got that wrong thinking that a democratic government could ever be successfull when the people being governed still want to live in the glorious middle ages when Arab culture was still a powerful force.

It's a pity really.

Anyone who had had the good sense to carefully read the history of the occupation of Baghdad by the English in the 1920s.

Actually, the authors did no such thing. They compared being an American soldier in Iraq to being a black male from the age of 20-34 in the 2000 census (or a 2002 estimate) counted as living in Philadelphia.

They might as well have compared the threat rate of all those murdered (100%) vs those that weren't killed in Iraq (0%) and claimed that Iraq was 100% safer. It was and continues to be a manufactured statistic using selective facts.

Census for Philly 2000

There were a total of 58574 black males from 20-34 living in Philly in 2000. (Philly population estimates have been reduced since then.)

In 2002 there were 288 murders in Philly. http://www.ppdonline.org/hq_statistics.php

To get to the 4.37 the authors claimed, 89% of the victims were black males from 20-34. The statistic is very selective. I haven't yet tracked down the Philly Uniform crime stats for victim status. They selectively chose a stat that could as well have been all those murdered in a given area compared to all those not murdered. Hmm, that would mean that the murder rate for the REST of Philly is .02 per 1000. (That isn't a typo. ) So for a white person or a black female you are 75 times safer in Philly than being in Iraq. I guess the only thing we have shown is that black males of military age should leave Philly and go to Iraq.

I am sure that if I selected for mechanics that never leave the base in Iraq I could claim it is very safe for US soldiers in Iraq.

The comparisons are silly. They continue to be silly. They will ALWAYS be silly. It was pointed out early in this thread that selected statisctics do not a case make.

Since it is so often apparent in these fora that what are obvious considerations to military men are unlikely to occur to non-military persons, and persons with no background in military or even general history, it is worth making another observation. Competent military planners always base their operational plans on the ability to exploit opportunity, while preparing for the consequences of the failure of the operation. If, for example, you plan to land on a hostile coast, you need to be prepared to evacuate your forces if the operations fails. The horrible slaughter of the Canadians at Dieppe, and the extraorindary number of Canadians made prisoners of war in that operation were lessons not lost on Allied planners. Even before the operation was carried out, Bernard Law Montgomery, and military figure for whom i have far less respect than the popular judgment, had sufficient military sense to tell Louis Mountbatten that the operation was badly planned, and that there had been no provision made for evacuating the troops, as well as insufficient support from the Royal Navy. Louis Mountbatten was the King's cousin, though, and was a darling of the public imagination, so Montgomery was ignored, and the Canadians paid the butcher's bill.

Those mistakes were not repeated. In Sicily, at Salerno, in Normandy and in the south of France, the landings had overwhelming naval gunfire support and transport, and local air superiority was acheived before the troops hit the beach. But more imporantly, plans were put in hand to admininster the civilian areas which would fall under the control of the Allies in the event of the success of the operations. My father was an artillery officer when he landed in France, but the planning for occupation of the liberated territories had already been put in hand, and as he was a lawyer, he was transferred to civil administration. Eisenhower's planning was not a case of attempting to cow the Germans with "shock and awe," and then let's see what we can cobble together if this actually works. If anything, the degree of Allied success created problems because frontline forces quickly outran their lines of supply. But the Allies were already prepared to administer civilian areas, to put ports into operation, to rebuild bridges and railway yards, before a single grunt hit the beach. As Allied forces pushed inland, more and more troops and personnel were diverted to civil administration to assure that the only problems to be solved were at the front, and not in rear areas.

No such planning for the aftermath of "shock and awe" was evident from the bunch of cowboys in the White House. Military officers of proven competence told them that they would need large numbers of military police and civil administration officers and troops, and they were ignored.

The neo-cons made this bed, and continue to whine about being made to lie in it.