During a war, it used to be that the body counts published in the newspapers focused on the number of enemies killed. And the populace reading those accounts were supposed to be happy, not sad; the statistics were supposed to make them feel that the effort was a success, not a failure.
Whatever deaths occurred to a country’s own combat forces were reported, but in a different way, a manner meant to inspire with the message of their courage and to praise their selfless sacrifice (here’s an interesting example of this, by the way).
These editorial policies were no accident. They were part of a tradition that glorified war and considered civilian morale something that needed boosting, not deflating.
Was this a good thing? Depends on the worthiness of the cause, I’d say. Which is always in the eye of the beholder. To an absolute pacifist none of it is worthy. To a relative pacifist most such causes are not worthy. And to the rest of us folks, the answer is variable, personal, and often political.
I’m not suggesting we go back to the days of automatic war boosterism. But I continue to be stunned by the fact that our media, since Vietnam, has adopted the opposite tack.
Here’s the method: because we in the West have become far more respectful of other countries, cultures, and people the world over, enemy battle casualties are reported in order to discourage further war and induce guilt in our populace and rage towards those who wage it. Our own casualties are reported on a daily basis, highlighted in headlines that emphasize the number of deaths without giving context to why they are there or what it might mean.
The idea, once again, is to emphasize what World War I poet Wilfred Owen called, “the pity of war”—that is, the suffering involved—in order to discourage it.
Owen was a poet and a soldier. Actually, he was a poet (and a pacifist, by the way) before he was a soldier. The war in which he served was considered the first modern war, the first in which disillusionment and futility (the latter word the title of one of Owen’s most famous poems) were the mark of those who served.
Checking enthusiasm for war is a good thing. No one should consider war easy or glorious or desirable in and of itself. But now the climate makes it very difficult to prosecute a war successfully, even against an enemy as vicious as this one, even in an arena in which it is clear that pulling out now would constitute a disaster.
I’m not going to argue the war itself or the wisdom/stupidity of what the Washington Post calls the Democrats “war plan.” I’ve done so many times before. This post is about war casualty statistics.
Statistics are notorious for their ability to be used for whatever purpose one wants. That’s because statistics seem understandable on their face but are actually extremely complex. They seem to say one thing but can really mean another, and thus the partisan among us can mold them to fit the rhetorical need at hand. And war casualty statistics are an especially useful and emotional tool for playing on the hearts and minds of the American public.
There is no doubt that thousands of US servicemen and women have died in this war. There is also no doubt that casualties are light compared to most other wars in our history. There is no doubt, too, that every one of these deaths is a sorrowful and tragic occurrence. And there is also no doubt that those who have served there are heroic, and that we should be thankful that they are.
Vietnam seems to have been the turning point, as it was with so many things. That war started out with controversial body counts of the enemy. It ended with the Vietnam Wall, on whose stark dark face are engraved the names of all our dead. And this sentiment—which I support—to memorialize, honor, and grieve the dead has led to the current trend to use the dead as potential weapons in the enemy cause.
The killings of our service men and women by IEDs can’t possibly do much damage to us militarily; their scope is way too small. They do matter, however, as propaganda, and very much—as the enemy is well aware (most US combat deaths are now from these devices).
And our own MSM, in emphasizing the number of those deaths, is subtly complicit in that propaganda cause. I’m not jaded enough to believe that this complicity is intentional on the part of the MSM. I think their idea and their motivation is the thought that death is bad, war is bad, this war is especially bad (and any war advocated by the Bush administration is exceptionally bad), and it’s best to not only publicize but to emphasize and drive home those facts to make sure the public is against the war.
Commenter Hyman Rosen wrote in a thread here yesterday, in response to another commenter’s assertion that US military deaths in the last year of the Carter Administration were higher than they’ve been during the years of the Iraq War:
The document you pointed to says that the number killed in 1981 by hostile action is zero. 69% of military deaths that year are listed as due to accident. Meanwhile, this site notes that we now have over 25,000 US casualties in the Iraq war. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it disrespectful of our troops to suggest that the danger they face in Iraq should be equated with the danger of, say, driving an automobile.
No doubt Mr. Rosen is sincere in his sympathy for the war dead. But his comment—and the statistics themselves—point out the difficulty in evaluating the figures referenced.
If one looks at the chart involved, here, several relevant facts can be noted:
First of all, the last year of the Carter Administration was 1980, not 1981 (the numbers for both of those years are not significantly different, however. We’ll take 1980 as the target year, but a similar argument could also be made for 1981, the first year of Reagan’s administration.) It’s clear that US military active forces were larger during the Carter—and Reagan—administrations than they are at present. So a correction should be made for that.
It turns out, at least by my preliminary calculations (having done the math rather quickly, and with pencil and paper) that our active forces in the last Iraqi war year reported on the chart, 2004 (1,711,916), constituted about 79% of the number serving under Carter in 1980 (2,159,630) . And the ratio of deaths of active forces in 2004 (1887) compared to the number in 1980 (2392) is also approximately 79%.
This was surprising even to me. But the fact is that, statistically speaking, the increase in military deaths of active forces due to the Iraq conflict represents an increase of essentially zero, rather modest for a war.
Of course, I would imagine that, but for the Iraq war, the death rate for active military in 2004 might indeed have been lower than in 1980, rather than virtually identical. That seems intuitively true, although one can never be sure. But the statistics do clearly point out the relatively low rate of military deaths in this war.
Commenter Rosen points out the percentage of deaths due to accident in the early 80s, but fails to acknowledge that about a third of US combat deaths in 2004 were also due to accident. He (and often the MSM) lumps together accidental deaths and combat deaths when it suits his purposes. In addition, he talks of casualties rather than deaths (apples to oranges) in order to be able to discuss a larger figure (note, by the way, that in the year 1983, 11.6% of US military casualties were inflicted by terrorist attack: the Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 American servicemen).
But the real question is: what do these numbers mean? And how are they being used? Is there an equation by which we can weigh one death versus another, and is there a distinct point at which the numbers would become unconscionable? If the cause is considered unworthy (as this one is by many opponents) then no death is acceptable. If worthy, how many deaths are too many? Is criticism of the deaths and the war motivated mostly by partisanship? Does talking incessantly about these deaths help the enemy? Is there an enemy (this last question would seem absurd, but I submit there are many who think the proper answer is “no”)?
Rosen’s quoted comment insinuates that deaths in war count differently from deaths in auto accidents (although, to be technical about it, those military vehicular deaths probably involved mostly Humvees and planes rather than cars). Yes indeed, deaths in war do have a different meaning and resonance than deaths in civilian auto accidents, although both are dreadful losses. I would submit (along with commenter Ymarsakar) that deaths in a war can have a meaning and purpose quite lacking in an automobile accident.
Those who believe this war was for oil, or Bush’s ego, think it especially offensive to die in such a war. Those who believe the motives were to liberate the Iraqi people from a murderous tyrant’s yoke and enable them to at least have a chance at determining their own future, and to stop Saddam from flaunting the terms of the Gulf War Armistice and the UN inspections, believe the cause was a worthy one and the deaths a meaningful sacrifice.
