I used to be amused, now I’m just disgusted

So, what’s the status on the Lancet studies? It seems to me the debate after the second study died down surprisingly quickly leaving the impression of a consensus that the 650,000 figure was simply so over-the-top crazy as to be not even worth arguing against, much less defending, still less using as a vehicle for war critics.

I followed the debate after the first study closely, and it was heated and intense for a long time. By comparison the second study — which, by its headline conclusion of an overmortality of 650,000 (!!!) seemed to merit considerable attention — has been a mere blimp.

Indeed, it seems mentioning Iraqi mortality in the hundreds of thousands has gone virtually extinct from the debate. Why is that?

My own vague feeling is everybody thinks 650,000 is so improbably huge, there must be something wrong with the study, and its authors must be unhinged. “First they said 100,000, now it’s 650,000 – will they do anything to get attention?”.

I suspect it just seems the most reasonable explanation to most people, even the ones who might want to use it in political argument.

Daniel says: “I am curious as to why anyone is bothering with this debate any more”.

I think it is quite telling. In our generation, an entire neo-quasi-‘Enlightenment consensus’, from left to right, has been built upon a stance of comfortable moral superiority to the past. Stalinism is the locus, with adornments from the various fascisms.

The assumption is this:

“In the recent historical past, wicked idealists subordinated people to utopia. They winked at the human cost of social engineering. This is the original sin of the Left in particular. We are much wiser, indeed more moral than that. Not only have we ‘learned the lessons’, but like the [mythologised] Orwell, we would have been on the side of the angels even back then. We are the lumineres.”

The problem with the ‘Lancet Reports’ is that Mark #1 came too early for most. Modernity – Enlightened, bourgeois, wielding full-spectrum dominance – had discovered the Holy Grail of Revolutionary Liberation without human cost. Iraq was to be the cap-stone of a great arc stretching from the defeat of Communism and before. Lancet burst the bubble, and the latter day wiseacres found themselves hardly better than the hated fellow-travellers of yesteryear, fawning around the Great Project of Socialist Construction.

The Coalition of the Smug may have shuffled away from the Iraq War now – casting anathemas into the eyes of an incredulous public. But they were all still gung-ho when Lancet~1 came out. When they dismissed that (or ignored it, like Norman Geras), well, that was their Moscow Trials moment: the point when they implicitly accepted that the Idea trumped the blood of innocents. At some sub-conscious level, this knowledge burns them now. This is why they will always be Iraq denialists. No matter how much they pretend to ‘face-up’, they will always be on the look-out for retrospective vindication. It makes the mirror easier to live with.

Ah, the argument from “my own vague feeling”! I hadn’t realized that was a respectable move to make stotstosto – shows how wrong I was.

Indeed it does. Everybody else agrees that it is the opposite that is not respectable, hence the old “argumentation weak, raise voice” joke.

Which argument is it that you suppose I am making, btw?

Chris, more to the point: What are your own feelings, vague or not? Or do you even have, what, insights? In that case, please share them, I am genuinely interested.

To spell it out: Do you think the reaction, commentary, discussion and debate over the second Lancet study was proportionate to that of the first? Or to the fact that its headline result was six and a half times larger than that of the first study? Or to the fact that 650,000 is by all standards an appalling number in its own right?

I’ve always felt that way about the number 131,313

I hate to sound like disgusted of Tunbridge Wells but, well, you have written this up as a letter to the Times, right, Daniel? Or asked them to run it as an opinion piece?

I think the problem with the Lancet study is that it rams up against a fundamental presupposition of current ‘Western’ discourse (i.e. among intellectuals) and therefore it can’t really be sensibly discussed. I’ve noticed a hierarchy of ‘acceptable’ ‘sins of the West’.

1: Most acceptable of all are horrors of the past during which ‘we’ did not ‘intervene’. (key example here: Rwanda). This can therefore be spun: ‘we are good, but sometimes we don’t do enough’.

2: Secondly are horrors of the past in which ‘we’ did do terrible things, but it was all a long time ago. Therefore this is spun: ‘Vietnam/the slave trade/the Empire was indeed a terrible thing but it was all a long time ago, and the fact that we disapprove of it now only goes to prove how good we are now.’ (or else, the Christopher Hitchens line: the fact that ‘we’ caused such bad things in the past only goes to prove that ‘we’ have to set them right now).

3: Verging into unacceptable territory (but still, as it were, alludable to) is ‘our’ current collusion with various dictators many of whom practice torture, murder, genocide etc. It is just barely permissable to mention our collusion with the Saudis, Equatorial Guinea, Egypt, Pakistan (etc. etc. etc.) but only if this is spun: ‘they are bad people and they have corrupted us! It is terrible that we are forced to deal with such people, but this is the way of the world.’

4: Completely and absolutely unmentionable (indeed, unthinkable) is a situation where ‘we’ are purely and simply the bad guys. The Lancet study is not so much argued against as ignored (or treated with bug eyed disbelief) because it threatens this taboo. For example, as Mahmood Mandani points out, why do ‘we’ not refer to what is currently going on in Iraq as genocide? It is not obviously much better than what is currently going on in Sudan. The reason, surely, is that then we would have to face the idea that ‘we’ set in motion a chain of events that led to genocide, and that, therefore, ‘we’ are the bad guys.

Or if we don’t want to compare Iraq to Sudan how about pressing this nerve point even further and comparing it to Rwanda? As MediaLens points out, ‘Les Roberts, co-author of the Lancet report, suggested that Britain and America may have triggered “an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide” in Iraq.’ (emphasis added).

This is about as acceptable a suggestion amongst Western intellectuals as suggesting that a triangle may not have three sides, or that 2+2=5. Again, the reaction is not so much anger or reasoned argument, as simple disbelief. (Usually phrased: ‘I don’t know much about statistics, but something tells me that this study isn’t right…..’). Or else it is ignored. To quote MediaLens again: ‘In an exchange with a Media Lens reader, Roberts explained his reasoning:

“The Fordam University assessment put the [Rwandan] death toll at ~6-700000, that is the only quantitative assessment that I have seen… and I was there so I do not use the comparison lightly.” (Roberts, Media Lens message board, February 18, 2007)

The media’s response to Roberts’s claim? Complete silence. No other national UK press outlet has since mentioned his comparison with Rwanda. And yet, as we have noted elsewhere, when Roberts made similar observations on mass killings in Congo in the 1990s, he was widely quoted by press and politicians.’

I remember many years ago reading a book on astronomy (I forget who it was by now) who pointed out that in Ancient Greed, Aristarchus’ suggestion that the earth orbited the sun (not the other way round) was not so much argued against as it was ignored. The author went on to state that most (all?) cultures have ‘absolute presuppositions’ agreed upon by ‘everyone’ and that anything that oversteps these cultural boundaries will simply and literally not be understood.

Likewise the fundamental and absolute presupposition of the Western intelligentsia is that ‘we’ (i.e. the West) are ‘good’, although we might make ‘mistakes’ or ‘errors’ or ‘not intervene enough’ or something of that sort. If you challenge that it’s as if you suddenly lapse into Chinese or Klingon or something.

Jet? Sebastian? Soru?

This is no fun.

‘“Nobody on any side of the issues will take the 650,000 number as a basis for discussion,…”

Posted by stostosto

Flat-out lie. Start with Deltoid, and follow the links.’

I think it would be much more accurate that no one, on either side of the debate, will even acknowledge that according to Lancet 2 the death toll might be 900,000. Still less will anyone acknowledge that this is almost certainly going to be higher now (perhaps over a million).

Hidari could have added that it’s precisely the assumption that “we” are “good” and that we therefore do things for good reasons that enables “us” to do enormously wicked things such as the destruction of Iraq.

Is the Times’ new attack on the Lancet study really “all over the blogosphere”? According to Daniel’s link, Google Blog Search only comes up with 8 references to it. I suspect this post is going to make the Spagat, et.al. critique better-known than anything has up to this point.

hey Marc [at 4],
this deserves posting on your blog (it’s languishing at the moment) – and expanding on

the fundamental and absolute presupposition of the Western intelligentsia is that ‘we’ (i.e. the West) are ‘good’, although we might make ‘mistakes’ or ‘errors’ or ‘not intervene enough’ or something of that sort. If you challenge that it’s as if you suddenly lapse into Chinese or Klingon or something.

To this I’d add that the reluctance to look at the Iraqi debacle squarely in the eye* does not just stem from an unwillingness to own up to the commission of evil. The disinclination** to acknowledge its lure plays a role. In addition, there’s the plain, pigheaded denial of defeat, of course.

Since he is both unsubtle*** and prolix, a guy like Victor Davis Hanson can be relied upon to run off his mouth without an editor. In “Carnage and Culture” and throughout his opinion pieces, he tends to acknowledge that the role of bloodshed in Western history makes its claims of moral superiority dubious. But since bloodshed is a consequence of Western creative exuberance, and thus proof of plain and simple superiority, things do end up coming up roses on the moral front. Many think like he does, and he’s interesting. He’s obviously not the only one who occasionally flashes the varicose tit**** of his savagery under his civilized clothing, but even the performance of simpletons like Friedman tend to be enhanced by the stage smoke of mixed metaphors and the like.

The high mortality figures in the Lancet raise the issue of the number of casualties inflicted by the Coalition. This would lead to the question of what was exactly meant by “shock and awe”, punching somebody in the Middle East “in the nose” and so on. Nobody is really interested in revisiting the climate of bellicosity (and fear) in the run-up to the war, or in unravelling the taboos it helped impose, concerning the oil and other assorted geopolitical and partisan considerations.

But more important than the lack of recognition of one’s less-than-immaculate morals is the denial of failure. As Brett has shown with admirable concision, the supporters of the war find it easy to shift the blame for the catastrophe in Iraq entirely on the Iraqis. What is undeniable, however, is that the Coalition has failed to secure a monopoly on the use of force, for itself and compliant Iraqis. This is anathema to jingoistic militarists. The bloody bedlam in the country also shows the glaring contradiction of speaking of “creative chaos” and expecting to remain in control of events. For self-styled visionaries it must be hard to swallow.

This is related to an issue with very practical consequences. Folks have been eager to interpret the midterms as an abjuration of Bush’s policies by the electorate. But perhaps the truth is simpler, and the American people are just not fond of losing. If that is the case, a repeat of the post-Vietnam scenario down the line is not unconceivable.

*: it bears repeating, time and again, that the critics of the Lancet study do not appear to be in a hurry to get other independent surveys done.

**: one surely must get style points for stringing together synonyms in such a blatantly pretentious way.

***: this is true even if I’m not the most indicated person to point it out, obviously…

****: it’s only one tit, for reasons of use of obscure pop culture references i.e. all hail Slaanesh.

The majority of killings in Iraq are execution style killings . . . you know this how? The Lancet paper gives a figure for explosive deaths as 24%, gunshots 31%. You’re assuming that all of these gunshot deaths are execution style killings, rather than shootouts, which seems unlikely; and shootouts produce treatable wounded, just like bombings.

As for the casualty ratios being invalidated by the fact that soldiers wear helmets and take cover, that makes no sense. Those helmets and flak jackets and so forth prevent some casualties from happening at all, as well as keeping some wounds from being deadly; one could just as easily argue that civilians should have more wounded, because none of them are taking cover or wearing protection to prevent wounds from shrapnel, etc.

“spun quite nicely by the right”: oy, matey, I am of the right and am dead agin this foolish and rash war, and have been since it was mooted. Are you perhaps referring to those deranged Trots who now style themselves “neo-cons”? Effing commies, they are; hanging’s too good for ’em.

Dearieme, God bless him or her (should God exist — otherwise, let D. be properly blessed by the backup unit) is a Right of One, not in communion with the actual functioning Mass Right.

Actually, if you read stostosto’s post very carefully, you’ll see:

“My own vague feeling is everybody thinks … must be unhinged.”

Which is to say, at no point does stostosto actually claim to hold these views him/herself (compare post #15). I think either stostosto is being deliberately obtuse, or is questioning (as hidari does) quite why there isn’t more discourse about the 650000 figure.

john emerson — the right in the UK was always much more sceptical about this than in the US, and I’d bet dearieme has been against it from the start — several Tory MPs were publicly against it because they believed… well frankly they probably believed that it would turn into a complete shambles, although I imagine they also had many of the views engels attributes to them. Many other Tory MPs were privately against it for similar reasons; especially those with close connections to the military and the intelligence community. Certainly my right wing acquaintances there had no more enthusiasm than anyone else (not that I’d want to claim they were typical). Didn’t Peter Hitchens oppose it?

Then again, as Ken Clarke said in a recent interview, when he was working for the Tory party in the mid-60s everyone he knew thought that most of the Republican party was insane. So there is a “what counts as right wing here doesn’t even get a hold there” issue.

Oh joy! One of the bloggers reproducing Ahuja’s guff is David Kane. All Lancet junkies will know why that’s a scream.

I suppose that small nations like Britain, Slovakia, etc. have their own boutique artisanal right wings, but I’m just too busy to keep up with them.

“The Lancet study, whether it’s good or bad social science, is primarily being promoted as a work of anti-war propaganda.”

What a great sentence.

Megan McArdle: “As for the casualty ratios being invalidated by the fact that soldiers wear helmets and take cover, that makes no sense. Those helmets and flak jackets and so forth prevent some casualties from happening at all, as well as keeping some wounds from being deadly; one could just as easily argue that civilians should have more wounded, because none of them are taking cover or wearing protection to prevent wounds from shrapnel, etc.”

Megan, wounds can kill; just reminding you. Frequently the difference between ‘wounded’ and ‘killed’ lies in swift and massive medical care.

Many Iraqi hospitals were looted and stripped in the Spring-Summer 2003 period; the CPA was more worried about setting up a laissez-faire paradise than getting them up and going again. Since then, the Health Ministry was taken over by a Shiite militia faction; many areas of Iraq have become no-go zones, depending on what religion one is (or for all, depending on criminal activity and US military roadblocks).

Many areas had very erratic electrical supplies and water supplies. There was a newspaper article mentioning that one hospital made relatives of the wounded donate blood; it was the only way that they could get blood for transfusions. The Shiite militia ^H^H^H^H Ministry of Health has supposedly discovered the one-shot cure for Sunni Islam; the shot, of course, comes out of an AK-47.

Given all that, it would not be surprising that the ratio of wounded to killed is lower than one might expect.

BTW – nice article in the Economist, about the self-correcting punditry (so to speak). It was 100% a lie, as the past few years have so powerfully demonstrated.

However, it should ingratiate you a bit with The Economist, and those being-in-error-is-no-problem pundits, who were so blase at the start of the war, and only revealed their doubts after the American people soured on the whole mess.

I fully expect to see your career progress over the next several years; you’ve demonstrated that you’re a born pundit.

At the risk of being off topic, Daniel’s post does assume you don’t expect the London Times to go so seriously off the rails these days.

But is this so? Aaronovitch can be good when he’s not being lazy, and I quite like their foreign correspondent Bronwen Maddox, and Anatole Kaletsky.

But the rest of the Times columnists strike me as increasingly weird. They had Phylis Chessler earlier this week: I rest my case

Irrefutable indeed, as Rorty has shown. Nobody but you can say how things seem to you. The very definition of subjectivity.

Jane Galt, when I was given weapons training by British Army instructors I was taught that a bullet from a modern high velocity rifle anywhere in an unprotected torso is almost certain to kill you by sheer compressive shock injury to tissue – regardless of medical care. An injury in any unprotected limb was said to be almost as likely to kill, because the limb is effectively blown clean off the body, or so badly mangled that it might as well be.

Modern weapons simply don’t injure people the same way as eighteenth century muskets.

And in an insurrection most casualties result from one side ambushing the other, and in an ambush scenario it seems reaonable to expect a higher proportion of fatalities to other casualties. Ambushes are, or aim to be, close range.

I’m veering off topic a bit (but I’ll come back), but the correct moral calculation is not with what Saddam Hussein did, but with what the expected death toll would have been under feasible policies other than going to war (I’m nitpicking about mfa’s 3rd para). Saddam Hussein might have killed millions prior to 2003; that would justify nothing if the expected consequences of leaving him in power post-2003 would have been fewer deaths than we have in fact seen. Similarly, if the expected consequences would have been more deaths than we’ve seen, the invaders are morally in the clear, even if there have been hundreds of thousands. Its hard to know the relevant counterfactuals. It is well known, though (I think, no?) that period 1981-1990 was very bloody indeed, and those deaths are irrelevant to any projected counterfactuals: post-2003 there is no way that Hussein would have attacked Iran or committed genocide against the Kurds, because the US would not have stood idly by if he had.

Brett — if we are making a conseuqentialist moral evaluation of the decision to invade and the conduct of the invasion, who is actually doing the killing is irrelevant. Bloody civil war was foreseen by enough knowledgable people that the invading forces are morally responsible for unleashing it, regardless of whether they are actually doing the killing. The killers themselves are responsible too, certainly. But imagine being a jailor who releases a killer into an environment awash with arms knowing there is a probability of that killer finding the arms and using them and knowing that if so no-one (you, the jailor, or any police force you have in place) will be able to stop him. You are not the killer. But it seems odd to think of yourself as free from culpability for the deaths.

The ONLY way to escape culpability is to claim that the consequences of all other actions available would have been worse. What the Lancet studies suggest is that the bar is very high. That’s why they are interesting, and not propaganda. And that is why intellectually dishonest supporters of the war are so keen to undermine them, and why Daniel’s continuing and extraordinary work responding to these people is the one genuinely important thing any of us on CT is doing. And why he should write a letter to the Times….

Matt, it was impressive to see how many numbers Megan could throw, with how little light produced.

Megan, I’m sure that there *are* a lot of maimed people walking around Iraq; ISTR very occasional articles about that.

I’m not obsessed with you; you just occasionally come into my view (almost always with a piece of prime dishonesty). The only (mild) interest I have is that you seem to have gotten on the MSM pundit track, and it’ll be interesting (in a disgusting way) to see how far you’ll go in the Pundit Lowarchy (to steal from CS Lewis). That BS you posted on The Economist recently should be a nice piece of ingratiation to all of those people who supported the Iraq War, and are only now claiming to have had doubts all along. Not to mention that you’ll be in good with AEI economists, who hate hearing terms like ‘Dow 36,000’.

Gilbert Burnham has been a model of professionalism in all my interactions with him. He’s a busy scholar, travelling around the world, but he is thoughtful and responsive to politely worded questions and comments. He says that we will have access to the data in due course, and I believe him.

Les Roberts, on the other hand, stopped returning my e-mails after it became clear that I was not a fan of the work. Or it might have just been that his campaign for Congress was heating up. Feel free to ask him.

In terms of meaninful criticism on a small but, I think, revealing issue, start here.

Barry, quite aside from the fact that we’re not all one or another species of utilitarian, you’ve missed the thrust of my point. I was addressing the Lancet study’s pathetic effectiveness as propaganda, which seems to puzzle some people. And I think my point was valid: From a propaganda standpoint, you just do NOT persuade the average person that a war was unjust, by proving to them that the foe is evil. It just doesn’t work, whether or not it should from a particular moral perspective.

Further, we’ve averted our gaze from enough genocides, before AND after what happened to the Kurds, that I find the capacity to doubt we really would have come to their rescue. The sanctions regime’s time was coming to an end,

doormat #38, #41:

Thanks for actually reading what I wrote. I promise I am not being deliberately obtuse, merely (possibly) obtuse.

Clearly, and not in the least interestingly, some people here have formed opinions of what my views are on this issue that are neither correct, nor, to the best of my senses, present in what I have written.

Now, I happen to be an exceedingly interesting person and thus one of my favourite subjects, but rather than go into that, I’d like to rephrase my original comments in a way that even posters John Emerson, barry (“flat-out lie” #17), and engels (“Socrates blah blah #39) might comprehend.

First some clarification: I think the Lancet study is important. It’s an attempt to gather information on what is happening in Iraq, and, as best I can see, an honest and competent attempt.

I also think it’s important what the numbers are. I don’t agree with people saying it’s irrelevant whether the excess mortality is 50,000, 100,000 or 1,000,000. Quantities matter. It also matters that 3,000 were killed on 9-11, not 300 or 300,000. It makes a difference, even a qualitative difference.

Now given these, I have been following the Lancet studies (i.e. I have read both) and their reporting in the media and their role as “talking point” in political debate.

I have also debated them, especially the first which came out in 2004, with right-wing hacks on an internet forum. I started out by explaining why Frank “dartboard” Kaplan got it horribly wrong, but ended up linking to dsquared who said it all much better.

By way of further clarification/full disclosure, I am Danish, and my country has been part of “the Coalition” from the very start of the Iraq adventure, so the debate here mirrors the British debate to some extent. (As does our policy; I think all of 15 minutes elapsed from the British announcement of withdrawal from Basra till the Danish government’s corresponding announcement).

My initial comment about what I called “the status” of the Lancet studies concerned their status in public discourse and political debate. So the fact that “flat-out lie” barry can point to some blogger whom I (embarrassingly) never heard of having discussed the second study in earnest doesn’t in any way impact on my general observation, which is this (and may be wrong, I haven’t done any comprehensive media study to corroborate my hypothesis): THE SECOND LANCET STUDY HAS BEEN MOSTLY NOT DEBATED OR EVEN MENTIONED IN THE MEDIA OR IN THE POLITICAL DEBATE since it appeared.

Now, GIVEN THAT I THINK IT IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION, I wondered why that is. I personally think this is important information to all sides of the debate, and I think everybody should strive to ascertain its validity in order to know what the hell is going on in Iraq.

(I noted that hidari seemed to agree with my basic observation that the study has been off the radar media wise, and offerred some speculation as to why which went beyond my own feeble “over the top crazy” comments).

So this was as far as I went, and as far as this line of inquiry got, until first Chris “vageue feeling” Bertram and then “flat-out lie” barry, “Socrates” engels and john “Jet? Sebastian? Soru?” emerson trenchantly saw me for what I am, which is, apparently, an anti-Lancet-study-shill-and-we-all-know-what-that-means-dont-we.

OK, so it will be a surprise to these individuals that I am personally quite prepared to believe the Lancet studies, especially in light of the (scandalous) abscence of any other serious attempt at monitoring mortality in Iraq.

What bugs me is that no one in public discourse (pace “Deltoid” and other magnificent interweb bloggers), be it media, or opposition politicians, even seem to include them — and especially the second study — in their copy or talking points.

There are several possible explanations, of course. One is, the study is seriously flawed, and thus unmentionable in polite company. Another is — and this was actually what I was getting at — a presumption that the study’s number (freaking 650,000!) is so freakishly large that if you mention it in earnest, you must be prepared to be regarded as an extremist hysteric freak. WHICH IS NOT TO SAY THAT THE NUMBER IS NOT CORRECT. It’s just too large for comfort. To the media. And even to politicians running for office — even extreme left-wing politicians whose constituency are supposingly biased in an anti-war direction.

Which makes it all the more important to establish its validity, firmly, for all to see.

On reflection, I’d like to further comment that I think the Times article, biased and tendentious as it may be, may have furthered this goal, insofar as it has re-launched the study on the public agenda.

“Ought” vs “is”, John; Propaganda depends on both rational discourse AND moral premises, especially when it’s propaganda about whether a government policy is “just”, a concept subject to contending definitions.

Rational discourse can still be part of successful propaganda, but not if it discounts those norms.

And I think my point was valid: From a propaganda standpoint, you just do NOT persuade the average person that a war was unjust, by proving to them that the foe is evil.

THE WAR AGAINST THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT IS OVER. We won almost four years ago. And the result of our winning has been an awful lot of people, some on our side, and some on the other side (which side is ours?), killing other people, while we are unable to enforce the rule of law, put anybody in power who will enforce the rule of law, or figure out who is trustworthy and who will use their new US police training to kill the people who trained them.

Who exactly is the “foe” that you are referring to? The death squads of the US/Iran-backed government, or the other death squads? Either way, it’s a completely different foe from the Iraqi army that was easily defeated in the initial war, it’s a foe that would not have existed without our providing a power vacuum, and it seems to be quite a bit more destructive to the people of Iraq than the 2002 status-quo government with which we actually went to war.

Over at deltoid I comment on The macaroni and cheese argument against the Lancet study

In response to stostosto, some of whose post I agree with (and others of which I don’t) my point goes much deeper than questions about statistics. As MediaLens have never tired of pointing out, there have been numerous studies on various massacres and disasters published in the last ten or fifteen years, and (with the exception of Srebrenica, which I really don’t want to get into here) NONE of them have faced the same amount of scrutiny and ‘questioning’ of the methodology as the two Lancet studies. Now this in itself is a suspicious sign, as far as I am concerned. Brief diversion into philosophy: Hilary Puttnam argues (in his book, pithily entitled ‘The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and other essays’) argues, correctly in my opinion that facts and values are not discrete entities but are in fact intertwined (you can’t have a discussion about the alleged facts without implicitly discussing your values as well. Less obviously discussions about values also presuppose facts).

I remember a TV archeologist (it was the one who wore the hat like Indiana Jones and who did the stuff about the Byzantine Empire, if anyone can remember his name) pointing this out. Say, he said, it was 1937, and you were a German archeologist. And say you stumbled upon some ruins that seemed to point to a semitic (Jewish) origin for the German ‘race’ or German civilisation. What would you do? Hush it up, presumably.

BUT….he pointed out, it would be much more likely that you would never in fact stumble upon any such remains because you would simply never be looking for such things, and would therefore never find them. We look intensely at things that our value system tells us is important and tend to ignore things that our value system tells us are unimportant.

Now, the fact (or ‘fact’) is, that other studies do not provoke the same dichotomy, between being ignored on the ‘mainstream’ media, and savagely attacked (not just once, but over and over and over and over again) on the internet. Look at the situation in Sudan for example. Some people think we should ‘intervene’ and some people don’t, but few people (if anyone) writes obsessively over and over and over again to discredit estimates of the raw numbers killed, and if they did, we would question their motives.

I’ve noticed, incidentally, that anti-Lancet types tend simply not to understand this argument. Again we are faced with the ‘argument from personal incredulity’: it is taken for granted that studies that demonstrate that ‘we’ are the bad guys are automatically less believable than studies which demonstrate that ‘they’ are the bad guys.

Which only goes to demonstrate the power of the ‘we are the good guys’ ideology.

“Studies that demonstrate that ‘we’ are the bad guys”; You just don’t get it, do you? “Studies” demonstrate objective facts. They don’t demonstrate moral conclusions. That ‘we’ are the “bad guys” is a moral conclusion. The Lancet study can’t demonstrate it.

Now, it can demonstrate facts such that if you hold certain moral beliefs then we are the bad guys. Moral beliefs which, contrary to the assumptions being made here, are scarcely universal. Especially when you get into little details some people think are irrelevant, such as who’s doing the killing.

Under certain circumstances I might grant Brett’s point, that the chaos in Iraq is mostly the result of Iraqi acts, and that our responsibility is for an unsuccessful attempt to do good, rather than responsible for evildoing.

On the other hand I don’t think you can take the administration’s statement of goals at their face value, and one theory (Josh Micah Marshall’s) is that spreading chaos is part of our plan. And if not that, American unsuccess in Iraq seems to be the result of enormous blunders, and military affairs tend to be judged very realistically, with big blunders regarded as worse than small crimes.

But imagine being a jailor who releases a killer into an environment awash with arms knowing there is a probability of that killer finding the arms and using them and knowing that if so no-one (you, the jailor, or any police force you have in place) will be able to stop him. You are not the killer. But it seems odd to think of yourself as free from culpability for the deaths.

Exactly, Harry B, and I’ve attempted to work through this line of reasoning with Brett and other dead-enders at least half a dozen times here. They just brush it aside.

I imagine Brett living in a city going through an unprecedented crime wave. The chief of police goes on TV and says “I don’t know why I’m taking so much heat–I’m not the one committing the crimes here!”

And Brett says, “You know, the guy’s got a point.”

Hidari:

The only thing that works with fundamentally self-serving ideologues like Brett is, unsurprisingly enough, to make an appeal to self-interest. They may question the moral link between the invasion and the mess in Iraq, but the causal one is undeniable even to them. The chaos in Iraq wouldn’t have happened without the invasion, and it undercuts America’s position in the Middle East and beyond, no matter what the bargain-basement Machiavellis at the AEI may say, and irrespective of the credit that Joshua Micah Marshall and others may give them.

No alleged “hyperpower” sends the cream of its military to a country to display its inability to maintain the most basic order there. The casualty figures in the Lancet speak of failure. I suspect that the denial thereof is just as important a motivation for the war supporters as shirking their moral co-responsibility.

“Jane”:

Barry, your obsession with me is truly touching. It does make one feel important in an otherwise uncaring world.

Isn’t a “typically British” wit one of the Economist’s main selling points among American readers? That snark is just about as trite as retorting that you “must have touched a nerve”.

Barry is right, anyway. It’s interesting to see how an ironclad cheek and the ability to utter irrelevant factoids (i.e. “Jane” is missing that wars characterized by pitched battles have little to do with counterinsurgencies and dirty civil wars) are the two main assets an up-and-coming pundit cannot do without.

Kevin:

a rehash of the David Kane critique, which goes like this: you guys are the Little Green Footballs of the left

What DK seems to be ignoring with the devastating cuteness of his critique is that nobody is spouting eliminationist rhetoric here. Even if CT were as far to the left as LGF is to the right, which is questionable, there’s the little fact that the contents of this site tend to be a tad less odious. But that’s moderation as defined by one’s position along the so-called political spectrum for you. As mfa says, it’s just “the Left” that indulges in moral relativism, right?

Stostosto – I do apologise for not guessing what you were thinking, but, not being a mind reader, I had to go on what you had written. And I am afraid that that was not terribly clear. And if you abbreviate other people’s comments as “blah blah”, you can’t really run crying to them when you feel that yours have not been given the most fine-grained possible interpretation.

No, stostosto, actually, it’s that you don’t write very well.

It should be obvious, but I accidentally edited it out of my previous comment, so let me be explicit: My answer to stostosto’s question is intended to apply only to the U.S., which is the only political climate I know enough about to give an answer.

It comes down to this: Americans and American politicians resist admitting unpleasant truths. They also don’t care as much about what happens to other people as they do about what happens to Americans.*

The Lancet numbers bring out both kinds of resistance.

*Both of these qualities are not necessarily unique to Americans. But they are very, very strong forces in U.S. politics.

And stostosto you will no doubt accuse me again of missing some crucial subtlety in your quasi-random prattling but

Also, I can think of at least one major and world renowned media player that has all the motivation in the world to report facts that put Tony Blair’s Iraq adventure in a bad light.

Plus, at least since Watergate it has been a wet dream and an agenda on its own for most ambitious journalists to embarrass, demask, and preferably bring down people in powerful positions, ministers, governments. (Many journalists are downright insufferable in such obsessions).

does tend to suggest that you have bought into some rather cheesy rightwing myths about the journalistic profession and the BBC. Believe it or not the BBC – to which I take the great liberty of assuming that you are referring here, despite the fact that you do not make this clear (now fancy that!) – certainly does not have “all the motivation in the world” to report facts which put Tony Blair and Iraq in a bad light. Although some forces push it in this direction, others push it in the opposite direction. Also, the caricature of journalists you present here is a well-known rightwing trope and your somewhat pathological animus towards “downright insufferable” journalists with their “wet dream[s]” and “agenda[s]” seems to cast doubt on the reliability of your judgments on these matters. The idea that most or even many journalists are motivated in the way you suggest derives not from reality but from a mythological rightwing conception of the “liberal media”.

Well, it was kinda flowing naturally from Nell’s comment; but, yes, you’re right. Sorry.

About the study: I think I read somewhere recently that they are going to release the raw data now, so we should expect more of this.

Y’see this is the sort of bizarre statement that makes me wonder what weird world some people are living in. ‘This is undoubtably true. But your attempt at applying your thesis on the Lancet case breaks down spectacularly because there is absolutely no shortage of people in the west—politicians, media—to whom a 650,000 death toll would be extremely important. Above I mentioned politicians of the left, even far left. Besides being politically opposed to the Iraq war by their very inclination, they have a vested political interest in portraying it as a costly, horrendous failure—in addition to any moral arguments they have. 650,000 dead people is a pretty horrendous cost if nothing else’

First, ‘politicians’. Who? In Britain the two main parties backed the war. Only the Lib Dems offered partial criticism. In the United States, both main parties backed the war (don’t get the people who run the parties confused with the ‘rank and file’. I am perfectly aware that ‘the grassroots’ of the Democrats and Labour were, generally speaking, unhappy about the war. But most political leaders view their own parties as unfortunate obstacles that have to be got round).

As for the ‘far left’…I’m sorry what decade are we living in? What century for that matter? Outwith the demented fantasies of Nick Cohen, Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis, in Western Europe and the USA, the far left is dead. It is dead as a political force, it is dead in the media, and it is (contrary to what David Horowitz thinks) more or less dead in academia.

As for this: ‘Also, I can think of at least one major and world renowned media player that has all the motivation in the world to report facts that put Tony Blair’s Iraq adventure in a bad light.’

I really had to read the rest of the posters to discover that you meant by this the BBC. The BBC!!!! Or (as it is never referred to in the media) the British ‘state run broadcasting service’ (although it is, very obviously, the British state run broadcasting service).

Can you possibly, perhaps, see why a corporation whose big shots are appointed by the government, where management hang about with New Labour, and whose license fee is controlled by the government….can you possibly see any reason why this corporation might not want to offend the government?

The rest of the media, in the UK at least, tend to be owned by Rupert Murdoch (backed the war), the Barclay Brothers (extreme right wing), “Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere” (whose political views should be self evident from his name), and Richard Desmond (right wing extremist, pornographer and lunatic).

Only the Daily Mirror (whose editor, Piers Morgan, was sacked) and the Independent offered any real or coherent opposition to the war (The Guardian leans far too heavily towards New Labour).

So I think it is fairly obvious why the media should want to downplay the Lancet study, in the same way it is obvious why the article currently under discussion was published in the Murdoch owned Times and not, say, The Morning Star.

engels, if there is something you want to discuss in what I say, please discuss it

Well I did exactly that, stostosto, in my last comment, so perhaps you could take it from there.

Oh, and stostosto, here is a search of Guardian articles which reference the terms “lancet 655 000”. As you can see, there do appear to be quite a few.

nell:

(the other thing of the “two things” in my previous)

to me, this comment by you is the most interesting thing anyone has said here:

stostosto, I’ve asked myself the same question about why the Lancet figures, even the low end of the confidence interval, are so rarely used in “respectable” antiwar discussion. I’ve asked myself why I am not using them.

Because I know the feeling. Is there any reason not to shout the Lancet study’s findings from the roof tops? I don’t know. It just seems to me it’s not being done.

I have just discovered that Les Roberts, co-author of the Lancet studies, will give a talk here in Copenhagen on March 22nd. I intend to attend.

nell #85:

One part of the answer is the current political situation in Congress and with the upcoming presidential election (which we are in the midst of much earlier than usual).

Stressing the Lancet casualty estimates focuses unhelpfully on the large-scale civil war that underpins them, and thus the “what about the bloodbath after we leave” obstacle to withdrawal.

Hmmm. Could be. But still…

To me there’s no mystery about the failure to use the Lancet figure. it’s the same reason that unfavorable news about Israeli behavior gets less play than unfavorable news about Palestinian behavior. Stinking the opposition out is a standard tactic here in the USA; a lot of people just don’t want to get involved in that.

My reason for being fairly indifferent to the Lancet study and its fate is that the argument about the Iraq War isn’t being carried on at that level, but at a much more basic / gutter level, so that the Lancet argument is nonfunctional in practice. The only ones who will pay attention to it are the ones, like myself, who had already come to fairly similiar conclusions on the basis of cruder reasoning. If there were a big population of thoughtful doubters the Lancet piece would be useful, but there isn’t; in America the undecideds and independents are usually low-information whim voters who respond well to stinkbomb argumentation.

I do regret that American political discourse stinks, but I’ve regretted that for decades. Eventually you have to learn to play the cards you’re dealt.

Also, I think you could be accused of being a little UScentric again. In the UK the arguments about the war really did turn on the conequentialist “humanitarian” arguments (put forward by the “decent Left”) and to address these it is essential to attempt to estimate the number of deaths due to the war, and it really does matter whether it is 50 000 or 500 000 (as Harry points out in #56).

As I said, Engels, I think that it was already possible to come to an evaluation of the war on the basis of what had been previously known, without the help of the Lancet report. Perhaps you are one of the few rational undecideds whose mind might be changed by the report, in which I suppose the report has some marginal value, but given my understanding of the war, that kind of rational undecidedness betrays a kind of blindness (in particular, blindness to the nature of the Bush administration and to its actual goals).

Your use of the word “propaganda”, like Bellmore’s, is malicious. What I’m saying is that this is not information we need in order to make a decision, and it is **also** not likely to be persuasive to many actual war supporters or to the actual undecideds.

I provisionally give the Lancet authors an A for effort and an A for science, but in the practical context of political decision, that kind of thing ends up being dragged into the weeds by the stinkbomb operatives, and we end up with an interminable discussion of minutae and technical concepts with ill-intentioned people who are often also pretty ignorant.

Many of us, however, are interested in reaching a fair and accurate evaluation of the issues surrounding the war for its own sake, and not because of any political use to which we might put this knowledge.

What does that mean? That after you’ve come to a fair and accurate evaluation, you will write it down in your little book and go on to something else, without making any political use of the knowledge? That you don’t care whether the war goes on or not, as long as you are clear in your mind as to whether or not it is justified on consequentialist principles? Or are you just accusing me of being a partisan hack?

John – No, I’m certainly not accusing you of being a partisan hack. My use of the word “propaganda” was meant to be mildly pejorative, in comparing in passing to Brett, but was not meant to imply that your position was seriously comparable to Brett’s, and it wasn’t intended to be malicious. “Propaganda” was meant to refer to what I thought was your claim that the signifance of the study lies chiefly in its use as a weapon in the (US) political fight. That is not a claim I agree with.

I think there is a further misunderstanding, in that you are taking my use of the word evaluation to mean that one can not rationally take a position on the war without having the information provided by the study. That is not what I meant. The point I was trying to make was that for many people it is important to establish these kinds of facts as accurately as possible in order to make the best possible judgment about the justice of the war (or, if you like, how evil the war was) even if, for practical purposes, our minds are already made up. In the same way that it is of interest how many Jews died in the holocaust, despite the fact that we already agree that it was evil. There is also the point that it is worthwhile establishing with certainty beliefs that we may already hold, even beliefs we already hold with enough confidence to act on.

Finally, when you say that one could have been against the war purely out of an awareness of the nature of the Bush administration, well yes, that’s true for the issue of competence but not for motive. It was the “decent Left” position that the war should be supported for consequentialist reasons, despite the odious nature of the Bush administration, and despite the fact the administration was not being honest about its real motives.

Also, John, I think that on the level of political practicalities there may be some truth in what you are saying, and, if so, it provides a nice answer to “stostosto”‘s query about why the study hasn’t been used very much by the political left, which does not require recourse to his hypothesis that they all believe the authors of the study to be “unhinged”.

engels,

I am happy to see you at least get what I am saying.

Now your basis for fuming against me seems to be my suggestion that maybe not all Lancet ignoring people do so out of willful dishonesty driven by a right-wing agenda. That’s progress, I suppose because I actually happen to subscribe to something like this.

I also note that you find John’s explanation more plausible.

Shorter John: (Sorry John):

a) the Lancet study is useless as a political debating point for the left and

b) the left is focused like a laser beam on what rationally, objectively furthers their cause and will blithely, actively and in a highly disciplined manner disregard any information that doesn’t

Hmmm.

‘Now we are getting somewhere. So, the BBC actually suppresses information that is awkward to the government because it is run by the government. And all the rest of the media are owned by right-wingers, thus won’t criticise the war. And the entire political class are either Blair poodles or conservative gung-ho warriors. It’s all a conspiracy against the truth.’

Yes that’s it. That’s exactly and precisely what I’m arguing, and if anyone tells you differently, it’s because they’re part of the conspiracy.

I have to go now, as there’s been an ice cream van parked outside my house for the last half hour, and I think they might be monitoring my phone calls.

john,

I will admit to misrepresenting you insofar as you also said upthread that the study was actively suppressed in the debate (rather than just, seemingly by a curiously passive choice on the part of the left).

viz: To me there’s no mystery about the failure to use the Lancet figure. it’s the same reason that unfavorable news about Israeli behavior gets less play than unfavorable news about Palestinian behavior. Stinking the opposition out is a standard tactic here in the USA; a lot of people just don’t want to get involved in that.

This I don’t understand:

For you, apparently anyone whose primary interest is in the present policy debate is an ideologue, a left ideologue in my case, and you feel some sort of superiority to such people.

What, pray tell, in what I have written signifies that I regard you as an ideologue and that I feel any kind of superiority to you?

I certainly do look differently at the Lancet study than you and I can’t grasp your studied and blasé indifference to it, but that is a different kettle of ballgames.

The Humvee thing just strikes me as a powerful image, easily made to symbolise everything that is wrong with the US in Iraq.

When I first saw it, I expected it to be picked up promptly by the media, anti-war and anti-Bush people and to make the rounds in a big way, but it hasn’t happened. My powers of prognostication in such matters obviously suck.

That’s how I interpreted “Hmm.” If you express yourself like that, you leave it up to your reader to figure out what you mean. It did not strike me as a friendly comment. In that context, your “pray tell” is obnoxious.

Much of what you are saying is very meta, and I your Danish world seems to be different than the American world. Wondering why the Humvee clip isn’t used more strikes me as REALLY getting lost in the weeds. It was widely circulated here, but apparently not widely enough for you. It strikes me as typical occupation-Army behavior

One thing you might not understand is that what the pro-war faction in the US thinks seeing that is mostly “Looks like fun! Too bad we don’t see them blowing people away!” People who don’t think that way already are almost all anti-war.

By now I suspect that you’re mostly a time-waster who likes being lost in the weeds. If your question is “Why doesn’t the left use the Lancet study as propaganda?” it’s about as I’ve said — it’s too technical for most people to understand precisely, and it’s been disabled by an effective smear campaign. If your question is “Doesn’t the Left’s failure to use the Lancet study as propaganda amount to an acknowledgement that it’s defective?”, my answer is no. I suspect that it’s an excellent study, but it’s useless as propaganda for reasons stated at lenghth. If your question is “Why are you not interested in whether or not the Lancet study is accurate or not?” my answer is a.) I have only a weak understanding of epidemiology and statistics, b.) I suspect that the controversy is 90%+ fake, and c.) in practice, I don’t need the Lancet study to make up my own mind or convince other people. In the aftermath I expect the study to be vindicated, but by that time it will be a footnote in history. I give the authors credit for effort, but fault them for naivite about the toxic American political process, which is the only one that’s really important (for reasons I stated above).

John, stostosto’s line of BS is merely the follow-on to the original WSJ/David Kane lies; he’s jumping up and down on the grave of something his friends killed. Basically the right’s theology is ‘the truth is weak, the lie is strong’.

Even those who care about Iraqi casualties don’t need the Lancet study. There’s theoretically a “decent left” slice for whom helping the Iraqis is supposedly the main thing, but that slice is very thin, and some who use that argument are in bad faith.

On the question of whether the Times article is a “bad piece of science journalism,” I much prefer the Times’ version to Daniel’s. Specifically, Daniel summarizes Garfield and other critics as saying “that the crude estimate of under-15 mortality was substantially lower than other estimates of under-5 mortality in Iraq.”

But Daniel’s version is misleading. The critics were not quoting mortality rates as such, which would be deaths of the under-15 per kid under-15. If the critics had really compared under-15 mortality to under-5 mortality, as Daniel says, the critics would indeed be foolish.

But since the critics are prominent scientists, they certainly did not do anything so foolish. Instead, they compared under-15 deaths *per birth* in the Lancet study to under-5 deaths *per birth* in another study. The critics’ rely on the fact that, as a matter of logic, if there are X deaths of kids under 15, there must be less than X deaths of kids under 5.

The Lancet study has 36 under-15 deaths per 1000 births, and another pre-war study has 100 or so under-5 deaths per 1000 births. If follows that the Lancet study found an under-5 death rate less than 1/3 of the pre-war study. This is exactly what the Times article says, and Daniel obscures.

Second, Daniel claims that “infant mortality remained constant in the [Lancet] survey.” But as far as I can see there is no data in the paper to calculate pre and post war infant mortality. The paper just reports total births, not pre and post war births. Daniel, without telling the reader, is implicitly assuming that the birth rate remained constant (which hardly seems consistent with the drastic increase in violence).

Finally, Daniel says that Garfield is a “hack.” Since Garfield was an author of the first Lancet Iraq study, I guess that study was co-authored by a “hack” too?

Ragout, that doesn`t sound like a trend analysis to me, but a qualitative discussion. Do they give any statistical tests associated with their statement? Because if not they are just saying “our data doesn`t support a rigorous statistical study as requested, but we think we can give a qualitative overview in lieu of this.” Those are different things.

Ragout wrote:

But Daniel’s version is misleading. […]The critics’ rely on the fact that, as a matter of logic, if there are X deaths of kids under 15, there must be less than X deaths of kids under 5. The Lancet study has 36 under-15 deaths per 1000 births, and another pre-war study has 100 or so under-5 deaths per 1000 births. If follows that the Lancet study found an under-5 death rate less than 1/3 of the pre-war study. This is exactly what the Times article says, and Daniel obscures.

Hmmm. I read the original version written by von Schreeb, Rosling, and Garfield, and I don’t think Daniel’s version is unfaithful. The comparison that vS-R-G made were with an estimate of under 5 mortality from the 1990’s to the Burnham study’s under 15 mortality from 2002 onward.

Daniel, without telling the reader, is implicitly assuming that the birth rate remained constant (which hardly seems consistent with the drastic increase in violence).

Perhaps, but we do have the CBR from the 2004 Roberts study. The pre- and post-invasion CBR’s for the 14 months pre-invasion vs. the 18 months post-invasion were almost the same (29.8 vs. 31.7). The birth rate would have had to have dropped quite a bit in the two years between the 2004 and 2006 studies in order for there to be a substantial drop in the overall post-invasion CBR. I agree that’s possible, but presuming that the CBR’s are roughly unchanged isn’t so crazy as one might think.