Civilian Casualties

If fewer civilians in Iraq really are dying that's great news, but I don't understand why we're supposed to take the Defense Department's word for it when the Pentagon "refuses to count civilian casualties, argues that civilian casualty counts are irrelevant to an evaluation of war aims, and either ignores or disputes the most sophisticated methodology for counting civilian casualties."

And I don't really mean this as a cheap "gotcha" -- it's a real problem. The US military seems to have weirdly conflicted views on this subject. They recognize that, on some level, reducing civilian casualties is important. On another level, they seem to think that reducing media coverage of civilian casualties is even more important. The latter goal leads them to reject efforts to quantify civilian mortality. But if you don't quantify civilian mortality, you can't effectively reduce. At the same time, however, they want to be seen as minimizing civilian casualties so they genuinely do expend a considerable amount of effort trying to do so. But because they're not measuring anything, nobody knows how well any of these tactics work.

DoD photo by Sgt. Tierney Nowland, U.S. Army

Comments

What an amazing photo.

36% fewer civilian casualties. I've an idea. Let's use that as a justification for staying longer in Iraq. Better yet, let's use it as justification for what we've accomplished so far in Iraq.

If there were 5000 people dying a month in Iraq, now there might only be 3200 dying. That's great news.

Posted by Bill | July 2, 2007 12:51 PM

When they say they "don't do body counts", that's like "we don't do torture". Of course they are tracking civilian casualties, what they haven't done since 1991 was declassify them or make them public knowledge. This particular stat might even be true (although given their open mendacity on the subject there is no real reason to believe it is), but they most certainly do body counts for obvious reasons.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 2, 2007 12:57 PM

If you did some research instead of parroting the NY Times, you would know that the numbers are from the Iraqis not the US government.

http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/02/1967993.htm?section=justin

Posted by Dave | July 2, 2007 3:16 PM

If you did some research instead of parroting the NY Times, you would know that the numbers are from the Iraqis not the US government.

But the Iraqis have lost the capacity to do proper body counts, too. The system has broken down to the extent that deaths outside of Baghdad - and more often than not within Baghdad - don't get reported to the Ministry of Health, which shouldn't be much of a surprise, since it's next to impossible to maintain a functioning bureaucracy in the middle of a civil war. The Iraqi government also has its own motives for underreporting and downplaying civilian casualties, obviously - see, for example, their response to the Johns Hopkins study.

Posted by Christmas | July 2, 2007 7:17 PM

The US military seems to have weirdly conflicted views on this subject. They recognize that, on some level, reducing civilian casualties is important. On another level, they seem to think that reducing media coverage of civilian casualties is even more important.

Body counts got a bad rep in 'Nam, when they tended to be inflated. That said, nothing much happened in that department, until, you guessed it (or you didn't) Gulf I. That was the point that the Bush administration (we are through pretending that they're different administrations, right?) decided that reporting causualties [particularly American ones] was bad unless it was at a controlled media event. Specifically, they did everything they could to under-report the number of men KIA. Similarly, the entire idea of controlling the press coverage and so on and following the policy you describe is a Bush innovation. (For all I know, one invented originally by the son who was Dad's domestic advisor.) That IS the Bush military legacy: creating a Soviet-like attitude to military PR (aka propaganda).

So the policy about not report comes from the civvies at DOD. The idea of actually reducing civilian causualties comes from people actually on the ground who, you know, are trying to win, since that's what they've been assigned to do.

m, so try not to confuse 'the military' with 'civilian DOD appointees'

Posted by max | July 2, 2007 7:33 PM

"The latter goal leads them to reject efforts to quantify civilian mortality. But if you don't quantify civilian mortality, you can't effectively reduce. "

It's Bush admin SOP. If the news is bad, stop reporting it. The Bush administration wants charter schools to be seen to outperform public schools. But the monitoring system suggests they don't. So they reduce the monitoring of charter schools.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | July 3, 2007 6:12 AM

At the same time, however, they want to be seen as minimizing civilian casualties so they genuinely do expend a considerable amount of effort trying to do so.

Well, they certainly expend a considerable amount of effort trying to be seen as minimizing civilian casualties. This is quite often just a matter of describing anyone killed by US forces, of any description whatsoever, as a terrorist, or Al Qaeda.

Perception matters more than reality in politics, and if it turns out to be possible to reduce the perception of civilian casualties, then the actual level of civilian casualties doesn't matter at all, at least not to a US audience.

Unfortunately, the only claim that US corporations have to Iraqi oil is through violence, so there may be a fundamental conflict between US goals one the one hand and measures to pacify (as opposing to beating into submission) the local population on the other hand.

Posted by RLaing | July 3, 2007 7:03 PM