Ilan Goldenberg counts the ways. It seems that when a Shiite kills a Shiite (as happens frequently in the south) that doesn't count. Similarly, when a Sunni kills a Sunni, that doesn't count. Nor does it count when the death was caused by a car bomb since, obvious, well, um, I couldn't even say. The exclusion of Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence seems like a clever-if-underhanded exploitation of critics' tendency to deploy the phrase "sectarian violence" even though there's a lot of politically motivated violence that isn't sectarian in nature. The car bomb exclusion seems entirely unprincipled.
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When Is a Casualty Not a Casualty?
04 Sep 2007 11:50 am
Comments (10)
RSH:
Dude, he wasn't saying he was surprised it was unprincipled. It's sometimes hard to keep track of all the unprincipled things the administration does so pointing them out isn't a bad thing. The administration offers the thinnest veneer of truth so separating the accidentally truthful from the unprincipled lies is still helpful.
And of course "sectarian violence" only became the buzzword because of the White House pushback on "civil war".
Wednesday's child is full of woe, so obviously they shouldn't count either. That's another 1/7th right off the top.
you are 300 pounds of dumb
why would you assume deaths resulting from non-sectarian violence would be counted in a figure for sectarian violence?
to quote from the march 2007 report to progress: "Sectarian incidents and murders as recorded in MNC-I Significant Activities Database. Sectarian incidents are threats and
violence with apparent sectarian motivations. Multiple casualties can result for a single incident. Sectarian murders are
murders with distinct characteristics, and are a subset of total civilian casualties (not depicted in this chart)."
that you seem incapable of basic inference is bad enough. That you are ignorant of a key figures definition - even though it has always been explicitly defined in the document in which the figure itself is published - proves youre a lazy hack at best.
Matthew, the principle is simple: cars don't kill people; people kill people.
How do they know who put the bullets in the heads of the corpses turning up everyday? The police over there aren't exactly CSI Las Vegas.
Pimp Hand:
I believe Matthew may be expressing surprise at that definition of "sectarian" violence. There are certainly various religious and political sub-sets (or "sub-sects") within the Shia and Sunni cultures in Iraq. The idea that this violence somehow isn't relevant to discussions of violence, that this isn't "sectarian" in Iraq is a bit ... odd. It appears to me to be gaming the count. If all of a sudden the murder levels stayed the same, but it was all Sunni on Sunni or Shia on Shia, could we declare that sectarian violence was zero, our mission was accomplished and we could go home? Of course not. The idea's absurd. Overall increased security so that Iraqi society can rebuild is the goal, and so the measures by which we judge progress toward that goal should reflect parameters for overall violence.
So this definition seems, I agree, logically flawed.
And, that said, not counting car bombs ... sweeeeeeeet. Man, my IRA cousins screwed up when they didn't get those rules for sectarian violence definitions. Get rid of car bombs, and the entire Middle East has been a peaceful Nirvana for decades. Why didn't we think of this earlier?
BOOM!
"I am filled with rage at the death of my brother in the car bomb!"
"NO, Ali, although the car bomb was planted outside our mosque, it was by definition non-sectarian, and so we should feel no need, nor do we have justification, to escalate the cycle of violence against those who planted it."
"I did not know that. I will now channel my rage elsewhere. Maybe art therapy."
Although you have ably pointed out not counting intra-sect violence as sectarian is codified, if not logical, I look forward to your spirited defense of why not counting car bombs makes perfect sense.
By the way - a casualty is either a death or an injury.
Your use of the word implies it means only death.
By the way - a casualty is either a death or an injury.
Your use of the word implies it means only death.
Comments closed September 18, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
"The car bomb exclusion seems entirely unprincipled."
See, now this is the kind of naive comment I've come to expect from you, Matt.
Principled? SINCE FUCKING WHEN?
When was the last time anything done by Bush and his crowd of sycophants in the government and the US media was "principled"?
Unless you count their fantasties and their lust for power and greed as "principles"...
There's no "principle" anywhere here. It's pure deception, from start to finish. And as we all know, the best lies have some tiny kernel of truth that can be pointed to when the lies are exposed. That's just part of the lying.
Stop being magnanimous and call it what it is - lying and bullshit.
Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 4, 2007 12:15 PM