Heaven forbid we would show the sort of cruel indifference to the fate of the Iraqi people that might prevent us from continuing a military operation in which air strikes accidentally kill Iraqi toddlers and other civilians who "were people sleeping on roofs to seek relief from the heat and lack of electricity."
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The Stakes
21 Oct 2007 08:58 pm
Comments (17)
the democracy we export is messy.
Matt,
You rightly denounce the pro-war hacks for this sort of anecdote driven propagandizing. ("Look, a town doesn't hate us anymore! Everything is now going great!") Please don't engage in the same sort of crap yourself.
I noticed this sentence in the cited article:
Iraqi police and hospital officials, who often overstate casualties, reported only 15 deaths including three children.
with the interesting aside in the middle. Too bad this formulation isn't used more often to describe claims from the Bush administration. I guess The New York Times doesn't get any grief from Iraqis when they are called out as liars.
As I got to this post, I read the title as "The Snakes." Seems an appropriate misreading, somehow.
When an American dies, it's a tragedy; when an Iraqi dies, it's an anecdote.
And really, as anecdotes go, getting bombed isn't a very good one. Maybe if the pilot had had an affair with an Iraqi woman 3 years ago, and the child he bombed had been the result of it. Now that would have been an anecdote.
I thought anecdote was the singular of "not data"
Anecdote being the singular of data is an old engineer's joke. You can tell it's an engineer's joke because it's not very funny.
Oh, and while worldwide child mortality has fallen, Iraq's child mortality rate nearly tripled between 1990 and 2005, so that now 1 in 8 (122,000 in 2005) Iraqi children die before their fifth birthday. Conservative estimates are that Iraq's child mortality rate has increased by 37% as a result of the 2003 US invasion.
Please don't engage in the same sort of crap yourself.
And the next time you read about children dying, and you feel compelled to make incredibly stupid, golden-means-fallacy, apologia out of it pepper spray yourself in the eyes at least. Icepicking yourself in the brain is probably coals to Newcastle, but that would keep you from doing it again.
Bo,
That is a truly horrific statistic, and deserves to be at the top of the thread. Instead we have Matt's snark, which does a disservice to his more compelling antiwar arguments. I was calling him out for the substandard post, not because I (or anyone with sense) think everything is peachy in Iraq.
As far as engineer's jokes go, there's no problem using the old ones. They weren't funny to begin with, but at least they haven't gotten less so with time.
I'm surprised the article didn't have the casualty tally I've come to expect from our glorious crusade: "X women, Y children, and Z militants". I guess that adult Iraqi males only find their true calling when they're obliterated by our guns.
It's getting like the old line about the two types of Vietnamese: Those who got shot when they ran, and thus had to be VC, and those got shot standing still, who had to be disciplined VC.
Ed Marshall - Oh, man, that was good! Thanks! I cracked up!
Heedless - truly an appropriate handle - the only better one would be "headless" - says:
"Instead we have Matt's snark, which does a disservice to his more compelling antiwar arguments. I was calling him out for the substandard post, not because I (or anyone with sense) think everything is peachy in Iraq."
What part of Matt's "snark" is "less compelling" than pointing out that the US military is committing FUCKING WAR CRIMES, you nitwit...?
Ball-less wonder can't even admit he was dismissing this fact with a pointless snark of his own...
"Substandard post", "not...everything is peachy in Iraq", indeed...
It appears yglesias removed his shame so as to have more room for food. When your position on iraq is essentially 'lets withdraw no matter whatever happens to iraq' you are in no position to talk about others supposed cruel indifference to the iraqi people.
Oh and matt, this post somewhat undermines your so far valiant effort to pretend the recent significant downturns in iraqi casualties hasnt happened. Everyone knows that when an argument is grounded on an anecdote when statistics are available it is most likely because the statistics dont support the argument made.
Pimp hand must be pimping for Juan - he makes the same "argument", er, fantasy.
I blew that out of the water for Juan - go see it elsewhere here. The numbers don't wash. Iraqis are still dying in the same great batches they have been, and many of those batches are the result of US military actions which are war crimes against civilians.
Pimp hand doesn't care about civilians, especially when they're just "raghead Ay-rabs".
Shorter php: We owe it to the Iraqis to keep bombing them.
Aw cripes, I meant "Shorter phs".
An ice pick?
Comments closed November 04, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
This kind of operation is exactly the opposite of what the "protect the Iraqi people" U.S. military counter-insurgency guys have been telling Congress and the press about how they're operating in Iraq these days.
All that hearts & minds crap goes out the window when they're trying to get Cheney an "Iranian"?
Posted by alphie | October 21, 2007 9:08 PM