When Numbers Get Serious
Earlier this evening, I read Seymour Hersh’s latest article about Iraq in The New Yorker. There’s a lot in there to chew on (and a lot that’s anonymously sourced that I’ll take with a grain of salt.) But one statistic in particular startled me.
Among other subjects, Hersh writes about the use of U.S. air power so far in Iraq and how the nature of that deployment might change if and when the U.S. begins to reduce the number of ground troops. In the middle of this discussion, Hersh writes (emphasis mine):
The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most significant — and underreported — aspect of the fight against the insurgency. The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004. “With a massive Marine air and ground offensive under way,” a Marine press release said, “Marine close air support continues to put high-tech steel on target. . . . Flying missions day and night for weeks, the fixed wing aircraft of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing are ensuring battlefield success on the front line.” Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance. “This number is likely to be much higher by the end of operations,” Major Mike Sexton said.
Hersh’s source is a military press release, so I assume it’s verifiable. But that number — 500,000 tons of ordnance — is almost unbelievable. It’s even more staggering when you realize that is doesn’t include the Air Force. That’s just the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. A year ago.
To put that in perspective, the U.S. dropped 85,000 tons of bombs during the first Gulf War. Yes, the first Gulf War was significantly shorter than the current war in Iraq. But still. That was an air campaign the likes of which the world had never seen.
Let’s put it another way. That’s 1,000,000,000 pounds of ordnance. The population of Iraq is roughly 26 million. That’s about 40 pounds of ordnance per man, woman and child in Iraq! And that’s a fraction of what we’ve dropped. Maybe a large fraction, maybe not. I have no idea.
Let’s just say (and this is purely a hypothetical exercise) it turns out that the full number — including the Air Force, including any other air units in the Marines, Army or Navy, and including the ordnance dropped since November 2004 — is even three or four times that amount. And let’s just say that with a population whose median age is 19, the average Iraqi weighs 150 pounds or so. That means, very roughly speaking, that we might approach a point at which we’ve dropped more ordnance in Iraq than the combined weight of its population.
Can that be right? Admittedly, I’m just making shit up at this point. I hope someone will prove me wrong. But if the original 500,000 tons figure is correct, those extrapolations don’t seem completely farfetched to me.
Insane? Maybe. Wrong? Good Lord, I hope so.
But farfetched? Sadly, no.
And for what?
We can chase down all our enemies
Bring them to their knees
We can bomb the world to pieces
But we can’t bomb it into peace”Bomb the World”
Michael Franti & Spearhead
(Post updated to correct my poor arithmetic and to spell “ordnance” correctly.)
Update: Here’s a link to the military press release Hersh is most likely quoting. The line that Hersh was referencing says the following:
“So far for OIF II, 3rd MAW has dropped more than 500,000 tons of ordnance, including several dozen JDAM GBU-31s and GBU-38s, but this number is likely to be much higher by the end of operations,” said Sexton.
One note: OIF II (or Operation Iraqi Freedom II) refers to the second round of deployment, which began in early 2004, well after the initial “shock and awe” phase. So Maj. Sexton is describing a time period of maybe 7-10 months. The way Hersh uses the quotation makes it sound like the time period encompasses the additional year since the beginning of the war.
36 Ripples from “When Numbers Get Serious”
Kevin says:
November 29, 2005 at 4:11 pm
But at least we’re not using chemical weapons like Saddam did. Oh wait. We did that, too. Shit.
Jacke says:
November 29, 2005 at 4:11 pm
It could easily be said that:
We can ignore all our enemies
Let them run and grow
We can appease the world to pieces
but we cannot peace bestow
So, either extreme is not a solution, and I’m not sure that anything in the middle of those extremes will bring about world peace either, zalm.
No one likes War but here’s a platitude for you:
“Freedom isn’t free,” either.
Jim says:
November 29, 2005 at 4:12 pm
Jacke,
So what’s your point?
Jacke says:
November 29, 2005 at 6:11 pm
Jim,
I might ask what is zalm’s point?
That war is an awful terrible thing? That awful terrible bombs are dropped on people? That innocent people die in the course of war?
Who could disagree with that?
I was just making the comment, I suppose, to say that there will not be any appeasing Islamic terrorists, so what choice do we really have but to fight them? We don’t have to like it, but I don’t think we have any other choice than to face it. That’s all.
dufflehead says:
November 29, 2005 at 6:11 pm
"freedom isn’t free, there’s a heafty fuckin fee . . . .(humming) . . .buck’o five . . .”
Jim says:
November 29, 2005 at 7:11 pm
I could see what Zalm’s point was. I couldn’t see yours.
I think you’re wrong Jacke. We always have a choice. And I think we as a nation failed to make it, as miserably as the terrorists.
dutchgirl says:
November 29, 2005 at 7:12 pm
zalm, a fun figure to add to the above conglomeration would be the number of bombs dropped on Iraq in the time BETWEEN the first and second gulf wars. obviously that amount was not enough to bring about a change either…
however, i think that your key phrase here was, “for what?” i’m guessing that only time will tell. however, it has been in my study and/or experience that a forced peace is not a true peace. while it serves to keep people in check, a forced peace does little to dissuade discord and dissent from bubbling under its surface until it eventually boils over into further conflict?...whether that be a year or twenty years from now. a lot of wars stack on top of each other and there are some historians who argue that we shouldn’t draw so many distinctions between the different wars since many of them have carry over from former military actions (including the recent situation in iraq).
conflict will not dissipate from the minds of those involved until we are able to deal with the heart of the issue. how we go about doing that is a whole other discussion and probably way off topic. however, I wanted to thank you for your post and your commitment to keeping such numbers and facts on the surface where others can see them.
zalm says:
November 29, 2005 at 8:11 pm
I think this was more an exercise in astonishment than a focused commentary. It was an attempt to wrap my head around a number like 500,000 tons of ordnance. But I certainly wasn’t trying to say any of the things that you seem to want me to be saying, Jacke.
Y’know, if I were writing the post now, I probably wouldn’t have ended with the Spearhead song. I like bringing music into my posts wherever I can, the song was running through my head, and at 2am I just went with it. But there’s admittedly something a little trite and distracting about it that took the edge off that final question.
I guess my underlying point is this: I find it hard to believe that dropping that much ordnance on a country is consistent with the goal of building stable democratic institutions and encouraging civil society. It seems to me that this is more a sign that we’ve messed up, and badly.
You say we had no other choice. I disagree. We most definitely had a choice. We are where we are today because we made thousands of choices. Some of them were good, many of them were not. But to say that it’s either terrorist “appeasement” or dropping hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives on Iraq is simply a false dichotomy.
dufflehead says:
November 29, 2005 at 8:11 pm
democracynow.org has an interview with Hersh today (about al jazeera)
Jacke says:
November 29, 2005 at 9:11 pm
Look, guys, I’m sorry I said anything. I didn’t mean to start something, no, maybe I did, I can’t expect you to understand, just suffice to say I’m not having the greatest of days and probably ought to have just kept my mouth shut. I think I was taking something out on you that you had nothing to do with, zalm, for that I apologize, you’ve always been very considerate of me.
zalm says:
November 30, 2005 at 3:11 am
S’ok, Jacke. I’ve only had a small glimpse into the conversations you had today and they didn’t seem to start out that well. May tomorrow go better for you.
Kent says:
November 30, 2005 at 5:11 am
Jacke,
The Roman Empire was extremely brutal. They openly sought the extermination of the early church. Why is it neither Jesus nor the early church advocated the use of violence to stop the oppression and guarantee the freedom to worship as they chose? Why must we be so afraid that if we choose to love our enemies as they did, God will abandon us? Do we really have no choices but slaughter or appeasement? Is there any evidence that our violence will beget anything but more violence? A forced peace will only drive violence underground, the bitterness caused by our bombs will only bring generations of terrorists against us. We are not fighting an evil tyrant with an army of unwilling conscripts anymore, but a growing population of people who see US as the evil tyrant. They have lost wives, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters at our hands. They are sickened by the depleted uraniun in our mortar casings. They lost a half million children to our sanctions while our corporations continued to make Saddam rich.
Where is our faith? Where is our God? How can we do this in His name?
We lost 3000 people on 9/11. One hundred thousand Iraqi’s have died in our war, over 30,000 of them civilians. We have made Saddam’s oppression seem bearable to many Iraqi’s. How can we possibly think justice is being done? Do you really think Jesus would solve this problem this way? What ever happened to “taking up our cross” to follow Him?
Jacke please, I know you had a bad day, but let your conscience be tender!
Jacke says:
November 30, 2005 at 9:11 am
zalm, thank you for your kindness and understanding, I appreciate it so much.
Kent, I had so hated the idea of getting involved in an argument about war and that is why I tried to disengage. It isn’t a simple issue. I would reluctantly engage in the discussion if I feel that it is welcome. I do feel it is somewhat off the topic of zalm’s post. Rather than just charge in, I’d like to know if anyone else is interested in the debate or if I’ll later be charged with going off topic?
So, anyone interested in me making a long and convoluted reply to Kent’s questions or should I just go on about my other business?
Zalm?
LotharBot says:
November 30, 2005 at 12:11 pm
I have no idea how much 500K tons of ordinance is (except that it’s 1 billion, not 100 million, pounds.) The comparison to GWI doesn’t really help, since that was an incredibly short war. How does that compare to Korea, Vietnam, WWII, Kosovo, etc?
I mean… it seems like a lot of bombs, but the reasonable estimates (like Kent’s) are 100,000 total people killed, including civilians, Iraq military, and insurgents. This is including casualties those groups have inflicted on each other, and casualties inflicted by bullets rather than bombs. This all makes me think it can’t be as much as it seems. A billion pounds of bombs (or, more likely, several billion) and we’ve only managed to kill a few thousand people with them?
Think about that… billions of pounds of bombs, and credible estimates put the number killed (insurgent, military, and civilian combined, with civilians making up far less than the other groups) in the low tens of thousands or less. If anything, that speaks to the exact opposite conclusion from what many of you seem to have reached.
Take the time to read what people in Iraq—whether they’re soldiers or Iraqis or visiting congressmen—say about the living conditions. (For example, read Joe Lieberman’s editorial from the Wall Street Journal yesterday, here.) It’s pretty hard to hold the conclusion that things are going horribly wrong when every sign from within the country points to things going incredibly right. Watch the elections on December 15 to see that…
zalm says:
November 30, 2005 at 1:11 pm
One billion. Right.
As I said, I’m still trying to wrap my head around these numbers. It seems I managed to skip a zero. That’s almost as bad as my original draft of the post, which had us dropping 500,000 tons of ordinance on Iraq. *sigh*
Obviously, it’s not so much up to me whether folks want to chime in, so write whatever you feel comfortable writing, Jacke. I don’t have time while I’m at work to write much of a response, but let me say that while this is clearly a topic that people (including me) feel pretty passionately about, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to talk about and even disagree about this without resorting to vitriol and ad hominem.
For example, if you disagree with the facts that someone uses to support their argument, it’s probably a better idea to request a source or provide a source of your own, instead of claiming that they seem to be “from Zarqawi.” That’s beyond the pale, needlessly provocative, and will convince no one of anything.
Just saying.
Tish says:
November 30, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Kent,
Your numbers of Iraqi dead are inaccurate. Where did you get them, al Jazeera? In fact, it would seem that you took your entire set of “facts” from al Jazeera, perhaps even Zarqawi.
WE did not continue to enrich Saddam with our corporations. The fact of the matter is that a very small percentage of Iraq business was done with the US. Study the report released by Paul Voelker (sp?) who has been investigating the Oil for Food sham. Those companies and individuals gaining enrichment from the US comprise considerably less than 1% of the transactions. The majority of Saddam’s business was carried out with Middle Eastern countries, Europe and Russia, meaning THEY, and their corporations, enriched Saddam, not the US.
WE didn’t kill Iraqis with our sanctions. Saddam killed them by choosing to warehouse food and formula supplies, rather than distributing them among Iraqis, the people for whom he allegedly cared. He added insult to injury by choosing to grease the palms of greedy, underhanded European politicians, journalists and UN officials so they would plead his case before the UN and elsewhere, rather than spending the money for food, medical care, education and infrastructure as was intended.
Is there any evidence our violence will beget anything other than violence? Study history. Peace is not the absence of war. It is the result of it.
Tish says:
November 30, 2005 at 1:12 pm
But at least we’re not using chemical weapons like Saddam did. Oh wait. We did that, too. Shit.
What might those be, Kevin?
Jacke says:
November 30, 2005 at 3:11 pm
So, Kent, where’d ya git yer numbers?
dufflehead says:
November 30, 2005 at 4:11 pm
we used white phosphorus on enemy combatants.
white phosphorus is a chemical weapon. burns down to the bone.
peace is the result of war? since when? give me an example. seems we’ve been not at peace since cain and able (assuming that’s actually the earliest incidence of killing)
Kevin says:
November 30, 2005 at 6:11 pm
I screwed the first link up. The site is actually here.
Kevin says:
November 30, 2005 at 6:12 pm
Iraqi Body Count puts the number of dead Iraqi civilians between 27,115 and 30,559. You can read more about how they reached those conclusions here and judge for yourself.
dufflehead says:
November 30, 2005 at 7:11 pm
agreed. sorry about that jab. i thought it was funny.
Tish says:
November 30, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Zalm, I didn’t type it to be caustic, or needlessly provocative. I typed it because it was the truth. The numbers and revised history thrown about by Kent are nothing but propaganda. Propaganda formed with a tiny grain of truth stuck somewhere in the middle of a huge pack of lies. That he took those “facts” from America’s enemies popped into my head immediately and I made that clear. You may not choose to address such things in the same manner, and that’s fine with me.
Dufflehead, white phosphorous is not a chemical weapon and it never has been. It has been used in combat repeatedly over the years as a smoke screen, or to mark certain locations. It is neither illegal, nor a chemical weapon. Yes, it will burn someone if it explodes on them, or in very close proximity to them, but it is not used as an offensive weapon. Regarding the pictures of children and other innocent Iraqi civilians allegedly burned by white phosphorous making their way around the net, experts suggest the claims regarding these pictures are fraudulent. You said yourself that white phosphorous will burn to the bone, yet none of the pictures show burns to the bone. Experts also wonder why the clothing is left intact when white phosphorous would burn it just as it does flesh. Yes, it was used in Iraq, just not illegally and, according to the experts, not on those people shown in the pictures allegedly burned by it.
As far as peace being the result of war, every war ever fought was followed by peace. Sometimes the peace is uneasy and at other times, it’s quite peaceful. WW2 was followed by peace. Though we were in the Cold War, we weren’t dropping bombs on the Soviet Union or vice versa. The Arab Israeli wars resulted in peace between Isreal, Jordan, and Egypt. The Civil War brought peace between the states. The Indian wars brought an end to hostilities. The war of 1812 brought peace between us and England. The Korean War brought peace, thus far, to the penninsula. Even Viet Nam brought peace to that country. It may not have brought a democracy, but they aren’t at war with anybody either.
The more total the victory the longer the peace lasts.
Tish says:
November 30, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Kevin,
Actually, Iraqi Body Count has the most thorough accounting of Iraqi dead. Note, however, that approximately 90% of those listed as “dead civilians” are men. How can this be when Iraq’s general population isn’t comprised of 90% men and the remaining 10% women and children? American bombs do not discriminate based on gender. And if I’m not mistaken, IBC includes any non-uniform wearing Iraqi as a “civilian.” We all know that terrorists don’t wear uniforms.
zalm says:
November 30, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Once again, Tish, just because you say something is propaganda and lies doesn’t necessarily make it so. You claim that Kent is getting his numbers from the enemy, you put scare quotes around “fact” and yet you make no effort to back up your statement. Honestly, I don’t know if Kent’s number is correct or wildly inaccurate. But you seem to. How? If his number is so wrong, what’s the right number?
dufflehead says:
November 30, 2005 at 7:11 pm
"the more total the victory the longer peace lasts”
huh. so, if we were to kill all of the iraqi’s, peace would be much longer. is that what you’re saying? or maybe you’re saying “might makes right?”
the indian wars brought an end to the hostilities . . . so, as long as the white folk aren’t bothered, that’s peace?
dufflehead says:
November 30, 2005 at 7:11 pm
tish, you must get your propoganda from fox or rush limbaugh, who, in my opinion, are america’s enemies, obviously just not the way you see it.
and what would you think about this:
US Paying Iraqi Media to Publish US-Authored Reports
The Los Angeles Times is reporting the US military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish American-written articles favorable to the U.S. presence in Iraq. The Times reports articles written by U.S. military “information operations” are translated into Arabic and then placed in Iraqi newspapers with the help of Washington-based defense contractor the Lincoln Group. The articles are presented to an Iraqi audience as unbiased news accounts written by independent journalists. The Lincoln Group’s contract is worth up to $100 million dollars over five years. A senior Pentagon official commented : “Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we’re breaking all the first principles of democracy when we’re doing it.”
and finally:
is white phosphorus a chemical? yes. was it used as a weapon? yes. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/17/1515223">the military admited to using it as an incendiary on enemy combatants.</a>
zalm says:
November 30, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Hmmm.
By the same token, calling FOXnews and Rush our “enemies” is also needlessly provocative and not terribly helpful.
Tish says:
November 30, 2005 at 9:11 pm
Zalm,
There has been study published touting the “100,000” number, the Lancet study. This study has been thoroughly debunked by experts, and I’ll give you some links in a moment.
First, the study which was blasted around the world and eagerly grasped by the anti-war crowd, was completely misrepresented in the media, and continues to be misrepresented. A close look at this study shows that it really doesn’t tell us anything. It states that, with 95% confidence rating, the authors determined that between 8,000 and 194,000 Iraqis had DIED during the war up to that point. That is not a typo. LOL Between EIGHT THOUSAND and ONE HUNDRED NINETY-FOUR THOUSAND had died, not necessarily from having been killed. Ya know what? With a 95% confidence rating, I can declare that between 10 and 10,000 women were raped in the United States last night. You see? The parameters of that study were so varied as to be useless.
No one has to take my word for it. Here are a couple of links to articles debunking this particular study.
http://www.slate.com/id/2108887/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/858gwbza.asp
Further, the UNDP conducted a much larger study of just over 21,500 households in Iraq, during April and May of 2004, and came to this conclusion:
The link for that report is http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/population.htm
Lastly, my quotes were meant to indicate that the “facts” Kent used were anything but, not to scare anyone. I don’t think I could scare anyone if I tried. LOL
Jacke says:
November 30, 2005 at 10:11 pm
Tish writes:
“Lastly, my quotes were meant to indicate that the “facts” Kent used were anything but, not to scare anyone. I don’t think I could scare anyone if I tried. LOL”
Doggone it, Tish, yer scarin’ me! You little firey-eyed meanie, you!!!
No, seriously, I read long ago that the Lancet report was not credible and even mentioned it on another blog on another topic. Lancet rushed the report in an attempt to effect the 2004 election according to what I read. I read about it at Tech Central Station.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/110104H.html
“The once-respectable British medical journal The Lancet has produced a report claiming we’re destroying Iraq to save it. It says that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by coalition forces since the invasion began, most from airstrikes. The journal even admitted its findings were an October Surprise, pre-released online to sway the election across The Pond.”
<em >
zalm says:
December 1, 2005 at 4:12 am
Thanks for finally coming through with the links, Tish.
I don’t mind vigorous discussion, I just want to make sure that it’s more or less substantive. Providing links and sources is helpful.
I’d still be interested to hear where Kent’s numbers came from, when and if he makes it back to this post. It strikes me that the numbers you cite and the IBC claims aren’t actually all that far from the 30,000 civilians he mentioned.
A recent AP article has a U.S. military spokesperson claiming that the IBC numbers seem credible. 30,000 would be on the high end of that, but still within the realm of credible, it seems.
I’m not going to defend the Lancet study except to say this about the Slate article you linked to. Fred Kaplan, who I usually admire, misrepresented twice what a confidence interval really means. A 95% confidence interval merely indicates statistical significance, it doesn’t indicate that every number in that range is equally likely. So the 8,000 or 194,000 figures are only about 2.5% likely to be correct, whereas a number closer to the center of that range has a much higher likelihood of being correct. That’s very different from what Kaplan and others painted those numbers to mean.
The truth is, it’s awfully difficult to determine a number like this with great precision. But it’s also true that 25,000 to 30,000 is a lot of civilian casualties in a country the size of Iraq.
And I’m still not convinced that dropping more than a billion pounds of ordnance on a country makes sense as a strategy to achieve whatever it is we’re trying to achieve in Iraq.
Oh, and scare quotes don’t mean you were trying to scare someone. I just meant you were using them to be derogatory and dismissive.
LotharBot says:
December 2, 2005 at 4:13 pm
Remember, the 30,000 civilians (or whatever the actual number is) includes not just those killed by US action, but those killed by insurgents and terrorists. (Note that if they’re intentionally killing civilians, they’re “terrorists”; insurgents are those who only attack military targets but may occasionally hit civilians in the crossfire.)
zalm says:
December 2, 2005 at 8:12 pm
I found the original military press release that Hersh quotes and have posted the following update to the post:
Here’s a link to the military press release Hersh is most likely quoting. The line that Hersh was referencing says the following:
One note: OIF II (or Operation Iraqi Freedom II) refers to the second round of deployment, which began in early 2004, well after the initial “shock and awe” phase. So Maj. Sexton is describing a time period of maybe 7-10 months. The way Hersh uses the quotation makes it sound like the time period encompasses the additional year since the beginning of the war.
LotharBot says:
December 3, 2005 at 2:12 am
My mathematical intuition is screaming at me to take another look at that number.
500,000 tons of explosives.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume 100,000 total Iraqi deaths so far—Kent’s estimate—and let’s further suppose they were all during just OIF II (after 2004). Clearly this is a bad assumption that will inflate our casualty numbers. Further, let’s suppose half of these were killed by Coalition forces and half by insurgents or terrorists—again, a bad assumption, since the majority of Iraqi casualties have been from IED’s and suicide bombs, and again, we inflate the casualty numbers. Further, let’s suppose that a full fifth of those people—10,000—were killed by bombs from the 3rd MAW, rather than bullets or bombs from any other group. Again, I’m doing my best to inflate the kill numbers.
So, we’re saying they dropped 500,000 TONS of explosives and managed 10,000 kills (and 10,000 is a very high estimate.) This means it’s taking about 50 tons of explosives per kill. The largest 747’s made, fully loaded, weigh about 500 tons. So the military is averaging no more than 10 kills per the weight of a fully loaded 747 worth of bombs dropped. And that’s if I assume many more kills than is even reasonable!
That doesn’t seem right at all. That’s way beyond “good aim” and into the realm of “dropping bombs in the middle of abandoned fields”. You just can’t drop that many bombs and hit that few people.
Maybe the original press release was wrong… or maybe the measure ordnance in a completely oddball way. Either way, I don’t think they’ve dropped a billion pounds of explosives on Iraq in the last 2 years. I just can’t reconcile that with the amount of damage supposed to have been caused by those explosives… unless they’re dropping a LOT of duds.
zalm says:
December 3, 2005 at 3:12 am
Yeah, I’ve been doing mental exercises like that for a few days as I’ve tried to fathom this number. As I wrote the first time around, it’s almost unbelievable. And that was before you pointed out that I was undershooting my arithmetic by a factor of 10.
Here’s another exercise I did…
You asked early on how this might compare to the Vietnam War (among others). I still haven’t found what I would consider a truly reputable source for the air campaign statistics from Vietnam, but most of what I’ve found suggests that between 1965 and 1973 we dropped about 7 million tons of ordnance.
That’s almost 1,000 pounds for every man, woman and child in North Vietnam.
Consensus casualty figures were similarly difficult to find, but <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War">wikipedia</a> offers this:
Let’s, as you did, go with the high estimate: 5 million. Since some of the civilian casualties were from the south, let’s err again on the high side and say that it was split 2.5 to 1.5 north/south. So that’s 3.5 million northern casualties, both military and civilian. Some of those seem like they may have been before 1963, and certainly many of them were deaths from artillery or infantry, etc. Erring on the high side yet again, let’s assume that more than half of them were due to bombing, say, 2 million.
That means 7 million tons of bombs for 2 million deaths. Or 3.5 tons per death, the truth being most likely much higher than that.
Another way of looking at it is that the US dropped almost 1 million tons per year.
For that matter, there were a lot of duds in Vietnam. Unexploded ordnance has killed some 40,000 since the war’s end.
Anyhow, I guess my point with this is that mindboggling numbers are not unprecedented in US military history.
Even so, I still don’t know what to do with the 500,000 tons. Like you, I’d love for this to be a typo.
I mean, certainly with the technology we’ve developed, we’re able to guide our bombs much better than in previous wars, which ideally lessens collateral damage. Unless we’re just dropping more bombs that are larger than ever before, in which case there might be more collateral damage.
And certainly, not every target in war is human. Although I would assume that most of the infrastructure/installation type bombing took place in the first phase.
All this is to say that I’m still at a loss. I’m glad there’s someone else as baffled as I am.
I do know this, though. The classic goal of an insurgency (or terrorists, for that matter) is to provoke an overreaction by a stronger force. If we’re really bombing at this rate, with the results that you conjectured, that seems a heckuva lot like overreaction to me.
Kent says:
December 6, 2005 at 9:12 am
I feel like the great Zarquan showing up at the last minute at the “Restaurant at the End of the Universe”. I started a controversy and then never returned to defend it!
I confess, my numbers are derived from media reports I haven’t personally verified, but I think many of you have done a great job in the absence of my time and effort.
In the midst of all the wrangling about numbers, I think a key point from my first post has been missed:
“Why is it neither Jesus nor the early church advocated the use of violence to stop the oppression and guarantee the freedom to worship as they chose? Why must we be so afraid that if we choose to love our enemies as they did, God will abandon us? Do we really have no choices but slaughter or appeasement?”
No matter where any of these numbers have come from they make very clear that massive numbers (many more than died on 9/11) have died at the hands of the U.S. and our allies, and even those dying at the hands of our enemies might not have died but for our “preemptive” invasion.
In the American church we have largely become convinced by our leaders that righteousness demands that we prevent slaughter by slaughtering first or slaughtering more. As long as our slaughter is “over there” and not on our soil, we don’t have to feel the pain we cause.
Jesus example, the example followed be the early church in the face of a brutal Roman empire, was to accept their own suffering and death, because to do otherwise would be to embrace hatred toward their enemies.
The result of their choices to lay down their lives was that their enemies were saved. We were Christ’s enemies when he died for us. Rome was the open enemy of the early church, yet within 300 years Rome was predominately Christian.
Hate begets hate, love makes friends. This is the foolishness of the Gospel.
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