Numbers and Wingnuts

One of Bill Kristol’s New York Times‘s columns has been republished on the Guardian web site. You can read it if you like, although to be frank I didn’t get past the blurb — “It is beyond Democrats to concede that Bush’s troop surge has been a substantial success.” Of course, it is beyond a neocon to concede that the principal objective of the surge has not been accomplished. The surge was supposed to buy the Iraqi government some time to pull itself together. Instead, the political situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate, surge or no surge.

But what I really want to call your attention to is one of the comments, which doesn’t have a direct link. “Hotbed” writes,

But let’s do the math:

1) The World Health Organization says that in the three years after the invasion 151,000 Iraqis died in random violence.

2) During Saddam’s 24 years in power, he started the Iran-Iraq and Gulf wars (in which about one million people died) and exterminated at least 500,000 of his own people.

Let’s work out the annual averages:

62,500 violent deaths per year under Saddam
50,000 violent deaths per year under the occupation.

So the latter figure will have to rise substantially, and continue for another 20 years, for the anti-war lobby to have been “right” about Iraq, Bush etc.

Never mind that Hotbed is using a lowball estimate of deaths per year under the occupation and a high estimate of deaths under Saddam. Never mind 3,923 dead U.S. soldiers as of today. Never mind that over 4 million Iraqis have been displaced. Never mind that the Middle East is now less stable than it was before. Never mind that the cost so far is approaching $486 billion. Never mind that the invasion of Iraq served absolutely no vital interest of the United States. Hotbed has the numbers! We’re a success!

In the recent “Morality and Wingnuts” post, I wrote about right-wing blogger reaction to the New York Times article on violent crimes committed by veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of expressing sympathy and concern for veterans who lacked support for war trauma, the righties went into big-time defensive mode and accused the New York Times of bashing vets.

I wrote,

This blogger (who tags his post “NY Times liars scoundrels scumbags”) calculates that 121 homicides among the number of returned veterans is actually below the national homicide rate of the general population — “one-half to less than one-third as much.” But the blogger calculates that there are 1.99 million Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, and I don’t believe that’s accurate. (Note to wingnuts: By saying “I don’t believe” I acknowledge that I don’t know what the number is and could be mistaken.) …

… I would like to know how the real homicide rate of the vets compares to non-vets of the same age group, particularly among males, who commit nearly 90 percent of homicides. It’s possible that the rate among the vets is pretty close to average.

Michelle Malkin provides a correction. According to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the actual number of discharged veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan is 749,932, not 1.99 million. If there were 121 homicides among that number of people (the New York Times considers 121 to be a minimum, not the actual total), then the homicide rate would be 16.1 per 100,000. This is lower than the going homicide rate of 20 per 100,000 rate for white males aged 18-24. But some of the vets are older, and some are women, and the 121 is probably a low number. As I said, it’s possible the homicide rate of discharged veterans is pretty close to average for that demographic group.

And numbers don’t show us what individuals are going through. When you look at individual cases as the New York Times did, it does appear that some of those homicides were related to war trauma. The point of the NY Times article was not that veterans by nature are homicidal maniacs, but that there is inadequate screening and support for post-traumatic stress and veterans and their families are suffering for it.

But in Rightie World, pointing out that veterans have all the vulnerabilities normally associated with being human is bashing the troops. Can’t have that.

And if they can produce some numbers to show that there’s no problem, then there’s no problem, never mind the real-world experience of actual flesh-and-blood people. See Malkin’s headline: “Hey, NYT: 99.98 percent of all discharged Iraq and Afghanistan vets have not committed or been charged with homicide!”

From the New York Times story that has Malkin in her usual steaming outrage mode (I swear, that girl is going to wear out her nervous system one of these days) —

About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

A quarter of the victims were fellow service members, including Specialist Richard Davis of the Army, who was stabbed repeatedly and then set ablaze, his body hidden in the woods by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq.

And the rest were acquaintances or strangers, among them Noah P. Gamez, 21, who was breaking into a car at a Tucson motel when an Iraq combat veteran, also 21, caught him, shot him dead and then killed himself outside San Diego with one of several guns found in his car. …

The Times’s analysis showed that the overwhelming majority of these young men, unlike most civilian homicide offenders, had no criminal history.

Statistics say these episodes are not a problem, say the wingnuts. Stuff happens.

Update:
Enjoy the video —