Comments on: Something has gone very badly wrong

By: john b

john b — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 07:15:00 +0000

I’m not sure if this effect would apply to this counting method: the question is effectively "have you or have you not killed >0 civilians". I’m sceptical that soldiers would inflate a body count from 0 to >0, even if they would inflate 3 to 18.

By: Tim Worstall

Tim Worstall — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 06:15:00 +0000

An interesting comment left at Crooked Timber back in August last year:
http://crookedtimber.org/2004/08/10/how-many-troops-does-sadr-have-exactly/
Comment 26.

"A general point is that soldiers generally tend to overestimate enemy deaths- not just when, as John Q suggests, the war is going badly for them. (Just to be clear: the war is, I think, going very badly for the Coalition right now.)Any history of the Battle of Britain has the RAF pilots overestimating enemy ‘kills’ by 300% or more: a more accurate figure was privately arrived at by RAF intelligence who collected shot-down planes on the ground, but the higher estimates were published to aid morale. On the ground, I can think of lots of examples. Martin Middlebrook, in ‘The battle for the Malvinas’, recounts the Royal Marine patrol on (I think) Mt Harriet, who bumped an Arg unit and shot them up before getting the hell out: they reported at least 18 enemy deaths, but Middlebrook dug out the Argentine papers and witnesses and found it was three. His whole book is replete with such examples of British over-reporting: and remember, the men reporting the inflated body counts were not cowboys but some of the best light infantry in the world.(They also had little motive to exaggerate: there was no ‘body count’ policy as per Vietnam.) It’s not hard to see why squaddies exaggerate: a lot of terrified, hyped-up men all firing at individual targets, which may hit the ground because they’re dead or because they are taking cover- who knows how many get killed."

No comment on the war itself from me, just a thought on the way in which deaths get reported.
Might there be a 300% over estimation as the RAF figures would indicate? Or 600% as the Falklands’ ones? Your choice I guess.

By: ampikle

ampikle — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 18:04:00 +0000

This would also mean that over 200,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed. A number given by Robert Fisk as well as some others. This also does not include the number of maimed and injured. Taking a wild assed guess, 10-20% of the Iraqi population would end up on disability directly as a consequence of this foray to steal their land, oil and water. And the sooner the US government raises taxes to pay for this the better and easier it would become.

By: Andrew Bartlett

Andrew Bartlett — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 07:23:00 +0000

Logically, in the abstract, yes. But practically the point will be indeterminate, a subjective assesment by a person at that particular time (subject to revision when considered again, say, after lunch). But the point is that the ends are indisputably ‘green’ and ‘blue’, regardless of the fact that we cannot draw a neat dividing line (a tipping point). By concentrating on the tipping point in cases such as war we allow people to deny the unacceptability of 100,000 dead, as we are pushed into providing a tipping point. But this is, in practice, an unreasonable (in the sense of it being against reason) argument cleverly disguised as a great peice of destructive analysis.

By: Matthew Turner

Matthew Turner — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 07:07:00 +0000

"If we are considering the old example of the wall, painted blue at one end and green at the other, with a careful blended blue-green gradient in the middle, we have this situation: Blue at one end? Undeniable. Green at one end? Undeniable. An identifiable point at which the wall becomes green (or blue)? Not present."

Surely though you can say 'it's too blue' at some point along the wall?

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 06:22:00 +0000

> I think "barbaric" was adequately covered by "war."

Do you? Gosh.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 15:48:00 +0000

Dave,

No - depends on what you are fighting for. If you are fighting to liberate the people, sure. If you are fighting to prevent a WMD attack (a real, present, probable attack, not a Tony Blair one), it could arguably make sense to nuke the whole country. It wouldn't be pretty, but it could be strategically wise, especially if the enemy has a similar level of tech to you. Not the case in Iraq, sure, but in a genuine case of us-or-them, not so unrealistic.

Andrew B,

I don't think it would be wise for the anti-war crowd to say 100,000 is unacceptable, because the obvious riposte is 'How many would be acceptable?' And why is it okay to kill x many people but not y? As I said above, that effectively prices a human life, which may be empirically true, but it's dodgy ground to argue from.

By: Andrew Bartlett

Andrew Bartlett — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 15:13:00 +0000

No, that's not what I meant. What I mean was that we can discrimnate perfectly capably between green and blue, but that does not mean we can indentify a tipping point, and given that we can't, we shouldn't allow ourselves to be bound up by por-war minimisers of human destruction by being cornered into providing one.

We can perfectly reasonably say that, say, 100,000 dead is unacceptable.

There was a similar argument going on at Lenin's Tomb, incidentally.

By: Backword Dave

Backword Dave — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 15:05:00 +0000

anyone sensible against whom we're fighting a war will use civilians as human shields
I wish that were the first time I'd seen the word "sensible" used as an implicit synonym for "barbaric".
S2 -- I think "barbaric" was adequately covered by "war."

Andrew, I think you're fudging. I agree that the "tipping point" itself isn't precisely determinable, but -- if I understand your argument -- that doesn't mean we could simply have nuked Iraq, killing all Saddam's henchmen, torturers, and what-have-you, along with every 'innocent' civilian. There's an area, if not a point, where the cure is worse than the disease.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 12:30:00 +0000

Andrew B,

You described that far better than I did.