| Monday, March 20, 2006 |
| Death in perspective |
President Bush is speaking right now in Cleveland, again defending his decision to take the U.S. to war in Iraq, and replaying his favorite record: we're in a war against the terrorists ... they're like "totalitarian fascists" (talk about your compounding) and we had to invade Iraq because "everybody thought they had weapons of mass destruction) ... by the way, everybody thinks Kim Jong Il is nuts. Cue the "shock and awe?" Don't hold your breath.
Anyway, I found an interesting site that has tried to catalogue the danger of death posed by the many human- and nature-produced ills that have befallen our lonely planet, and -- surprise! -- terrorism just might be the least of these. According to various sources cited by Don's Home, during the period from 1900 to 2004, the death rates from various causes are approximately as follows:
Deaths from disease and pandemics: 46 million
Deaths from hunger or famine: 32 million
Civilian and military deaths during war: 61 million
Deaths from natural disasters like floods, draught and hurricanes: 21 million (with half of those from drought... the earthquake in Bam, Iran in 2003 killed 26,000 people. The Asian tsunami killed more than 150,000. )
Deaths form accidents and/or medical mistakes: 500,000
and Deaths from our present foe, terrorism: about 12,000...
Now that figure deserves some more attention.
The 9/11 attacks alone accounted for 2,830 deaths. Newarly 200 people died in the 3/11 attacks in Spain, and another 55 in the London tube bombings. Looking at the major terrorist incidents in the last five years alone:
So if we add those up, you get 9,099, almost your total 12,000. So let's be generous and say that the terror figure is low-balled, by half -- even three times (if you throw in old-time terrorists like the Stern Gang, Irgun, Black September and the guys who touched off World War I by killing that Hapsburg in Bosnia...) you still have only 36,000 deaths, versus the literally millions who routinely die by other means.
So what's the point? You could say that the exorbitant spending on counterterrorism, including the new batch of major spending to thwart the possibility of terror attacks using weapons of mass destruction (more than ten times as much for law enforcement as for "physical security of the national populace in the U.S., by the way, and more than 20 times as much for the physical security of government as for securing the population -- and five times more for government security as for preparedness in the Bush budgets since 9/11...) is somewhat counterproductive. You could, theoretically, protect more people worldwide from death by shifting spending toward preparedness for a natural disaster, or by foregoing armed conflicts (the Iraq war has cost half a trillion dollars, while only 1 percent of cargo is inspected for nuclear or biological materials at our ports), than by spending money "fighting terrorism."
That's not to say the government shouldn't fight terrorism. Of course they should. And the impact of terrorism -- the shock factor alone -- is often greater and more traumatic than that of natural disaster deaths, although it's hard to see how the washing away of nearly a quarter million people in tsunami flood waters isn't the freakiest thing anyone has ever heard of. The point is that Americans should rightly ask whether $500 billion, 2,300 American and perhaps 35,000 Iraqi lives lost is worth the cost, when even if Iraq was tied to international terrorism -- which it has never been found to be, by the way -- the number of lives at stake due to terror is so small compared to the many, many other things out there (including the weather, bad levees and a trip to the wrong doctor) that can kill you.
Just think if the U.S. had spent the $500 billion we've blown in Iraq on rebuilding the infrastructure of the United States. We'd have first class levees that could handle the next Katrina, a sound port system employing thousands of Americans on a cleaned up waterfront where every piece of cargo is checked in real-time via high-tech means, an electric grid system you could actually count on, an improved highway system with better security checks to prevent alien smuggling (and perhaps, the smuggling of illicit weapons)... But we forewent those choices by invading Iraq -- trading all those lives for ... well, I'm not sure what at this stage. Mr. Bush is defending that choice today, and likely every day until the November elections. He has to. But he really can't justify the Iraq invasion in terms of saving lives. At least, not by the numbers...
Just a thought.
More stats on the 20th century's incredible multi-factor death toll here (preview: Karl Marx has killed more people than anyone else in history...)
And since I know the comment is coming:
- Number of Iraqis killed by the Saddam regime: ranges from 61,000 to 500,000
- The number of Iraqis killed in the first Gulf War (estimate): 158,000
- U.S. deaths in that war: 293
... and by the way, the U.S. lost zero troops preventing those up to half million deaths at the hands of Saddam. We were siding with him against Iran at the time... So again the cost-benefit analysis on the efficacy of the present war has to be weighed. Would Saddam have killed another half a million people? Who knows. The regime was so brittle and decrepit it's hard to imagine he would have had the wherewithall. And would the U.S. have invaded, regardless of wmd, to prevent him from doing so? Doubtful. That's the sidebar, judge the numbers for yourself.
Tags: Iraq war, Death, Bush, Natural disasters, Statistics, Iraq, War |
posted by JReid @ 1:20 PM   |
|
|
|
|
