How Come the Iraqi Body Count Meter isn't Running in Reverse?

According to the United Nations, prior to the invasion of Iraq up to 5,000 Iraqi children were dying of privation each month. Walter Russel Meade highlighted this estimate in an opinion piece prior to the war:

Based on Iraqi government figures, UNICEF estimates that containment kills roughly 5,000 Iraqi babies (children under 5 years of age) every month, or 60,000 per year. Other estimates are lower, but by any reasonable estimate containment kills about as many people every year as the Gulf War -- and almost all the victims of containment are civilian, and two-thirds are children under 5.

Mr. Mead went on to argue that, if an invasion would bring an end to the UN's economic sanctions, it could actually result in a net savings of Iraqi lives. Now there are some including Iraqi doctors who, now free to speak their minds, will tell you that it was Saddam's perverse spending priorities and not the sanctions that were responsible for all of the premature mortality. But even the doctors seem to accept the fact that thousands upon thousands of Iraqis had died.

Since the end of the war the UN's economic sanctions have been lifted and, from what I can tell, Iraqis are no longer dying from privation or any humanitarian crises arising from the war. And since Iraq is crawling with both international and domestic journalists as well as NGO types making assessments, I have little doubt that if Iraqis were continuing to die in such large numbers we'd have heard about it by now. You may recall that there were early reports of a small outbreak of cholera near Basra shortly after the war's end. That crisis in the making was nipped in the bud but the fact that the illnesses (not even deaths) were picked up by the media tells me that they are unlikely to have missed a humanitarian disaster on the scale of what reportedly occurred under Saddam's regime.

So if the UN's estimate was accurate - and if it wasn't where's the outcry that those who opposed the sanctions on humanitarian grounds were lying - and there is no evidence that Iraqis continue to die of privation, then, by my calculations, the war has already resulted in a net savings of well over 15,000 Iraqi lives after accounting for those killed in the war using figures compiled by Iraq Body Count. By rights the odometer-style counters should be running in reverse subtracting 5,000 Iraqi deaths per month.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds, the instapundit, suggests that "thanatometer" - derived from the name of Thanatos, a Greek god of death - would be a more appropriate term to describe a meter tallying the dead. I can't find that term in the dictionary so I'm wondering if it's a recent coinage. This site says that Thantos was "the personification of (non-violent) death and the twin brother of Hypnos (Sleep). Unlike his sisters the Keres, the daimones of violent death, Thanatos came to men gently like his brother Sleep." So maybe there should be two kinds of death guages, a thanatometer for recording non-violent deaths and a keresometer for violent deaths. In any case, thanks for the the "instalanche", Glenn. I hope some of the new vistors to this blog will take a look at some of my other, forlorn posts before moving on.

ANOTHER UPDATE: As some in the comment section have pointed out, there is good reason to be sceptical of the Iraq Body Count tally of war dead. FWIW, the Associated Press' estimate for civilain deaths resulting from the war was *at least* 3,240. But there's good cause for scepticism about the UN figures as well. Here's Margaret Wente's sceptical assessment and a fuller treatment for those interested in the details.

Comments

"Concerned is the wrong word, I'm responsible for that which the US has some complicty in and and therefore it is right to concentrate on that which I have some say in. "

Thats a rather selfish, self involved view of the world. As long as you keep your conscience clean your ok? You'd prefer that Hussein killed a hundred thousand than for you to risk inadvertantly killing one? Thats morally and pragmatically repugnant, and in fact evil in itself as it puts your feeling good about yourself above the lives of other human beings.

[Eddgra Fallin]

"Thats a rather selfish, self involved view of the world. As long as you keep your conscience clean your ok? You'd prefer that Hussein killed a hundred thousand than for you to risk inadvertantly killing one? Thats morally and pragmatically repugnant, and in fact evil in itself as it puts your feeling good about yourself above the lives of other human beings."

Yep. I guess dbq would have been perfectly willing to sit back and let Hitler kill as many Jews as he wanted -- as long as awful America wasn't responsible for harming a single hair on a German's head to stop the slaughter.

[dbg]

Yeah, Saddam was just another Hilter. Get a grip. I guess you are in favor of invading North Korea, Indonesia, Rwanda, Turkey, Columbia, China, and dozens of other criminal places where poor souls are waiting for caring people like you to liberate them. It's pretty selfish and self involved to sit at a pc when there is so much work to do.

[Mark Buehner]

Ah, so we've hit Its America's Fault Anyway, and have moved quickly to So I Guess We Have to Stop Evil Everywhere, and blown right into And Why Arent You Over There Then?

All the classic ad hominim defense mechanisms being dispensed with, lets wrap this up. We cant stop evil everywhere because its not practical. We would weaken ourselves too much and risk even greater evil rising in the world. I may not be able to stop every rape in the world, but if I see one in an alley on the way home I'm not going to walk right by simply cuz I cant stop them all.
And as far as the good ol chickenhawk assumption, I suggest you confine your assessments to people whos histories you have a clue about.

[Eddgra Fallin]

Freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny was a happy consequence of doing what was in our national interest. What is so tiresome is how lefties are always willing to send our military halfway around the world to fight UNLESS we may actually directly benefit from it (see Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, etc.). But when it comes to sparing the lives of people who happen to live in a country where we have a national interest, the left suddenly says, "To hell with 'em." How childish and petty can you get?

"We cant stop evil everywhere because its not practical. We would weaken ourselves too much and risk even greater evil rising in the world. I may not be able to stop every rape in the world, but if I see one in an alley on the way home I'm not going to walk right by simply cuz I cant stop them all."

So, wouldn't you stop the "rape" commited by your friends with your money in their pocket first?

"What is so tiresome is how lefties are always willing to send our military halfway around the world to fight UNLESS we may actually directly benefit from it (see Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, etc."

Always willing? I never supported any of those interventions. There's a pretty extensive literature by some on the Left who didn't support them either.

[Eddgra Fallin]

"Always willing? I never supported any of those interventions. There's a pretty extensive literature by some on the Left who didn't support them either."

Yes, but it's a minority, to be sure.

[Fixer]

This diatribe is absoulutely fascinating. Peeople who canntt spelll talking to people who are discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!

The US did a good thing they didn't have to do, it cost lives and saved lives.

Is the world better off? I think so. (forget drivel about "justifications" and what who knew at what time.) Today we KNOW the world is better with these madmen gone.

Was the world improved when Idi Amin was deposed? Yes. Did it cost the lives of some? Did it save lives? Undoubtedly.

Was the dropping of a bomb on Japan justified? I don't know because I don't know what was known at the time and who knew what. Is the world better without an Axis? Yes!

Going back to discuss justification is simply an exercise. Give it a rest!

Deal with today. Forget useless blame.

[casey swenson]

It's wonderfull to see another middle class white kid scapegoating the deaths of civilians in our raid on Iraq as some kind of retribution for a decade of sanction we imposed which killed millions of civilians, I hope that whoever wrote this feels moral next time he starts up his s.u.v. and thinks of the 7,000 plus civilians killed in our colinization of Iraq.

[Arnold Ziffle]

As long as you want to take a holistic view, folding in all consequences, then lets make it real. The spending of hundreds of billions of dollars to fight this war and aftermath means cuts in domestic spending. This leads to cuts in education, food, housing, and health care to americans. Millions of people will endure lower quality of life and diminshed life expectancy. The possibility of thousands dead from the next bird flu, a major war in the asian sub continent, and increaced terrorism are all increaced due to the reduced resources of america's economic might and military. Let's fold in these numbers with yours and see how things look.

[Herman]

I find it a bit sad that war deaths are being JUSTIFIED by SPECULATING how many regime deaths there MIGHT HAVE BEEN during the same period.

You can't compare apples and pears.

YES what happened under Saddam was attrocious - we all know that. It should have been sorted by the UN. The fact that it wasn't makes you wonder how much they TRUSTED their own regime-death "assumptions". It's easy to say in retrospect that there was x number of regime deaths per day.

What aren't being kept in mind is how many people are dying due to "natural deaths" due to very bad medical infrastructure in most Iraqi cities. <--- I theory this could surpass the daily death rate (if you can get something like that) under the former regime.

Civilian WAR deaths is on the conscience of the people that wanted to make war. They are the ones that CAUSED the deaths...through their war - whether they like it or not. To me that is pretty clear cut and there is NO grounds for justification.

If the war was a result of actions taken by the UN to stop gross human right abuses then there would have been an argument to justify human deaths. In this case war was made on lies and not to vindicate the Iraqi people.

[John]

The Iraq Body Count is NOT an estimate - it is a log of every death reported in the media. Other studies have estimated ten times the number of deaths...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442_pf.html

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