If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?
Informed Comment : 09/01/2004 - 09/30/2004
The article linked above is a criticism of the war/rebuilding process in Iraq. I have a couple problems with it. First, right at the beginning, Juan does some simple multilplication to arrive at some body count numbers. That sets the tone for the rest of the article; wild conjecture.
The other problem I have is why are we only comparing the current conditions in Iraq to the U.S.? Why not compare the chemical attack on Halabja, for example? Let’s use the same math that Juan used (We’ll use the lower casualty number in the link above):
population: 70,000 x 10 = 700,000
deaths: 4,000 x 10 = 40,000
Go ahead and substitute a minority group of the US population for the Kurds in Halabja. Pick a city with around 700,000 people (Columbus, OH - Austin, TX). The leaders of our country were disgusted enough with this minority group that they attacked them with chemicals that killed them from the inside-out. The rest of the conjecture can be up to you. You can take it to all sorts of extremes, just like Juan did. It is really an exercise in futility, though. The histories of our two countries are just too different for 1:1 comparisons.
I am no big fan of having our troops over there, and I wish that things had gone differently in many aspects of the Iraq-US war, but what are the people in charge supposed to do? An attempt is being made at giving those people a chance for more freedom in their lives. Should the leader of the EU speak out to the public and say “things in Iraq are terrible and they were better off under a dictatorship” or “the US has screwed everything up - now let’s all teach them a lesson in international politics”? I think it is important to rally behind the effort being made for democracy. The news media are always going to report on the tragedy and chaos first anyhow, no matter what is happening. And now, I step off my rare political soap box.
Found the link to Juan’s article above at the Electoral Vote Predictor. I enjoy the statistical analysis and history of the different polls tracked at that site, and I believe the person running it is doing their best to stay objective with the poll data at least despite obvious political preferences. You should check it out sometime.
cw