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Lancet
Left-wing bloggers, such as CrookedTimber, Brad DeLong, and Tim Lambert, are supporting the claim of about 600,000 extra deaths in Iraq. Jane Galt (scroll down for a few posts) and Steve Sailer raise some concerns.
I am a bit skeptical, but in any case the sheer number of deaths is being overdebated. Steve Sailer notes: "The violent death toll in the third year of the war is more than triple what it was in the first year." That to me is the more telling estimate.
A very high deaths total, taken alone, suggests (but does not prove) that the Iraqis were ready to start killing each other in great numbers the minute Saddam went away. The stronger that propensity, the less contingent it was upon the U.S. invasion, and the more likely it would have happened anyway, sooner or later. In that scenario the war greatly accelerated deaths. But short of giving Iraq an eternal dictator, that genie was already in the bottle.
If the deaths are low at first but rising over time, it is more likely that a peaceful transition might have been possible, either through better postwar planning or by leaving Saddam in power and letting Iraqi events take some other course. That could make Bush policies look worse, not better. Tim Lambert, in one post, hints that the rate of change of deaths is an important variable but he does not develop this idea.
We all know that the political world judges Iraq by the absolute badness of what is going on (which means Bush critics find a higher number to fit their priors), but that is an incorrect standard. We should judge the marginal product of U.S. action, relative to what else could have happened. (North Korea, and the UN response, will give us one data point from another setting.) In that latter and more accurate notion of a cost-benefit test, U.S. actions probably appear worst when deaths are rising over time, and hitting very high levels in the future.
Of course the rate of change of deaths is not exactly the proper variable. Ideally we would like some measure of the contingency of eventual total deaths, relative to policy. I am not sure what other proxies for that we might have.
Addendum: Let me put my comment up here on the front page: "Many of you are misreading the post by focusing only on the first case of "bottled up killing," which is presented as only one of two scenarios. Reread that if deaths are rising over time and possibly contingent -- and yes I do say this is the relevant and uncontroversial fact -- this suggests a very negative evaluation of Bush policies."
I don't want to take the bait on why I am skeptical, the whole argument is that possible skepticism doesn't have that much import once we consider the broader context of rising deaths and the possible contingency of those deaths.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 14, 2006 at 06:52 AM in Data Source, Political Science | Permalink
Comments
A very high deaths total, taken alone, suggests (but does not prove) that the Iraqis were ready to start killing each other in great numbers the minute Saddam went away.
That needs some justification. Or at least an acknowledgement that the claim weakens the case for invasion: Hussein wasn't going to live for ever, and apparently the Ba'athist regime wasn't sufficiently stable to sustain a nuclear program past his death. So choose which strut of the justification you want to kick out from under the case for war: Hussein was a threat to the US, or there was a humanitarian reason to do this.
Once that's done, we can address the remaining strut.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim at Oct 14, 2006 8:57:08 AM
I'm not sure that what 'Galt' does can properly be called "raising concerns" as opposed to "speculate wildly" and "rant and cry", but then, it's not clear that much more should be expected from someone for whom the annecdote is by far the prefered form of evidence and who models herself after an Ayn Rand book.
Posted by: Matt at Oct 14, 2006 9:06:09 AM
They were all going to die anyway is a great rationale for a war. We should do a cost benenfit analysis of all the wars that are going to happen anyway, calculate the benefit of preemptive action, and then start those wars now to save those hypothetical future lives. Among the many other problems with this argument is the tone of false precision.
Posted by: bjak at Oct 14, 2006 9:23:25 AM
Like SomeCallMeTim, I'd like a better indication of where you are coming from with this notion of a bottled-up killing propensity which was bound to find expression sooner or later.
The link at the words "a bit sceptical" goes to a post about HIV rates in Africa. I don't see the relevance.
Posted by: Kevin Donoghue at Oct 14, 2006 12:01:11 PM
Your "a bit skeptical" link goes to a case where there was an overestimate because a convenience sample was used. I don't see how this is a reason to be skeptical of the Lancet study which used a random sample.
And I agree with Matt about the Galt posts. I don't think her anecdote about New Coke is a cogent criticism of the Lancet study.
Posted by: Tim Lambert at Oct 14, 2006 12:04:58 PM
Left-wing bloggers, such as CrookedTimber, Brad DeLong, and Tim Lambert, are supporting the claim of about 600,000 extra deaths in Iraq. Jane Galt (scroll down for a few posts) and Steve Sailer raise some concerns.
While I suppose tthe political leanings of these bloggers are of some interest, isn't their understanding of the research problems and the soundness of their comments more important?
Do you think that the defenses and criticisms put forth by the cited bloggers are equally valid?
Posted by: bernard Yomtov at Oct 14, 2006 12:16:45 PM
I don't see why the actual death count should matter so much. If the war was immoral, it was immoral on a priori grounds.
If you are doing a cost/benefit analysis it makes no sense to do it from the Iraqi perspective as they were not the ones that made the decision. If doing it from the American perspective, as proper, then the 600,000 deaths in Iraq don't come into play on either side of the ledger.
Posted by: Kevin Nowell at Oct 14, 2006 12:42:31 PM
Thanks for the link.
I'm not convinced that there is some inevitable amount of killing hardwired into a country. Germany in the first half of the 20th Century is a good example of how historically contingent this can be -- if Germany had stayed out of war in August 1914, it might have lived out the century in peace. But war can unleash more violence and war, as we saw with Germany after 1918.
Looking around at Iraq's Arab neighbors, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, it doesn't seem inevitable that chaos awaited Iraq even without our intervention. Saddam himself was old, tired, writing romance novels, and too broke to pursue nukes. (Even in that state, he was operating as a deterrent to Iran, helping maintain stability in the Gulf.) When he went, succession might have gone to his non-crazy son or to a general in a palace coup.
Our invasion, by destroying the old government, brought chaos, which has given every ambitious man in Iraq the idea that if he puts together a big enough gang, he migh end up owning the oil.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Oct 14, 2006 1:29:43 PM
What exactly are Galt's technical concerns with the study? If anything, it seems to be completely her opinion. Maybe people are biasing their interpretations with prior beliefs -- but at least some people are using evidence, while others are just name-calling.
Sailer's raises some points, but seems to conclude, he could believe 300K deaths. Not exactly a stinging refutation on any methodological points with the study.
Posted by: Jor at Oct 14, 2006 1:31:36 PM
Kevin - the cost/benefit analysis can or cannot depend on Iraqi death counts depending on the preferences of the person(s) making the decision. Since part of the justification of the war is the gains to the Iraqi citizens, it's necessary to include a measure of Iraqi well-being, which definitely should include a measure of mortality under various states of the world, and their accompanying likelihood.
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Oct 14, 2006 1:51:11 PM
A very high deaths total, taken alone, suggests (but does not prove) that the Iraqis were ready to start killing each other in great numbers the minute Saddam went away.
I don't see your reasoning here either. Is the holocaust evidence that the Germans had a bottled up propensity to murder Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, etc? Goldhagen says yes, but most other scholars emphasize the contingency of the killing, despite the mass scale.
How about Cambodia? Or Rwanda, where the level of mass involvement was high? Experts on each of these incidents disagree.
Heck - how about the US civil war? Is that evidence that northerners and southerners would have slaughtered each other in large numbers at some point, even if secession had been avoided and slavery had been peacefully phased out?
Tyler, think hard about the mechanisms involved in this killing right now. It's not about every Iraqi turning around and killing his neighbor, it's about a situation where ethnic militias have developed as part of a cycle of escalation. It took a while for these organizations to come about and be mobilized. All of that could have been prevented.
You're seeing propensity, I'm seeing response to specific incentives created by the occupation.
I can elucidate further, with more specifics, but it's probably better for me to make my case off-line.
Posted by: Ennis at Oct 14, 2006 1:57:56 PM
I agree with most of the other commenters. I am not certain that the ethnic conflict was inevitable, and certainly there is a long history in Iraq to look at as evidence. I believe the Shia felt enabled and protected by the American presence, and over the course of a couple years, decided to take advantage and maximize their position. Of course the Sunni Arabs felt threatened and desperate. But without the Americans, the Shia at roughly an uncoordinated 60% wold not be strong enough to really dominate. Result:civil war.
Posted by: bob mcmanus at Oct 14, 2006 2:15:22 PM
Like Lambert, I can't function at the Cowanesque level required to see how the African-statistics link provides any basis for being skeptical about the Lancet study, other than perhaps a general "people get stats wrong sometimes" skepticism.
I was looking forward to seeing MR weigh in, since presumably y'all are adept with statistics and your opinion would carry some weight.
Posted by: Anderson at Oct 14, 2006 2:22:29 PM
Btw, many of the comments seem off-base re: the "propensity" argument. For instance, the Nazis simply did *not* begin killing Jews right away, but gradually built up to it; so on Cowan's theory, there was indeed no such hidden propensity.
"Low at first but rising over time" does indeed seem to be the pattern with the deaths in Iraq.
Posted by: Anderson at Oct 14, 2006 2:24:58 PM
Many of you are misreading the post by focusing only on the first case of "bottled up killing," which is presented as only one of two scenarios. Reread that if deaths are rising over time and possibly contingent -- and yes I do say this is the relevant and uncontroversial fact -- this suggests a very negative evaluation of Bush policies.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Oct 14, 2006 2:26:46 PM
My interpretation of what Cowen is not that he believed there was pent-up energy for violence, but rather, it matters how this post-invasion violence played out. If it happened at once - explosive deaths post-invasion which tapered off over time - then that would fit a theory that there was pent-up energy, and that the US is not the proximate cause of the violence. But a trending up of violence makes that story less credible.
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Oct 14, 2006 2:43:43 PM
What is accounting for the huge discreprancy between the Lancet estimates and the Brookings Institute's estimates (see here).
"On the other hand, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, which tracks statistics in its Iraq Index, said: "I do not believe the new numbers. I think they're way off."
The Brooking Index, relying on the UN (which gets figures from the Iraqi health ministry) and the Iraq Body Count (IBC), estimates the civilian death toll at about 62,000."
Anyone familiar enough with the two methodologies and data to comment about why such a vast disparity exists?
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Oct 14, 2006 2:59:08 PM
This is bad science. You aren't supposed to wait until after the results are in, to tell us what different results would mean. There are reasons for that. Especially when you're doing social science.
Posted by: Constant at Oct 14, 2006 3:24:02 PM
Jason, your own link to the BBC provides a reasonably good summary. IBC acknowledges that it only picks up a fraction of violent deaths and the Iraqi health ministry figures are woefully incomplete. As Les Roberts says: "There have to be ~300 deaths per day from natural cause even if Iraq was the healthiest 26 million people in the world. Where are those bodies? When the MOH [ministry of health] in Iraq is perhaps recording 10% of them, why should they be doing better with politically charged violent deaths. Yes, I think almost nothing is getting reported outside of Baghdad where things are worse."
Posted by: Kevin Donoghue at Oct 14, 2006 3:28:35 PM
Insurrections and guerilla warfare after military defeats seldom begin overnight.
The first year after the occupation of Iraq was probably quieter because alliances were being made, resources acquired and positioned, and leadership sorted out.
Initially attacks were directed at our military. That had some success but soon shifted from RPGs to suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices. Later the campaign seemed to change again to mostly bombing and terrorizing civilians. Presumeably the intent is now to incite civil war between religious groups. We no longer hear much about attacks on oil installations and power lines.
A shift of tactics from attacking soldiers and infrastructure to killing civilians - a pure terror tactic - is almost certain to produce high casualties. Whether it will prove a winning tactic cannot be known. A rising body count does not, in itself, show success or failure for either side.
The (somewhat misnamed) Lancet reports disagreed markedly with several others. But they may be more accurate. Or they may not. The real oddity about this situation is that foreign media (such as the BBC and others who have hardly been reluctant to oppose the Iraq war) have not, for three years, reported anything like the startling death rates of the latest Lancet. So if Lancet is right it would seem no major media has been doing a very good job.
It would be disheartening to conclude that for three years the media numbers have been utter tripe. Reliable information is all we can base decisions upon.
Posted by: K at Oct 14, 2006 5:34:55 PM
Iraq Body Count (IBC) has no one on the ground in Iraq but collects information from cofirmed news reports ( two or more sources), so it is an significant undercount. As the news media retreated to Baghdad the undercounting probably is even more of a problem. What ever you think the current count is, it is large enough to merit concern. My fear is that it could grow to levels seen in Cambodia if we leave or could go on like this for decades like Viet Nam if we stay.
Posted by: joan at Oct 14, 2006 6:55:12 PM
There are legitimate reasons for being "a bit" skeptical of the number. Though the research methodology itself is widely used to count mortality rates, there are concerns that the sample selection could be biased. Moreover, the sample size may not be big enough to be able to extrapolate to the whole nation; the 95% confidence level that the study claims may be too high.
Posted by: Biomed Tim at Oct 14, 2006 8:44:37 PM
Jason Voorhees,
Besides the fact that Iraq Body Count only counts deaths reported in
newspapers, the other reason why official numbers may be off is that
apparently there has been a severe breakdown in communication between
local ministries and the central one in Baghdad. Thus, many death
certificates are handed out locally, but never recorded in Baghdad.
K.,
A similar point can explain the problem with the media. There is little
media that is really reporting from around Iraq, with all too many reporters
of one sort or another never leaving the Green Zone in Baghdad. More to
the point, some of the most dangerous places are essentially never visited
by any foreign media anymore. They are too dangerous.
Biomed Tim,
The sample is much larger than any other that have been the basis of studies
in Iraq and is very widely based geographically. This of course does not
guarantee that it may not still be biased upwards to some extent.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Oct 14, 2006 9:01:31 PM
Biomed Tim,
What do you mean that the sample size may not be big enough?
Posted by: GT at Oct 14, 2006 9:03:03 PM
I understand that the Iraqi Body Count is an undercount. But it's a 10th of the size of the Lancet study. Is that a reasonable undercount? Have demographers found similar magnitudes of undercounting before with that type of data? I'm just having trouble understanding how it'd be possible for the differences in these two data sources to exist, even with the undercounts. It's a completely useless method of collecting data if the real number is 600,000 and body counts only can get 10% of that. Is this the first time those counts have been called into question like this? Not being a demographer, this is new to me.
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Oct 14, 2006 11:20:33 PM
