Troops Injured Outside Combat Ignored in Media;
Al-Maliki Gives Away Money
Greg Mitchell points out that the media continue to give little coverage to non-combat-related deaths among American troops in Iraq. Actually, they seldom mention the number of those wounded in combat, much less putting them and their stories on the screen. (It happens. It is rare.)
Even as much press as the electrocuted soldiers got last week would not have been there if there had not been a change in the party that dominates Congress in November of 2006.
McClatchy profiles wounded veteran Victor Domenguez
As Michael Munk periodically reminds us, the numbers of our troops wounded in combat and those injured outside of combat are enormous:
"US military occupation forces in Iraq suffered at least 38 combat
casualties from July 2 to July 8, as the official casualty total
reached at least 65,889. The total includes 33,664 dead and
wounded by what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and
many more than the 32,187 last reported March 1 dead and
injured from "non-hostile" causes.*
The actual total is over 85,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count
as "Iraq casualties" the approximately 20,000 casualties discovered only
after they returned from Iraq -mainly brain trauma from explosions.**
US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by routinely reporting only the total killed (4,117 as of July 8) and rarely mentioning the 30,349 wounded in combat. To further minimize public perception of the cost, they cover for the Pentagon by ignoring the 31,325 (as of March 1)*** military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical air evacuation, although the 4,117 reported deaths include 764 (up one) who died from those same causes, including 145 suicides as of March 1.
* The number of wounded is updated weekly (usually Tuesdays) by the Pentagon [pdf]. The dead are reported by Iraq Coalition Casualties
** see USA Today, Nov. 23, 2007
*** the number of "non combat" injured is reported by Iraq Coalition Casualties. The AP.
visit www.michaelmunk.com"
Al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders are handing out cash in the streets. This known as the Howie Mandell system of government. The problems, of sectarian favoritism and lack of government capacity to spend the money wisely, remain acute, as the Associated Press points out.
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq has agreed that his party will not use photographs of non-candidates in its compaign literature. The party has benefitted in the past from its association with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiites. ISCI official Hamid al-Mu`alla also said that the open lits system planned for the provincial elections scheduled in October will allow voters to vote for individual candidates rather than only for a list. He predicted that use of the system will almost certainly disadvantage women.
Meanwhile, Salah al-Ubaidi of the Sadr Movement accused the Islamic Supreme Council of attempting unfairly to exclude the Sadrists in the next election.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/13/2008 12:06:00 AM
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11 Comments:
Giving public money away, in order to become popular, is common around the world. It is called pork in the US.
But what is different about Iraq, apart from the vulgarity of the process, is that it is presented as a personal "makruma" (loosely: philanthropy) not public money which they must account for. Both Maliki and Talabani have budgets for this, it was reportedly $1m a month each in 2005, possibly much larger now.
Saddam, who is the real role model for the GreenZone gangsters, did that too. They actually think that it is their own generosity and it shows that they care. Saddam famously told millions of Shiite that they should thank him because he, directly, fed and clothed them. Maliki and his ilk are from the same low-level gangster stock.
The US commercial press is a "Fifth column" in the USA democracy. See Bill Moyers at http://www.truthout.org/article/is-fourth-estate-a-fifth-column#comment-6409
"Al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders are handing out cash in the streets. This known as the Howie Mandell system of government."
Uh....Stimulus package?
Professor, this is kind of a "meta" question: have we averted, or just delayed an all out Iraq civil war?
In other words, did the surge accomplish anything, even if it wasn't what they said the goal was? The right seems to delight in saying that the surge was "successful" despite no political reconciliation. But with Maliki willing to throw us out (or at least posturing in that direction) that speaks to me as a fantastic development.
Please explain how wrong and naive I am.
9 US Soldiers Killed, 15 Wounded, in Attack in Afghanistan
Dr. Cole,
The topic of US military withdrawal from Iraq resurfaces many issues involving justice, quilt and reparation. I, like many others, believe the war was worse than illegal and that there are many guilty of war crimes. There is no way I can ignore what has occurred and what continues to occur. The day that the US forces leave and refrain from intervening cannot come soon enough.
What seems to get lost in some of the debate is the plain fact that the nations of the world, especially those who could take effective non-military action, turned their back on Iraq. There were protests both in the US and abroad. A few countries exercised legal options to complicate the logistics of pursuing the war but many did not. The citizens opposed to the war, both in the US and abroad, were unable to have their government and institutions take real actions that either might have stopped the war before it started or forced an early end to the occupation.
The types of actions that would cause enormous problems for the US are not hard to understand. Examples are refusing to allow military aircraft to use a nation's airspace, giving a termination notice with respect to status of forces agreements and outright trade sanctions. As the war progressed and evidence of war crimes emerged, charges and warrants could have been sought in the tribunals of other nations. This would expose those charged to immediate arrest in much of the world. None of this happened. If you dig a bit, you can find instances where supposedly progressive and peace oriented groups did not oppose questionable positions given the law of their land. The US was given and is still being given a free pass by much of the world and is indirectly supported by trade arrangements that effectively allow production capacty to be diverted to military purposes. This is more than tit for tat trade, the US runs a trade deficit.
None of this excuses what the US has done. What excuses this lack of intervention by the international community? Is the US really that powerful or is it just convenient to say that it is? The Iraqis were isolated by the world. The world allowed the US to invade and occupy the country. The protests were and are genuine but all we are left with is outrage and a sense of powerlessness: The citizens in other countries that were opposed to the war were just as ineffective as their peers in the US. In addition to the devastation of a land and its people, we have to accept the horrible truth is that most of our neighbors--and I do not been neighboring nations, I mean the citizens in our local communities--did not really object even though they may say otherwise. Effective resistance is only possible if those who are active are supported by their communities.
My concern is that we who oppose this war and everything it represents allow ourselves to be driven mad by our sense of powerless and to lose the capacity to make distinctions about others who we do not know and about what is possible now. The war is insane. It is madness. The calculus of realpolitik or whatever has nothing to do with ending it any more than a retreat into fatalism or denial of involvement even if the only form of involvement is to face one's own limitations.
The same options for actions remain, e.g., filing charges in established tribunals, denying free passage to troops and supplies, trade sanctions, etc. Citizens of the US can only do so much, most will do nothing at all and the rest of the world has not really provided any resistance beyond rhetorical outrage, if that.
Dr. Cole, is there any record in history where a nation gone mad has righted itself in this kind of situation and then proved capable of remediating the consequences of its past actions? Is there something that all the nations of the world need to learn from this? WWII spurred a good deal of activity with respect to international law and institutions but what was positive has been subverted or forgotten or exaggerated as to its lasting effect. Is there any basis for a belief that a country is capable of trying its own leaders for war crimes? What does history really have to tell us about all these attempts to right an unrightable wrong?
All I'm left with is the basic responsibility to maintain some level of sanity so that I can recognize when I can do something and act accordingly.
Re casualties:
Adding up our recent Iraq and Afghanistan KIA's gives you a 2+/day, 60+/month total. That's about the same as 2005-2006, when our composite wounded/killed/disabled attrition was about a battalion (800) a month, according to Barry Mccaffrey LLC's war consultancy.
Our losses are concentrated among the patrol and transport units that spend time outside the wire. For instance, one battalion had several $20M armored infantry assault machines reduced to salvage scrap in just a few weeks of the March-April fighting. Had these troops been patrolling with HMV's used in previous deployments, their casualties would have been much higher.
So far as I know, no public assessment includes the contractor people we've lost in Iraq. That would add upwards of a thousand deaths, 25% more than the official 4,100+ DoD undertakers report.
Our contractors outnumber uniformed troops in Iraq, and include tens of thousands of armored shooters, with helo gunships and rapid deployment units ready to shoot their way into Iraqi communities, and extract teams that get ambushed. Sometimes when they weren't ambushed.
If the facts on this war were reported accurately, winding it down ASAP would not even be a matter for discussion.
Wonderful - the right wing complains about welfare in the US, but I'm sure they are OK with giving their tax dollars to the needy in Iraq. It's the poor, single mother in Detroit that doesn't deserve it.
Here's the next Justification For Staying In Iraq meme: the USA cannot leave Iraq now or there will be a military coup.
Check out all the words of caution in this AP article.
Expect to hear more along these lines in coming months.
Interesting/puzzling that there is a significant disparity in WIA/RTD figures in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afgh 37% of all WIA are RTD. In Iraq 56% of all WIA are RTD. Is it possible the nature of the wounds is so different between the theatres as to justify the disparity? Or are different standards being applied?
It is true that there is relatively little discussion of the American non-combat deaths in Iraq. But this does not give the American public an impression that fewer Americans are dying in Iraq than is actually the case.
The figures for cumulative deaths in Iraq that are given. frequently, on the TV news shows, are totals of all deaths--combat and non-combat. But because there is so seldom (never that I can recall seeing) any discussion of the way the total death figure breaks up into combat and non-combat deaths, most viewers get the impression that the figure they are being given is a figure for combat deaths.
So the lack of explicit discussion of the non-combat deaths gives viewers an exaggerated impression of the number of deaths. They see a figure representing the total number of deaths, and think it is a figure for only part of the deaths.
It is true that there is very little statistical discussion of the wounded and injured. But there is quite a lot of discussion of them. I see a lot of scenes, on TV news, of wounded and injured men undergoing treatment. I just don't see a lot of statistics.
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