Fri 16 Sep 2005
In his debate with George Galloway, Christopher Hitchens said:
If you really believe the crazed fabrication of the figures of 100,00 deaths in Iraq … you can simply go to my colleague Fred Kaplan’s space on slate.com. He’s a very stern and strong critic of the war, a great opponent of mine. We’ve had quite a quarrel about it. He’s a great writer about science and other matters. It’s a simple matter to show this is politicized hackwork of the worst kind. The statistics in that case have been conclusively and absolutely shown to be false and I invite anyone to check it. Everything I say has at least ten pages of documentation, which I am willing to share, behind it.
When Galloway asked Hitchens if he really was accusing the Lancet and researchers at Johns Hopkins University of crazed fabrication, Hitchens stood by his slander.
Kaplan’s criticism of the Lancet study was demolished here and here.
Kaplan seems to write mainly about war and not about science, but even if he is a great science writer, how does that make him a better authority on epidemiology than actual expert scientists publishing in a refereed journal?
Kaplan did not claim to have “conclusively” and “absolutely” shown the statistics to be false. Nor did he say that the study was a “crazed fabrication”. In fact, he wrote this:
The problem is, ultimately, not with the scholars who conducted the study; they did the best they could under the circumstances.
Hitchens is the one making the crazed fabrication here.
September 16th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
I would have thought that the UN sponsored study was worth mentioning somewhere, but you seem to have ignored it lately….. are you still suggesting that the 24,000 casualties it described happened in one year instead of two, and that the pre-march 2003 casualties where ‘negligible’?
There’s a weird conformity at work here. George Galloway is, also, exactly the sort of person whom I could imagine calling casualties in the last year of Saddam’s reign ‘negligible’.
September 16th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
Tim:
Seriously, aren’t you sraping the bottom of the toilet bowl with this one. In a sense you are supporting Gallaway over Hitchens ern’t you?
At least we on the right try and hide our mad uncles and aunts. The campus left shows them off.
September 16th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
“crazed fabrication”?
“politicized hackwork of the worst kind”?
“conclusively and absolutely shown to be false”?
Methinks Uncle Christopher’s “ten pages of documentation” might make for some interesting reading. The world as viewed by someone who thinks “a great writer about science” would have no clue whatsoever about the shape of a Gaussian.
September 16th, 2005 at 7:57 pm
Hitchens is a sad example of the truth in Charles Austin Beard’s great moral “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad with power”.
It’s been his real misfortune to have been as celebrated as he’s always believed himself to deserve; now he’s become drunk on what he sees as the power of his own mind.
And never mind who his some time antagonist may be, this is about him.
September 16th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
nicolo
Hitchens may drink, but I assure you that it is not drink that is forcing him to follow his convictions. His strength of convictions is doing that.
I presume you agree with Galloway. Is that the guy who took 300k from Saddam? Naaaa can’t be. If Stalin was around now I’m sure Gallaway.
September 16th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
continued……
…. would have liked and supported him.
September 16th, 2005 at 10:31 pm
relly Joe? Do you think Galloway might have possibly been a Stalinist? Tell us more!
September 16th, 2005 at 10:51 pm
and while we’re at it Wilbur:
1) the ILCS report’s casualty figures referred to a period of 15 months, not two years
2) it is settled fact that in 2003, the number of Iraqis being murdered by Saddam Hussein’s regime was in the region 2000-3000. This is obviously a horrific indictment of the regime, but is equally obviously much less than 20,000.
September 16th, 2005 at 11:36 pm
Dsquared;
Is this where the left is heading: the abyss of amorality?
You can actually sit there behind a keyboard and measure the murders committed by Saddam comparing these numbers to the Lancet report as though you can…. compare? As though the morality of these two situations is so related they can be compared. Has the left gone so mad?
This is like saying of the Second World War:
Well we know Hitler is killing off the Jews pretty soon there won’t be any left in the world. But hey, if we hit the Nazis now, it will mean there will be another 20 million dead.
So, Na, we won’t hit Hitler and his thugs. It’s better cost/ benefit relationship if we let Hitler kill 6 million Jews.
Have you guys gone completely crazy!
Tim:
For the purposes of your discourse over whether Lancet is correct. Let’s accept there have been 100,000 deaths. Answer this: What exactly is your point? Are you suggesting we ought to compare Saddam’s acid baths to the coalition actions? I would dearly love an answer and quite honestly you have written so much about this your readers deserve to know your position with this. As though we don’t know.
Man, the campus left has lost it.
September 16th, 2005 at 11:44 pm
Tim,
Great piece. Keep em’ coming.
What I find so amusing about the denialists, both who comment here on this web site and elsewhere in the mainstream media, is that they don’t come out and explicitly say that our governments in the west are guilty of mass murder, which they clearly are, but use all kinds of illusory tactics to donwplay the atrocities. The fact is that our governments have no interest whatsoever in counting the victims of our aggression. They never have. Any number in Iraq, whether it is 24,000 or 100,000 or more, is enough evidence of the complicity of our governments (by this I mean primarily the UK and US regimes) in genocide.
I am sure that Wilbur, Joe C and others have long since sent the images of the 2.5 million Vietnamese and Cambodian dead, victims of another US war of agression, down their collective ‘memory holes’. The same for the carnage US forces inflicted in Korea, or even Haiti, Cuba, and the Phillipines a century ago, all of which caused the US media to enter into çollective denial’ within a few years of their occurrence. There are many similar examples.
The fact is, as international attorney Richard Falk once commented, “We in the west are conditioned to see the world through a one-way moral/legal screen, with images of innocent western values portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence”. In other words, when “we” attack “them”, it is business-as-usual. When “they” attack “us”, the world is coming to an end.
Finally, and for the millionth time, Saddam’s worst crimes were committed under full diplomatic and economic support from the west. He only became a “new Hitler” when he invaded Kuwait - just another example of a brutal regional tyrant who was fully supported by “us” until he slipped the leash. Ditto for Manuel Noriega, a lesser thug who was on the CIA payroll for years, until he became uppity and threatened the status quo in Panana (the US invasion of that country killed an estimated 3,000 civilians). In the case of Iraq, why aren’t those responsible for supporting Saddam’s regime in the 1980’s, such as some of the recycled Reaganite neocon cronies in the Bush/Cheney junta in the dock alongside him for crimes against humanity? Why not Rumsfeld? Perle? Libby? Feith? Negroponte?
September 17th, 2005 at 12:04 am
Jeff Harveÿ:
By your reckoning then, if the West was true to its faith we should never have supported Stalin in his fight against the Nazis.Is that correct? We should never have supported Stalin with war material?
What about the Serbian bombing? What is your position on that. If I recall correctly Clinton never asked the UN for the go ahead.
Oh, and let’s not forget the adorable Pol Pot, right? How long will it take before a Chomsky like goof ball blames Pol Pot on the Americans. Oh, I just forgot. He did!
The adsurdity of your claims are beyond reason.
Now it ought to be Tim’s turn to answer the question I posed in the above comment.
What exactly is your position? Are you comparing Saddam’s acid baths to coalition actions?
September 17th, 2005 at 12:35 am
JoeC: I suggest that you might want to visit Iraq and explain to the relatives of some of those who have been killed that they shouldn’t hold it against us because we are the “good guys” and our intentions are nothing but noble.
And, you could explain to them that at the recent rate that Saddam had been killing people…using dsquared’s figures (after we no longer supported him, which was during his much more brutal period, and we had actually put in no-fly zones to protect the Kurds), in another 30-50 years he would have killed more than it is estimated have died so far as the result of our invasion.
I’m certainty not saying that Saddam wasn’t a very bad guy or that we are nearly as morally depraved us him. However, enough bad things have been done while invoking moral superiority that I think it is a very dangerous road to go down. One of the most important features that seems to separate the folks on the Right from those on the Left is a completely inability to get outside of one’s own cramped point-of-view to see themselves as others see them…not just as they see themselves.
September 17th, 2005 at 1:28 am
Joel:
You may be surprised but I agree with some of the points you make. I am also against the war, however not for the tired, sorry and immoral reasons coming from the left. In my mind, this war is being fought exactly like as a leftist war.
From the very beginning it has been fought in a way that does not make any cogent sense to me and like a lot of right- wingers. The idea of “liberating” the Iraqis from the clutches of Saddamite punks is bringing back the Wilsonian doctrine. Imposing a Jeffersonian democracy, rather imposing one from above will not work unless people want and desire it. Already, we are seeing the makings of another Mullah run theocracy that will hate the west even more. I blame Bush for this sorry state.
So we have ended up getting caught up in a fight with the anti-war immoral left at home and reducing our opportunities to go after the real big fish in the future- Iran and to a lessor extent Syria. In other words the sorry state of affairs has been brought to us by Bush’s inability to think through what “democratising” Iraq would mean for future actions. We are screwed with this policy.
My idea of war especially after 911 is an easy one. Unless you are prepared to fight a war as an act of punishment and conduct a war with everything at your disposal including ignoring civilian causalities then don’t fight the frigging thing. Faluga was a good example of what I mean. The coalition had two attempts at Faluga. The first time the forces retreated. There should never have been a retreat. Faluga should have been destroyed, razed is a better word, without any concern for civilian causalities. If the coalition was/is not prepared to do that then they should never have gone to war in the first place. In my idea of war, civilian deaths are unfortunate, but not one American kids life ought to be risked to avoid civilian causalities.
Before you accuse me of being cold- hearted right- winger I would like to remind you of two things. I did say that wars should not be fought like we are now. Also recall that it was only 60 odd years ago when we fought wars exactly this way. Germany or japan did not lose the war. They were crushed. That didn’t happen in Iraq. At the very most the Americans should have put in a strong man and got the hell out after getting rid of Saddam. He would have been our son of a bitch. This would have left ample room to eventually go after the other two.
In a sense you and Tim are right in counting the death stats. That’s because we are fighting a war on those terms. Civilian casualties should be irrelevant in fighting a war. If they become so important then don’t fight it. The other side plays for keeps.
September 17th, 2005 at 1:36 am
joe c,
I read from your post you oppose the way the war is being waged - you appear to think the war is being waged the way ‘the left’ would wage it.
If I read this correctly, it is profoundly incorrect. A plank of the left’s opposition to the war is opposition to the very things you enumerate. ‘The left’ wondered why the F we went into Eye-rack in the first place when the terrists were in Afghanistan. Why didn’t BushCo, in his 9/11 speech a few days ago mention Osama bin Forgotten?
And your civilian casualties thing is profoundly immoral.
Civilians are innocents. Using this logic, I can walk down the street, see that I don’t like the color of your shirt, and pop a cap in yo *ss because you’re a punk.
Slippery slope and all that.
D
September 17th, 2005 at 2:11 am
“I can walk down the street, see that I don’t like the color of your shirt, and pop a cap in yo *ss because you’re a punk”.
Oh, and I guess that is the way the way the Allies fought WW2? Just popping people off? Really.
My point, Dano, in case you missed it, is that you don’t go popping someone off because they are wearing a Hawaiian shirt (although I can see the sense in that). You conduct a war to crush the enemy’s will to fight and always minimize your side’s casualities. Dano, this was how WW2 was fought. If you aren’t prepared to fight like that you end up with Vietnam. So don’t fight a war if you are not prepared to crush the other side.
Clearing Iraq of Saddamites was not such a bad idea from a right wing perspective. Attempting to impose democracy on the place was Wilsonian- not our job.
September 17th, 2005 at 3:22 am
I presume, joe c, that your reply is a rebuttal to my assertion that the left does not characterize the war in this way and that killing innocents is OK in your book.
I lived within a long bike ride’s distance of Aschaffenburg and then while working on a project, near Munich for a time. There is no need to explain to me the tactics and reasoning of WWII, as I lived among the survivors of those tactics. But thank you for recalling my fond memories of that countryside.
Anyway, neither my memories nor your assertions address the fact that killing innocents is immoral.
But I take it you have checked on ‘the left’s’ objections to the war and you see now that the assertion you used - liberating - was in fact a post facto justification for depleting our treasure and weakening our security situation, and in fact ‘the left’, prior to the invasion, did not oppose the war for the reason you gave, as BushCo did not use that justification until it learned there were no dubya-em-dee in eye-rack.
I ought to know what we opposed, as I was among the 350K protestors in San Francisco stating that Iraq wasn’t where Osama bin Forgotten was, so the reasons for war were ginned up.
HTH,
D
September 17th, 2005 at 4:26 am
Joe C: To be honest, I am sort of at a loss for words in a discussion with someone who uses the term “immoral left” repeatedly in the same post as he argues that the problem that we are having in fighting the war is that we are wrongly at all concerned about civilian casualties. I am not sure how morality is defined in your book, but I am pretty sure that I want no part of it.
I guess we can at least agree that this is a foolish war.
September 17th, 2005 at 5:21 am
“Are you suggesting we ought to compare Saddam’s acid baths to the coalition actions? I would dearly love an answer and quite honestly”
It seems the only one interested in that comparison is you, Joe.
It seems your point is that we should not show any interest in the fact that up to 100,000 deaths could have been produced as a consequence of the US-British invasion, provided that we remember that Saddam was a monster.
If that is indeed your point, your point is plainly absurd. You don’t kill the innocent to protect them from past abuses.
If your point is, as Hitchens claims, that humanitarian intervention was desirable to rid a suffering people from a tyrant, then you would at least admit, like some repentant ‘humanitarian’ hawks, that the implementation and results have been disastrous. Most infrastructure destroyed, cultural history looted, insecurity, incipient civil-war, incipient Islamic state, torture at Abu Ghraib, checkpoints in all neighborhoods, 100,000 deaths… If your interest is humanitarian you don’t go to war with a crowd that secures the Ministry of Oil building but allows hospitals to be looted. You don’t go to war with a crowd that weasels its way to lawyerly justifications of torture. You don’t go to war with a crowd that sleeps at night in fortified Saddam’s palaces in the Green Zone while the regular guy sleeps with a car-bomb waiting for him the next morning in the grocery store.
Saddam’s atrocities as justification of further atrocities is repugnant.
September 17th, 2005 at 6:09 am
Joe, just so I can be sure we come from the same version of alternate reality, who would you say it was who started the Second World War? My textbooks all say it was Adolf Hitler, not us.
September 17th, 2005 at 6:14 am
d2,
I think the metaphor got muddled due to the out-of-breathness caused by the tap-dancing and backpedaling.
Best,
ÐanØ
September 17th, 2005 at 6:15 am
donde esta el gravatar?
D
September 17th, 2005 at 7:15 am
Dsquared; the ILCS report says differently, although it does not seem to have been reported as such. In my opinion most of the media was asleep at the wheel when they reported it.
If you look at the actual report, you’ll see that the survey asked for any casualties in the previous 24 months to April 2004. It then unilaterally decided that all of these casualties happened after the ground invasion, and that none at all happened before! This can be seen on page 55 of the report. In the absence of any other evidence from them, they have indeed demonstrated 24,000 over 24 months.
I’m not aware of what conclusive evidence there is to suggest the violent deaths in the last year of Saddam’s reign was 2-3,000. Even if it was as low as that, it would still throw Tim’s calculations out, however.
September 17th, 2005 at 12:29 pm
Wilbur, the ILCS question asked about war-related deaths. How many war-related deaths do you think there were before the war?
If there was even flimsy evidence that the number of violent deaths in the last year of Sadaam’s reign was higher than the figure dsquared suggests then the pro-war folks would have mentioned it two or three million times.
September 17th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
Dano et al;
Before I go into a long dialogue spelling out the arguments again can I first ask you guys a question.
Could you please contrast the actions in Iraq to Serbia? I would dearly love to know the differences.
Yes I know
1. Serbia was a Democrat war
2. Serbia was supported by France and Germany ( which is important to lefties)
3. Serbia as against Iraq was never sanctioned by the UN. Res. 1441 did threaten action if Saddam did not comply.
4. There was no oil for food program that your friends, the French and Kofi could not milk.
The only thing I see different is that the Frogs supported the bombing of Serbia and didn’t go for Iraq, which must have had a bearing on how the left felt about the war.
Let me know I would be interested.
September 17th, 2005 at 4:25 pm
Another one of Hitchen’s crazed fabrications seems to have been the lie that Juan Cole doesn’t speak the local languages. See here for Cole’s reply.
I think this is particularly discourteous, and libellous to boot. These are statements of fact, which attack someone’s reputation at the most basic level. This is well outside the rules of any civilised debate, given that Cole was not there to contradict the assertion, and lives anyway with the lie undermining him on the internet from other sources.
Will the broadcast this weekend contain a clarification? Will Hitchens apologise? Would he, for instance, attempt to get the broadcast delayed until the truth is inserted?
It is an interesting position for C-Span which is broadcasting it. In Australia, Cole would by now confidently be able to make a down payment on his holiday house.
It is also an example where libel laws are a bloody good thing.
September 17th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
Actually I believe it’s the guy who won a massive defamation lawsuit over false claims that he accepted money from Saddam.
September 17th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
Joe, I know you read John Quiggin’s blof.
Did you see my post where I put up undated descriptions of torture from the Saddma era and torture conducted by the current Iraqi regime and invited readers to say which was which?
As I recall there were no takers.
September 17th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
I can’t speak for Tim (and I know Mr. Harvey and I are pretty far apart on this point) but from my perspective, I support the concept of international action, including military action, to remove dictatorial or genocidal regimes - with one exception. THat exception is that the intervention should not worsen the condition of the people it is supposedly intended to help.
I supported the US action in the First Gulf War, in Kosovo and in Afghanistan because in each case there was a clear and immediate need to intervene for humanitarian purposes or to prevent further aggression; there was a clear military objective with a realistic chance of success and there was an exit strategy.
I opposed the war in Iraq because virtually all those preconditions were not met.
If the US had sent a special forces unit into Baghdad and put a bullet through Saddam’s head (and preferable also throguh the heads of Uday, Qusay and rest of Saddam;s odious inner circle) I would have bene the first one to applaud.
I also take the position, which also tends ti isolate me from others on the left, that having committed the monstrous crime of blundering into Iraq in the first place and wrecking the place, the west now has a moral obligation to prevent it descending further into civil war and religious tyranny.
Not only do I not support an early withdrawal of coalition forces, I’m hoping that the CDU wins in Germany and, despite its current position, sends German troops to Iraq.
None of which stops me from saying the initial decision to invade was a foolish and criminal act and that the political leaders repsonsible should be held accountable.
September 17th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
Ian
“If the US had sent a special forces unit into Baghdad and put a bullet through Saddam’s head (and preferable also throguh the heads of Uday, Qusay and rest of Saddam;s odious inner circle) I would have bene the first one to applaud”.
Now, how would you have done that? You think a couple of hundred Delta Force could have just helicopted in and shot Saddam by magic. This is problem on the left, they don’t believe what they say most of the time because it doesn’t side with reality.
Seriously, Ian, what a piss weak suggestion is this in a military sense. In all conscience no commander in chief would would send in a couple of 100 decent kids to meet their doom with underwhelming force. This is near enough to the point I was making in an earlier thread. If you are gunna play pretend war like he left would do. Do it yourself. Don’t send in innocent kids who are gunna get hammered.
You make war to win and you win by overwhelming force. Don’t fight it, if it is pretend war.
By the way, Ian, I recently read that your buddy gorgeous George was sucking up to Bashir in Syria. This is the creep, T. Lambert, is tacitly supporting by putting up the post. Galleway is a deuce bag and you guys are rooting for him over Hitchens. My heart aches.
One other thing, putting a dog collar on a Islamist and getting a pic to send home to the family is not the same as the meat grinder Dad and the kids were running at Abu Garib. The suggestion is absurd.
But the simmarise, you supported the idea of getting rid of the Saddamites but you disagreed with the strategy. Instead of sending in 140k troops, you think it should have been done with 100 or so troops. Ok. That’s a strategy. Does the Carter success story in the Iran desert ring a bell?
September 17th, 2005 at 8:07 pm
Joe, do you approve of Hitchens’ fabrication?
September 17th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
Tim:
Kaplan may or may not be right. Even if Kaplan is wrong it doesn’t mean Hitchens was trying to pull the wool over everyone by referring to Kaplan. I therefore think your charactorization of him is real harsh.
Despite Hitchens being a lefty, I can’t help liking the guy. Hitchens is an honorable sort of drunk, I don’t see him lying and therefore you’re being really hard on him.
On he other hand, whether one agrees or disagrees with the war, Gorgeous George is not someone I would want to be supporting my cause.
He really is human garbage. I am not saying that because he is from the left just the company he likes to keep.
September 17th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
Tim:
addition:
Again whether one supports the war, and I don’t (at least in the way it is being conducted) Hitchens, from what I can discern gave an excellent account of why he is for the war and why Gallaway happens to be a crudball.
Even if the death numbers he gave was incorrect he demonstrated what Gallaway is.
Gallaway on the other hand further supported the assertion that his life ought to have never happened.
September 17th, 2005 at 10:06 pm
Joe, did you even read my post? Look at point 3.
September 17th, 2005 at 10:30 pm
Tim:
Tim, aren’t you placing the ice-cream cone upside down by referring to point three. Kaplan seems to be acting humble with that point. The central part of the piece questions the study.
Do you think point 3 is the central core of his piece?
September 17th, 2005 at 10:38 pm
Tim:
Aren’t holding the ice cream cone upside down? Kaplan is being humble here. It was not the central part of the piece. Refuting the death toll was.
Even so, how does that demonstrate, Hitchens is a liar and fabricator? Even if Hitchens is quoting wrong figs. that does not him a fabricator- a liar in your characterization.
Did you consider anything Gallaway said to be fabrication or was all of it true and accurate? Did you listen to Gallaway? What did you think?
September 18th, 2005 at 6:57 am
Joe C:
In answer to your question “Could you please contrast the actions in Iraq to Serbia? I would dearly love to know the differences.”
(1) The Kosovo situation was responding to an immediate acute genocide that was being perpetrated. And, there did not appear to be other alternatives (or even time to investigate other alternatives) to stop it.
(2) The mission in Kosovo was fairly clearly defined and limited. The motives were generally clear and good.
(3) The result of that action was not the death of ~1800 U.S. soldiers (and counting) and 100,000 Serbians / Kosovians.
(4) Things clearly improved in Kosovo as the result of our action.
Contrast this to Iraq. In Iraq, there was no immediate genocide or humanitarian crisis that we were responding to. Yes, Saddam was a brutal ruler and had committed large atrocities in the past. However, we had contained him (e.g., by having “no-fly” zones to protect the Kurds) and while he continued to rule with brutality in his own country, tolerating no dissent and dealing sadistically with his enemies, he was not committing genocidal acts….There were certainly was no acute humanitarian crisis.
Secondly, in Iraq our mission was not a humanitarian one at any rate. It was simply a byproduct of our actions that we were going to remove a brutal dictator who we once supported. This distinction might not be important to you but I think it is very important for the simple reason that it is extremely difficult to improve a humanitarian situation by starting a war even if your goals are noble. When your goals are a mishmash then I would argue that it is nearly impossible…because the less noble goals will necessarily cause you to make decisions that will undermine the more noble ones. Also, those whose trust you are trying to gain will not trust you because they will see your other motives and, in this particular case, will see how we supported Saddam when we thought in our interests to do so…even through some of his most brutal years. To those of us who opposed the war, it is no surprise that this has turned into such a fiasco; it was pretty much pre-ordained from the despicable way in which we were hoodwinked into this war.
September 18th, 2005 at 7:10 am
the ILCS question asked about war-related deaths. How many war-related deaths do you think there were before the war?
Well now, when did the war start for the average Iraqi? With coalition bombing, fighting between Ansar-al-islam and the Kurds, and Saddam’s troops behaving like, well, Saddam’s troops, I doubt the average Iraqi thinks of it as beginning with the arrival of coalition ground troops.
You’ve certainly shifted ground in this area: the last time I raised this issue, you avoided it by describing pre-invasion casualties as ‘negligible’ and then offering no evidence to support your claim. Now you’ve decided that the pre-invasion casualties from bombing, shooting, or whatever other violent means wouldn’t have seemed ‘war-related’ enough to the average person living in a third world country. To put it another way, you previously said the war-related casualties were negligible, now you think they weren’t war-related.
You also need to re-read page 55 of the survey.
If there was even flimsy evidence that the number of violent deaths in the last year of Sadaam’s reign was higher than the figure dsquared suggests then the pro-war folks would have mentioned it two or three million times.
Why don’t you just admit here that no one actually knows what the figures are with any certainty? In any case, the 2-3,000 mentioned by him seems to be casualties attributed to Saddam. That doesn’t seem to include coalition bombing or the fighting in the Kurdish enclave, all of which would drive the pre-invasion figure higher, and throw your calculations out more.
This business seems to be less and less sensible analysis and more and more blind faith.
September 18th, 2005 at 7:34 am
Joe,
Are you aware of the concept of the “hypothetical”?
Hypothetically, if there had been a cheap easy way to remove Saddam from power I and the overwhelming majority of people on the left would have supported it.
Now let me put a hypothetical to you: your basic argument is: “Saddam was bad therefore removing Saddam was good.”
So suppose the US had decided that the most cost-effective way to achieve that objective had been to nuke Baghdad, Basra and every other city in Iraq with a population over 100,000?
Would you still apporve or can you grasp the concept that two wrongs don’t make a right?
September 18th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
Ian:
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And we are reaping the seeds of that harvest right now.
Would you still apporve or can you grasp the concept that two wrongs don’t make a right?>
My anwser to that comes out like this:
If the coalition felt there was an immediate threat to Western territory along the scale of WTC. I would have no problem with using nukes.
However in this day and age conventional bombs also do the trick. In other words you don’t need to use nukes if you don’t need them and you certainly don’t take them off the table. You think the Us did/does not have nukes in the Mid East right now?
Your Hypothetical here is interesting specially with Iran. The scum bag who is the President of Iran was quoted as saying this week that Iran will continue with it’s nuke program and share it with other Muslim countries. A couple of Mullahs have said that they would not mind using nukes of Israel and or Europe if they had them.
My bet is that parts of Iran will be glowing in the dark in the next few years. Interestingly the gold price spike we saw this week began its move just after the Iranian creep made the announcement in NY.
Back to the issue.
You fight wars with two objectives in mind. To win and to minimise csualities on your side. Civilians on the opposing side are not your problem. Maybe I am an old fashioned type of guy who looks back 500 years ago to the sec. World War. when the Allies used the same strategies. IF you don’t want to fight wars that way then don’t put young guys in harms way
September 18th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
That’s a disgusting an immoral proposition - and I don’t mind if Tim gags me for saying so.
Furthermroe unless your prepared to commit full-on genocide and repopulate with your own people (which would tend to rather undercut the humanitarian rationale for this war) all you do is inspire more opposition.
In World War II, the Germans followed your line and in a matter of months converted tens of millions of Russians from welcoming them as liberators from Stalin to actively opposing them.
September 18th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
“Civilians on the opposing side are not your problem
That’s a disgusting an immoral proposition - and I don’t mind if Tim gags me for saying so”.
Stop trying to mischaracterize what I am saying. The Allies never considered the other side’s civilian population to be their concern. They shouldn’t be ours, either. Otherwise don’t fight the damned war in the first place.
The Germans went out of their way to hit the civilian populations. That was mass murder. German troops slaughtered civilians by the millions. The Allies never did that.
My point is simple. Don’t place troops in harms way if you are not prepared to conduct a war the way it ought to be.
In case you weren’t aware of it wars are messy terrible things. People get killed. Strange isn’t it. Wars have always been like that.
September 19th, 2005 at 1:24 am
Joe,
That is rather PC there.
Given what we knew then, it would have been a good idea. Thank you for suggesting it in a timely manner.
The point being that the denial of the death of many thousands of civilians by those seeking to justify a war fought for no damn good reason is what sticks in people’s craw.
So there are really two issues here. The first is that tens of thousands of civilians died in this war. The cheerleaders for invading Iraq have attempted to deny this. It is true.
The second is that most of us recognize that civilian deaths do occur in wars in large numbers, and you have to balance that against the reasons for the war (on both sides). That is moral ambiguity, but so what, we live in a morally ambiguous world. Deal with it.
As far as Iraq II is concerned we can draw two conclusions:
The results have been a disaster for the country that started the war, the US.
The stated caused for the war have all been proved false.
It was highly probable that the stated causus belli were known to be false by those who favored the war BEFORE the invasion.
September 19th, 2005 at 7:14 am
Eli,
don’t waste your time.
I no longer intend to.
September 19th, 2005 at 10:28 am
Yeah, it’s impossible to reason with a Fighting 101st Keyboarder (thanks Nabakov).
September 19th, 2005 at 10:43 am
Zoot:
What’s your opinion. Have one?
Ian:
You really do have an issue with rudness and the self-certain sense of superior values. It’s attitudes like yours that are decaying Europe.
September 19th, 2005 at 2:47 pm
I’d rather not be rude to you Joe but you seem to me to have done an awful lot of writing for the amount of sense I can see in what you’ve written, while the lessons in many of the responses you’ve received have perfectly clearly been wasted on you. No gratitude shown for those lessons either. If I could think of a more constructive response I hope I’d make it!
Best, etc.
September 19th, 2005 at 6:05 pm
Since you ask Joe, my opinion is you’re just trolling and should be treated with the ignore you so richly deserve. (Which will be my strategy after this post)
It is also my opinion that, in accusing Ian of rudeness, you are displaying a textbook example of projection.
Another opinion I hold is that it is obvious from your inane attempts at hairy chestedness that you have never been in any danger of involvement in armed conflict.
Enough opinions for you? I’ve dozens more.
September 19th, 2005 at 8:20 pm
Joe,
Sorry for the delay in my response, but I don’t usually blog on weekends…
As for Saddam’s ‘acid baths’, all I can say is that the Reagan and Bush I administrations turned a blind eye on them - again, as long as Saddam did our bidding, he could kill and torture with impunity. At present, the US gives more military ‘aid’ to Colombia than any other country on Earth surpassing Turkey, Israel and Egypt, all vying for the coveted No. 1 slot. Uribe is hardly a pacifist saint; his regime and its associated paramilitaries have murdured some 15,000 civilians since 1999. Successive governments in Turkey have killed around 30,000 Kurds since 1993, leaving some 3,000 Kurdish towns as veritable ‘dungeons’. I see no official record of US denunciation of this slaughter by one of our ‘allies’. In fact, a couple of years ago, the US ambassador to Turkey claimed that, whereas Saddam “slaughtered” Kurds, Turkey only “represses” them. This shows you how the US views ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims. You can re-read Falk’s argument here. Algeria was cited by the US government as a “partner in the war on terror”, ignoring the fact that the regime there has killed upwards of 100,000 civilians since it refused to accept the results of a 1990 election. The bottom line is that ’state terror’ does not enter onto the US/UK radar screens when it is carried out by client states who are aligned with the objectives of western state planners. Any human rights violations, whether alleged or real, will be siezed upon by the Bush junta as justification for US intervention, when the real obectives are, or at least should be, clearly obvious.
Let’s not also forget Suharto, one of the biggest torturers and mass murderers of the second half of the twentienth century, who received full US economic and diplomatic support (and his 1965-66 coup which left perhaps half a million dead was facilitated with much US/UK/Australian government support). In 1996 Clinton called him “Our kind of guy”, in full knowledge of his atrocities. The fact was we (meaning the west) didn’t care how many civilians he killed, so long as he ruled according to western corporate standards. In 1998, he started challenging IMF rules and suddenly the western media lost its 30 year amnesia and began to recall some of his many crimes. And why was the US so silent on the atrocities recently committed by Islam Karimov’s regime in Uzbekistan? This man is another Saddam who boils his political opponents alive, amongst other forms of repression, torture and murder. Could it be because Karimov had allowed US military bases on Uzbek soil? Shucks, this smacks of hypocrisy doesn’t it? Now that Karimov has ordered the closing of US military bases, watch how the media begins to print stories about his horrific regime. But note how the US strategy is to stay silent on atrocities committed by client states until they slip the leash. The bottom line is that human rights has always been a convenient tool that camouflages the true objectives of aggressor nations.
As far as the Wilson doctrine goes, you might say thje US revisionist stance is twofold: First, Bush advocates what I see as Wilson Mk. II: ‘under arms’ and the threat of force for so-called democracy; second, the US view about democracy is translated as “you can have any democracy you like as long as you do as you are told”. This is the kind of democracy the recycled Reganites had implemented in Latin America in the 1980’s, and its the kind of democracy they envisage for the Middle East. I believe that Carter’s 1980 doctrine is the most relevant as far as the Middle east is concerned. He stated that, “Any move by any nation into the Persian Gulf will be seen as a direct attack on the interests of the US”. Although clearly aimed at the Russians, who were early into their Afghan conflict, the implications were clear.
September 19th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
Zoot:
I understand all that. But It seems the only time you post is when you “think” you have been called to referee as you demonstrate constantly. Telling me I am wrong and Harry is right because it aligns with your ideological view of the world is pretty useless. In fact it is what you accuse me of- trolling in the true sense. You can disagree with someone but merely coming out of your hole to tell a person (in your jaundiced opinion) they are right and the other person is wrong is not adding anything.
Your point above is simply trolled up garbage. Why? Because you seem to incorrectly interpret my response. How? What I said was, more or less, if you conduct a war in a namby pamby way you get the same result. If you are not prepared to fight a war in the way wars have been fought in the past don’t order troops in. Military service these days is a professional vocation. Like you, I chose not to enlist. However those that do fully understand their job may entail killing or getting killed.
I don’t offer strategies like your friend, Ian, who seems to think that sending in a dozen SAS troops to kill Saddamites will do the trick.
Like you I disagree with the war. However not for the same reasons.
So in future it would be far more helpful if you opined rather than directing traffic with a red and green flag.
Thanks Zoot- is that your real name?
September 19th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
Jeff:
I would added to my previous post but didn’t catch it in time.
Would you mind telling me why it is always US policies which were/ are wrong? How about (just once) one of you guys on the left say something slightly less than positive about say France, Greece or Germany for instance? How about the EU?
Us policy isn’t prefect and never has been. But you and your buddies accord the US higher standards than you would measure other countries. Why is that I wonder? Don’t you also get a little tired of US bashing?
Your Turkish example was quite illuminating. Did you even think about placing a little blame on the country involved- Turkey? Or did that escape your imagination? The US is always easy to blame, right?
How about Indonesia? Excuse me for reminding you, but wasn’t it Gough who essentially gave Timor to the Idons on a Gold Platter? If not on a gold platter, the National Living Treasure did not really have that much to say about that takeover. And you can’t really blame the US for swaying the Australian Governemnt. The Treasure wasn’t exactly pro- American was he? Oh wait I just remember something. Which Government was it that wanted to borrow A$ 3 billion (in those days it was real money) from Saddam. Yep, I just remembered, It was the National living Treasure of course. Gough’s Government, right? That’s not as bad though because it wasn’t the US that was trying to borrow the money, right?
There are essentially three periods you spoke about that you seem to roll into one. Each was quite different. There was the Cold war period. The 90’s interval. Than 911. Each required (s) different repsonses.
Every country on the this planet conducts its foreign policy with one objective in mind. It will always attempt to further its own interests. If you understand that then maybe you will understand a little how the world works. Good luck with figuring it out.
September 19th, 2005 at 9:50 pm
Joe,
I appreciate your comments, but its getting a bit lame to accuse everyone who opposes US policies of “US bashing”. It is all about accountability and justice. If you wish to defend US actions in Iraq - which was nothing less than godfatherly agression - by claiming somehow that they wish to invoke ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ in the middle east, then you are going to get your fair share of detractors who show how utterly inconsistent this is with US foreign policy. I have spelled out a few of the exceptions; there are dozens of other examples.
I could have discussed in more detail how direct and proxy US actions destroyed the Nicaraguan economy, turning a country that was deemed in 1984 by the Inter American Development Bank to be a “Model for Latin America” into the second poorest in the western hemisphere (after another US clieant, Haiti), with one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the world. Nicaragua’s crime? Ousting a corrupt regime (the brutal Somosza dictatorship) and daring to embrace revisionist measures that were nationalistic, rather than subservient to US investors. Ths is why George Schultz made his famopus remark that the US had to “Cut out the cancer in Central America, and that cancer is Nicaragua”.
I am in now way disagreeing with you that nations almost without exception act in their ow selfish national interests (wich in the devloped world means bolstering the elites and the profits of the multinational corporations they own). But when members of the Bush junta claim to be waging en endless war around the world in support of ‘democracy’, I feel physically sick. You may believe this utter nonsense, as do most of the corporate media in the US, who rehash it time and time and time again. But in a poll conducted in Iraq last year, an almost invisible 1% believed that the US invasion was conducted primarily in “support of democracy”. Why the vast discrepanacy between the US media and Iraqi people? Perhaps they know something that our media don’t?
As far as Turkey is concerned, certainly I condemn their government. But its remarkable to let the S off the hook, because it supplies the country with many of the arms that are used to do the killing and repressing. Or does ‘complicity’ not count in your lexicon of crimes?
Finally, I am equally critical of UK policy (speaking as British citizen), because Blair and his gang of plutocrats have thrown in their lot with unfettered US power. I am fed up with the west claiming the moral high ground with respect to human rights and democracy while our so-called elected representatives are involved in policies that are creating carnage and misery across vast swathes of the planet. Fact is, and Bill Blum is correct, the biggest rogue state on Earth at the moment is the US. This is hardly controversial. I would read up on some of the aims of he Project for the New American Century, as well as Bush’s “Grand Imperial Strategy” which are clear blueprints for US global economic and miltary domination. Again, only a blind person could ignore the ramifications of the current objectives of the DC gang and its junior clients (including the the UK). Ray McGivern was an intelligence agent in the CIA for 27 years; he recalls that many close to current Bush administration (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Abrams, Feith, Libby, Bennett, Perle etc. etc. ) were routinely known as “the crazies” in diplomatic circles in the 1990’s, because their aims were so nakedly transparent and extreme. But now, as McGovern argues, these people are in the highest echelons of US government. We should all be scared….
September 19th, 2005 at 10:07 pm
If you wish to defend US actions in Iraq - which was nothing less than godfatherly agression - by claiming somehow that they wish to invoke ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ in the middle east, then you are going to get your fair share of detractors who show how utterly inconsistent this is with US foreign policy.
Do you similarly oppose any funding for building flood defences in New Orleans , because that would be inconsistent with US domestic policy?
soru
September 19th, 2005 at 11:52 pm
Soru,
Please don’t make such utterly fatuous comments… What has the attack on Iraq - which has so far cost the US taxpayer around 200 billion dollars, destroyed the civilian infrastructure of an areadfy crioppled nation and increased the global threat of terrorism - got to do with domestic policy, except that it has starved the US treasury of funds that would have otherwise been available for disaster relief? Considering the levels of poverity and social deprivation in which many American citizens are trapped, its a crime that such a massive amount of money has been wasted on economic wars that are aimed at benefitiing the privileged few.
September 19th, 2005 at 11:57 pm
Jeff:
“Considering the levels of poverity and social deprivation in which many American citizens are trapped”.
Have you visted the US recently, ever? Just curious.
September 20th, 2005 at 12:21 am
Joe,
Yes I have - I worked in Madison (WI) for two years, where I did postdoctoral research (1997-99). I also drove across the country by car in 2001, giving lectures at Princeton and Stanford Universities during each ends of the visit.
I want to make it clear - there’s a lot of wealth in America - and a lot of poverty. Since levels of poverty have increased some 17% in the US under Bush’s watch, its clear that the current policies of his government, such as massive tax cuts for the rich (under the guise of “economic security) are aimed at further redistribuition of wealth from the poor to the rich. This is mirrored in the foreign policy of his administration.
Paul Street, a writer based in Chicago, whose office is located in one of the city’s poorest districts, comments in his excellent book, “Empire and Inequality”, on the ‘myth of the powerless state’. He argues that governments can always find the money they need to wage wars that primarly benefit the elites, whereas they always claim to be lacking the funds necessary to help the poor (both at home and abroad). George Monbiot is also correct when he claims that the Bush and Blair governments have spent so much money killing people, that they haven’t got much left for saving them.
September 20th, 2005 at 6:09 am
Jeff Harvey be speaking the truth, mateys!
Yar, it’s “speak like a pirate day”, so be fillin up with rum and good times before ye be run through with a cutlass!
September 20th, 2005 at 8:20 am
Regarding soru’s comment:
The connection between hurricane damage and Federal spending priorities is more than abstract. In 1995, the US Army Corps of Engineers was chartered in the SELA project with improving southeast Louisiana’s coastal defenses. In recent years, that effort had slowed to a crawl:
September 20th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
Jeff:
It seems we have two very different countries here. I never saw the grinding poverty you seemed to have witnessed. City, state and federal relief works out to about US$20,000 a year. Sure that below the US poverty line now running at about $25,000. But it’s hardly the grinding poverty you would see in the worst situations around the world. Are you sure you aren’t confusing things with Mexico?
September 20th, 2005 at 4:42 pm
New Orleans is a particularly poor city.
“One of every four New Orleans families lives below the federal poverty level ($19,000 annual cash income for a family of four in 2005), compared with about one in 10 nationally.”
news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/worl…
That’s about 100,000 people living below $20K per family, or $9k for a single. For the non-Americans in the crowd, by comparison, my rent last year (which hadn’t been raised in over ten years) was $8k by itself. So we’re talking poooooor. The sad thing is that in those parts, the rural poor are much worse off even than the urban poor.
September 20th, 2005 at 6:48 pm
Z,
Thanks for the valuable feedback. What Joe ignores is that the division between the wealthy and poor in the US is the largest in the developed world. Some 300 towns in Mississippi lack basic sanitation. John Pilger sums it uop in his latest New Statesman article: “As if by accident, the American media, which is the legitimising arm of corporate public relations, reported the truth. For a few days, a selective group of liberal newspaper readers were told that poverty had risen an amazing 17 per cent under Bush; that an African-American baby born within a mile of the White House had less chance of surviving its first year than an urban baby in India; that the United States was now ranked 43rd in the world in infant mortality, 84th for measles immunisation and 89th for polio; that the world’s richest oil company, ExxonMobil, would make 30 billion dollars in profits this year, having received a huge slice of the 14.5 billion dollars in ‘tax breaks’ which Bush’s new energy bill guarantees his elite cronies”.
There are many other indicators that can be used to highlight the division between the poor and wealthy in the US, which is the largest in the developed world. A mere 1% of then population controls 47% of the country’s wealth. This is abominable.
.
To recite the chapter by Paul Street in his book, Empire and Inequality, we are very often told that, with respect to grinding poverty, the state is “helpless” and that there is insufficient money to alleviate, let alone eliminate poverty. But when a war is deemed important, usually in support of elite interests, the money magically appears.
Joe, I suggest you drive through some of the poverty-ridden shanty towns in the south, or the ghettoes of Chicago and Detroit, and then expound upon the American dream. I’ve driven the United States coast to coast, including the deep south, and seen both sides of the divide.
September 20th, 2005 at 8:16 pm
Z:
Tim are you ready with this headline.
PILGER”S CRAZED FABRICATIONS.
Z, if you want the low down of US poverty I suggest you head to this site- The US Census Bureau www.census.gov/hhes/www/p… where you will get a better picture on US poverty. Relying on Pilger is like relying on Gallaway to tell the truth.
Oh if we were poor, (my kids both raised in the US) would have been immunzed free.
September 20th, 2005 at 8:39 pm
sorry:
this site to be exact
www.census.gov/hhes/www/p…
September 20th, 2005 at 8:49 pm
Joe,
You make me laugh. You are doing exactly what the political right have become famous for over many years. With those with whom you disagree, you feebly attempt to smear them as being lunatics, irrespective of their experience. John Pilger is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, and has lived and written from Iraq, Viet Nam, the US and many other countries. His journalistic skills are outstanding. Just last year he was awarded the prestigious Sophie Prize (along with 100,000 dollars) for his courage and bravery as a journalist. But because he writes things that don’t agree with your conservative (or, shall I more aptly say, one-sided) worldview, you deem him a fanatic. I am sure that other esteemed critics of western foreign policies are tarred by you with the same brush: Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky, Gary Leupp, Paul Street, Tom Engelhardt, Jonathon Schell, Norman Solomon, John Stauber, Mark Curtis, Robert Fisk, George Monbiot, Gore Vidal etc. etc. Because these people destroy accredited myths, you must feel threatened by them, hence your response is something I fully expected. Pilger was citing certified statistical facts in his most recent article, not conjecture.
Yet you probably think so-called liberals like Chris Hitchens and Tom Friedman are ‘moderates’ whose polemics make sense. Friedman is a continual apologist for US state power; he argued in the NY Times a few years ago that “the US should bomb [Iraq] over and over and over again”, and, with respect to the Yugoslav-Kosovo conflict, that “we need to give war a chance”. So long as the US is pulling the trigger, he supports military action all the way. These are the so-called voices of the ‘respectable left’. The comments pages of US papers are also full of comments from the ‘radical right’: scribes lke Charles Krauthamer, William Safire, George Will and others who are constantly going on about the wonders of US military migght and humanitarian intervention. I wait with baited breath to see you writing how crazy these people are.
Fact is, Joe, your views are insular and narrow. Instead of responding to what journalists like Pilger say, you are reduced to the childish act of ridiculing them, but not their words. You are a perfect example of someone who really must believe the black and white world of GW Bush and his neocon junta. Richard falk had you described to a tee when he talked about the one-way moral/legal screen with which many in the west are conditioned by their corporate media to see the world.
Lastly, Joe, what do you think of John Bolton? Paul Wolfowitz? Douglas Feith? Richard Perle? Or any of the neocons Ray McGovern dsaid were collectively known as the “crazies” who now hod the reins of power in the US?
September 20th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
Joe,
Before you crow about the US census bureau data you provided, you should realize that there are several definitions of poverty. The Wikipedia web site discusses these:
Poverty in the United States
September 20th, 2005 at 9:06 pm
Joe,
You should also read this:
www.aecf.org/kidscount/kc…
Poverty rates for children inthe US are the highest in the developed world. Most other developed nations don’t even come close.
September 20th, 2005 at 10:27 pm
Jeff:
Did you read the report. It’s pretty extensive. It may even help Pilger next time he “writes’about US poverty”.
Thanks for writing all that stuff there is quite a lot I need to chew on. Thanks.
By the way does Chomsky still deny Pol Pot killed 1/3 of the Cambodian population because he was quoted as saying the Khmer Rouge slaughter never happened.
September 21st, 2005 at 12:54 am
Joe C:
I fail to see where the U.S. census bureau statistics on poverty directly contradict anything that Pilger said. Would you care to elaborate?
I don’t think there is any serious debate about the basic fact that poverty in the U.S. is, by many different measures, worse than any other (or almost any other) First World nation. If you have any evidence that contradicts this, I’d be interested to see it.
September 21st, 2005 at 1:39 am
Joel
A poor person in Atlanta lives better than a middle class Frenchman. And Atlanta is a middling sate when it comes to the other 49.
Consumption figures attest to this. And please don’t give me the health care crap. It really gets tiring to refute.
Prove that wrong.
September 21st, 2005 at 2:27 am
I don’t have any close experience with New Orleans myself, but Baltimore is similar in many ways to New Orleans, but not quite as bad. Hospitals there see poor people (invariably black, of course, this being the urban poor of the Southern US), who have lived their lives completely “off the grid”. No social security number, no bank account, no medical insurance, no credit cards, never had a “real” job, never had an address with the post office, never had a telephone number, no medical records, no driver’s license, just ghosts, if you will. They show up at the hospital at advanced ages when they finally get some kind of medical problem with which they can’t deal themselves, baffled and completely at a loss as to what to do. (Ironic that this is the dream lifestyle of the fear-of-government rightwingnuts).
“Learned helplessness” and similar reactions to being screwed all their lives can’t be ignored as a factor in the thinking of the poverts. The news post-Katrina was saying that when helicopters came to rescue people trapped on rooftops, some of them were reluctant to accept the rescue, and asked what the charges would be, because they were worried that they couldn’t afford it. The sad thing is that they’re not entirely off base in their worries. Certainly the national swing to the right is aimed at getting these people to “help themselves” in various ways and “off the government teat”. All the high-minded rightwing philosophizing about how it’s immoral for the government to confiscate their money to aid somebody else, etc.
If you go to the New Haven courthouse small claims court, you can sit through a whole morning of Yale-New Haven Hospital filing suit against various poor folks to get recompensed for the “free” medical services which the rightwingers believe the urban poor are reveling in. The hospitals are very aggressive about pursuing such cases. The local papers recently were focusing on such practices as the hospitals actually seizing people’s homes and evicting them, not to mention cases where they had merely garnished minimum wage workers’ wages for years to repay a bill of $8,000 or similar (with an exorbitant rate of compound interest tacked on, of course).
The cause of this, in turn, is that the state government (itself impoverished) is not exactly freely dishing out reimbursement for these “free” cases, and demands that the hospitals play Simon Legree; then when it hits the papers, the same legislators who enacted the budget cuts go on record as being shocked, shocked mind you, that the hospitals would treat our citizens so shabbily.
Meanwhile, the insurance companies use their size to bargain with the hospitals for reimbursement rates that are actually below the cost to the hospital, and have full time legal staff who have to fill their eight hours a day fighting over any billing that they deem worth fighting over. And the state fights to avoid paying as well. So naturally, the hospitals find it more attractive to hunt mice for food rather than wolves, to coin a metaphor.
It’s not just the lack of money that’s the issue with poverty; it’s the cumulative effect of years of powerlessness and getting repeatedly screwed. Again, ironic that the right wing seems to be more concerned about the tragic injustice of the deserving recipient of a $100 million inheritance who has to make do with only $80 million net after “death taxes”, to use their colourful idiom.
September 21st, 2005 at 2:45 am
“And please don’t give me the health care crap. It really gets tiring to refute. Prove that wrong.”
Well, what do you think is the meaning of an infant mortality rate for black Americans of 13.9, overall, not just the urban poor? 7.1 overall for the US? 17.2 for blacks in the capitol of your nation? 13.8 for blacks in Georgia (home of Atlanta, for Nonmericans) and 8.7 overall for Georgia, versus 4.7 for France, that being the comparison you have chosen? www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/…
www.cia.gov/cia/publicati…
Do Georgians and/or blacks just not come from particularly healthy stock compared to the French? Or is it your impression that the American poor are all getting lots of health care, it’s just really bad health care compared to the French? “A poor person in Atlanta lives better than a middle class Frenchman”, just not in the sense of his or her children surviving infancy?
September 21st, 2005 at 3:45 am
Re: Comment #66
Joe C. said: “By the way does Chomsky still deny Pol Pot killed 1/3 of the Cambodian population because he was quoted as saying the Khmer Rouge slaughter never happened.”
You’ll have to source this little slander. I’m sure Chomsky never said that the Khmer Rouge slaughter never happened.
September 21st, 2005 at 6:10 am
Joe C: I really don’t know what to say to someone who honestly believes that the quality of life of a poor person in the inner cities of the U.S. is better than a middle class Frenchman. Have you actually travelled outside the U.S. to other First World countries?
September 21st, 2005 at 9:31 am
“…the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot…”
Noam Chomsky, “Manufacturing Dissent”, 1993
A discussion of Chomsky’s various statments regarding the Khmer Rouge can be found here.
www.mekong.net/cambodia/c…
September 21st, 2005 at 11:26 am
Ian:
You are either obfuscate or ignorant. Noamy boy said that earlier. Go take a look. Do you carry around Noams books everwhere you go? Wow! That’s true dedication.
Joel :
You just keep honking to that old line religion (lefty dogma) and ignore everything else. Let’s go through this again. The US poverty rate is considered to be below $25,000. Support supplements through the city, state and Feds rise to the surface when someone falls below $us 21,ooo.
Median income in the US is US$44,000 according to the Bureau. Median income in France is around US$23,000. Considering that the cost of living in the US is much less than that of France. One could say with a reasonable amount of confidence that the average poor folk in Atlanta, Georgia lives better than the average frog.
I don’t know why you guy get so upset with these numbers, go check them out.
September 21st, 2005 at 12:44 pm
Joe C:
The reason we are so upset with the numbers is that we have first-hand experience to go on so we know that your statement is utterly ridiculous! Your claims fail a simple “sanity check”. Another “sanity check” they fail is looking at various other measures of wellbeing such a child mortality rates and so forth. In short, you are living in your own little fantasy world, as is true of many of your conservative breathren here in the U.S.
I don’t know exactly what is wrong with all of your facts since you state them without cites. But I will note that if you look at the 2004 U.S. Census Bureau poverty threshholds (www.census.gov/hhes/pover…), then in fact the figure starts at $9060 for a single adult 65 years or older and goes up from there as you add household members. You have to get to 6 household members before you get up to a $25000 threshhold.
Furthermore, cross-national comparisons of this kind have to be done very carefully, looking at average household size and the like. And, despite your glib claim that the cost of living is much lower here than in France, there are in fact factors involving medical care that have to be factored into the equation.
Furthermore, there are all the quality of life factors that come into play with concentrated poverty in the U.S., e.g., a dangerous living environment, pathetic schools, etc., etc.
I have not met anyone who has lived in both the U.S. and another First World country who has not been shocked by the extremes of poverty that one sees in the U.S. In fact, many of them are hesitant to call the U.S. a First World country on the basis of this. Are all of these people just deceived…and you and your conservative buddies, many who have not even visited let alone lived in another country are the only ones who know the truth? Give me a break!
September 21st, 2005 at 7:26 pm
“You are either obfuscate or ignorant.”
If only all my (would-be) disputants went to such lengths to make me look good by comparison.
Someone with greater patience than I might want to explain to Joey-boy the concept of links.
September 21st, 2005 at 9:01 pm
Very late in this conversation however when I started reading the posts I was reminded of George Gittoes next project that I heard about on Hack. He is the director of “Soundtrack to War” about the music soldiers in Iraq played while in battle.
Anyway this statement was the genesis for his new project “Soundtrack To War: America”
“Gittoes is entirely unaffected. “It was interesting to me that some of these street fighter type guys like Elliot could go out and do three missions a day, yet were able to relax and rap. You could see there was no depression and no crying. Most of the soldiers in the American army are just stressed and you can see they are psychologically damaged by the war. Not Elliot. So I asked: ‘How come you are so clear?’ He said, ‘Because to me the army is safety. It’s much more dangerous where I come from back in Miami.’ And I decided that the next film would be about his life in Miami, in the projects.” Thus the concept for the sequel Soundtrack To War: America was born.”
This perhaps gives some idea of how the poorer people in the USA live.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:30 pm
Okay, Joe C. so then since you refuse to support your Chomsky statement we can then just lay it to rest as either a mistake on your part or an untruth.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:47 pm
Joe c Says:
September 21st, 2005 5:18 am
Ian:
Go take a look at your link. Did you even bother to read it? It’s a damning critique on your buddy, Chomsky. The link asserts that (your buddy) Chomsky began to change his tune when the evidence became irrefutable. Thanks; I’d never seen that piece and it was a good a good read. Is Chomsky the guy who also sucked up to a French holocaust denier? As I said in another piece, the left wants to show off its mad uncles and aunts.
For all you other religious types out there, I would suggest you get your teeth into this link written by a Swedish consulting firm… www.timbro.com/euvsusa/pd…vsUSA_English.pdf. And do yourselves a favour if you want to trash America do it where facts can be obfuscated and where hard evidence cannot support religious dogma.
That stuff about the GI insinuating Miami is more dangerous than Iraq (war zone) is laughable. The guy was obviously pulling the writer’s leg and fallen for it hook line and sinker.Ian, one other thing. I think you need to address the rubbish you wrote about Niger and the failure of markets as it clearly requires correction. Subsistence level existence does not demonstrate market failure. It demonstrates your lack of understanding of the very topic you studied. I would therefore suggest you spend a little time revising your knowledge on this before you graduate to Chomsky and American poverty, which you clearly know nothing about other than reading nonsense, which you then help spread.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:53 pm
Ian one other thing. It’s a bit cheap to go around and use typos to trash someone. I suggest you take a look at some of he stuff you write, which I admit may contain less mistakes than mine but it does contain typos etc. Postings are conversational and not meant to be formal letters or assignments. If you can’t discern my intent then just ask and don’t be a smart alec. I really don’t want to waste time going through grammar. If you place that standard on me I suggest you ought take a look in the mirror.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:56 pm
Fanny Flanders
Pleas go read Ian Gould’s link. he was nice enough to provide a link for my argument about red Noam
September 21st, 2005 at 11:57 pm
Apologies.
The link is:
J F Beck Says:
September 22nd, 2005 at 12:34 am
Would anyone – TL refuses to answer me directly – care to explain who Hitchens slandered.
September 22nd, 2005 at 1:02 am
“crazed fabrication” kind of slanders a lot of people - those who did the study, those who refereed it, those who published it.. maybe those who believe it too.
A specific name - Juan Cole. HItchens said he didn’t speak Arabic. Given that Cole says he does, and his reputation depends on it, I would call that slander.
I haven’t found any point at which Hitchens has dealt with Cole’s refutation of this. Perhaps he thinks Cole is too unimportant. Kind of like running over a spider.
September 22nd, 2005 at 2:53 am
Juan Cole is not the sort of “academic” to use when attempting to refute slander.
Juan slandered the name of the journalist that was murdered in Basra a few months ago by leveling an unsubstantiated accusation that the victim was conducting an affair with his female Iraqi assistant. The murdered journalist was married. The victim’s real wife publicly wrote to Juan to inform him that her husband was not conducting an affair: that he was merely attempting to arrange a show marriage and get the assistant out of Iraq.
Cole excused the murder by arguing journalist was not obeying the honor customs found in a “mediterranean” country like Iraq. Not only did Cole slander the murdered journalist and excused the murder, he also got the geography wrong.
Cole is a creep, and a slanderer who cannot even point to Iraq on a map.
I suggest you try again.
September 22nd, 2005 at 3:37 am
Okay, Joe, I read the link. Nowhere there does it say that Chomsky made a claim that the Khmer Rouge slaughter never happened. Are you maybe attributing something to Chomsky that he never said?
September 22nd, 2005 at 4:53 am
Joe C,
Even if the things you say about Cole are all true (I know that some of them are false and therefore see no reason to trust you on the others), they have no bearing on Cole’s knowledge of Arabic. It’s a red herring.
September 22nd, 2005 at 6:51 am
Interesting example of the cognitive style of the right:
Firstly, the frequently seen response to a critique of a “friendly” source by an attack on a prominent member of the opposition (most frequently Bill Clinton, and/or his penis). Thus, in the middle of a discussion of Hitchens’ veracity, Joe C.: “By the way does Chomsky still deny Pol Pot killed 1/3 of the Cambodian population because he was quoted as saying the Khmer Rouge slaughter never happened.”
(Said quote or other reference to same not given)
Ian Gould provides opposing quote, and link: “…the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot…” Noam Chomsky, “Manufacturing Dissent”, 1993
Joe c, obligatory knee jerk insult before bothering to investigate the content (see below): “You are either obfuscate [sic] or ignorant. Noamy boy said that earlier. Go take a look.”
Followed by an insult to Ian for doing his homework: “Do you carry around Noams [sic] books everwhere you go? Wow! That’s true dedication”
Joe c, after actually following the link (small praise to Joe for taking that much trouble): “Go take a look at your link. Did you even bother to read it? It’s a damning critique on your buddy, Chomsky. The link asserts that (your buddy) Chomsky began to change his tune when the evidence became irrefutable.”
Ah, the smokiing gun; the man actually changed his mind, when the evidence against his position became irrefutable! Something alien and frightening to the rightwing mindset.
So, we see the hallmarks of the rightwing forensic style: major reliance on insulting of the opposition and character attacks rather than content, and sticking to the message at all costs no matter what the evidence. Thus, the argument tends to deviate from what might be considered “normal” process of logical deduction beginning with points of fact, and instead takes off into a deadpan version of Monty Python’s Argument Clinic. Since the nuttier you are the better at this kind of thing you tend to be (no compromise, no admission of possible error, no consideration of any possibility of validity for the opposition, unshakable conviction that the opposition is not dealing in good faith, but is deliberately lying for Evil Purpose) the rightwingnut gains in the process. This has been the pattern overall in the current right/left Bushie/reality-based-community debate on the grand scale. The righties time and again succeed in shifting the debate from examination of the factual inaccuracy of their premises and the media follows along, a violent shouting match being much better press than a boring academic examination of detail. Until the left learns to successfully keep the debate on track, the right will continue to lead the ignorant around by their adrenals.
Therefore, to return the Chomsky subdebate onto a factual footing: Cambodia was closed to outside observers. 1975 marks the peak period of the atrocities. The first indications of such appeared in the Western media in 1977. Quotes of Chomsky from 1977 through 1979 indicate a reluctance at the time to lend these initial reports credence, although it ironically takes the form of attacking the motives of the media doing the reporting (see above) and obfuscating about the difficulty of doing accurate reporting in such a society closed off from the outside world. (Even after getting remedial research assistance Joe. c still hasn’t provided us with an example of Chomsky actually denying mass killing). By 1979 Chomsky is already starting to admit to hundreds, perhaps even thousands of deaths. (Compare to the Bushies’ current attitude towards Iraqi casualties). Jump forward 15 years, Chomsky has Changed His Mind After Seeing A Lot Of Evidence!!, which oddly enough is somehow not a Good Thing, but rather further evidence against his character, already in question for being wrong before he saw the evidence. However; Chomsky does appear to distance himself now from his early, inaccurate assessments of the situation. Ha! The bastard! Clear evidence of a character flaw; certainly no prominent rightwinger would fail to admit his initial errors of judgement!
September 22nd, 2005 at 7:35 am
“The US poverty rate is considered to be below $25,000. Support supplements through the city, state and Feds rise to the surface when someone falls below $us 21,ooo.
Median income in the US is US$44,000 according to the Bureau. Median income in France is around US$23,000. Considering that the cost of living in the US is much less than that of France. One could say with a reasonable amount of confidence that the average poor folk in Atlanta, Georgia lives better than the average frog.
I don’t know why you guy get so upset with these numbers, go check them out.”
Sheesh. Check them out indeed. It’s too bad the source for them is inacceswsible to us, being rather far upstream in your lower digestive tract.
Luckily, “This was done to death in the blogosphere a couple of years ago, but it’s obviously time for another go.” johnquiggin.com/index.php…
“The EIU reports that French median household income for 2004 was $US42,451.” johnquiggin.com/index.php…
eb.eiu.com/index.asp?layo…
Joe says $23,000.
Median family size in France, 2.4. johnquiggin.com/index.php… Poverty level in US for a family of 2.4, (thanks Joel Shore for the link hint hint Joe), give the US the benefit of the doubt, call it 2 people and one child… $15,205. So in contrast to the rectally extracted $23k middle class French vs. $21k-$25k American povert figures living in Joe’s world, we have more reliably sourced $42K vs. $15k, respectively. It’s starting to look doubtful that our hypothetical Homeless of Atlanta are living that much better than Mr. French Bourgeoisie, on 1/3 the income per capita, even if “the cost of living in the US is much less than that of France”. Given Joe’s track record thus far, I wouldn’t pin my hopes on that statement.
But wait; there’s more! The French get what, a month of vacation time? 6 weeks? give the US the benefit of the doubt again, call it a month. That’s two more weeks in the French work year, basically; whether he or she spends them on a second income or on leisuring, it still constitutes an approximate 4% boost. And we’re not finished yet; last time I had to pay my own healthcare (18 months ago) it was $500 a month here for a reasonably healthy not hyper-aged person, that’s $6k a year from an American’s per capita income. The French spend 10% of their GNP on healthcare, ezraklein.typepad.com/blo…carefra.html that works out to $3500 a year per capita. eb.eiu.com/index.asp?layo…, $2500 per capita advantage to the French.
Well, looks grim for your argument, Joe. I don’t know why you get so upset with these numbers, go check them out.
September 22nd, 2005 at 12:19 pm
Z apologies for the link problem. Here it is again.
www.timbro.com/euvsusa/
Go to the bottom and download it. It’s on Adobe.
What’s damning in this report(about European per capita income) is that that authors argue that most European countries with the exception of Lux and Swit. would not make it with the top 45 states.
Please! You are now using Quiggin as a source! This is the guy who is suggested we re-nationalize Telstra. Ah! Hello! Hello! John. Nationalization was tried in the forties and fifties around the world failed. I am afraid Quiggin is not exactly a person who would qualify as a unbiasd researcher.
It seems from the above link US poor are a little behind middle class Europeans in Broadband access. As for your assertions that Europeans love their time off from work. Well they may but judging by the time they spend washing dishes ( very little use of dishwashers) and putting clothes out on a hoist (even less use of clothes dryers) they don’t have much time for anything else. Or rather, they need the time off for these sorts of tasks.
The French per capita income is not $42,000. It’s $us 23,000 on a straight Dollars basis without paying attention to PPP. Read the link. Also I would suggest you avoid references to Quiggin when talking about economics. He gets his research from Brad Delong and Paul Krugman.
see CIA link for per capita income.
On a purchasing power basis the CIA link says France is US $28,000 www.cia.gov/cia/publicati…. The US is US$40,000 www.cia.gov/cia/publicati….
PPP is a far more accurate meausure than straight Dollars.
September 22nd, 2005 at 5:15 pm
I followed your links Joe, and the figures you quote as per capita income are actually GDP per capita. Even to an economic illiterate like me they aren’t the same thing.
By the way, this post is about Christopher Hitchens criticisms of the Lancet Iraq study, yet here we are, some 90 responses later, debating the relative merits of poverty in the US and middle class incomes in France. One of the measures of a troll is how far they are able to take things off topic. Well done, you’re a champion.
September 22nd, 2005 at 6:01 pm
Zoot
But what’s your opinion? Yes I did make a mistake by mixing income with GDP. Glad you caught that, although it makes no real difference in terms of the spread between the countries. In fact let me restate that. It does make a difference by my reckoning and the spread would widen between the US and France. The reason is the US which maintains a much, much lower tax threshold than socialist France and therefore take home pay is higher. Thanks for bring that up.
You can feel free to call me a troll any time you like as I don’t give a crapola. But it seems it does to you. Voting, like you have in the past as to who is right or wrong is a troll like thing to do specially when you don’t present an opinion.
You didn’t on this thread either, although you voted again.
September 22nd, 2005 at 6:29 pm
Zoot:
When you say this:
I didn’t raise the issue of US poverty first up. It was Jeff Harvery where he said this:
Considering the levels of poverity and social deprivation in which many American citizens are trapped, its a crime that such a massive amount of money has been wasted on economic wars that are aimed at benefitiing the privileged few.
Sure you read the thread? Oh, that would need an opinion and you are just a lollipop guy, right.
September 22nd, 2005 at 10:18 pm
Another problem with GDP per capita is that it is a measure of the mean, not median. The average income in the U.S. is very skewed. Almost all of the gains in the last 30 years has been made at the high end. This has caused the average (mean) income to rise at a healthy rate while the median income has not risen very much. The median is a much better indication of how well the “average person” lives. An illustration of that is the observation that in a room consisting of 19 homeless people and Bill Gates, the “average person” in the sense of mean (but not median) income is a billionaire!
September 22nd, 2005 at 11:18 pm
Joe,
Its amazing what one can do with statistics. The poverty rate in the US is about twice as high as in any other industrialized, developed country. Its mikles higher than in most Europena nations. Universal access to medicare is impossible. A population the size of Canada’s (or even slightly more) in the US lives in chronic poverty. And yet, whenever the US government needs the money for one of its imperialistc adventures abroad or in support of the establishment, it always gets it.
September 22nd, 2005 at 11:20 pm
Joel:
I would like to explain something to you that may even make sense and hopefully will stimulate further study by you and others on this subject.
It may be very hard to believe but people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do not have a large income. Hell, its not hard to have a fatter salary than Warren . WB receives a salary of around 100K per year. At one stage, last time I looked, Bill Gates was getting around 600k per year. Big but no means enormous.
Their secret to immense wealth is they are able to use tax free compunding on their stock holding which have grown expontentially over the years.
The real disparity between rich and poor over the last 20 years has been whether or not you had a stock portfolio which contained good stocks that didn’t pay a dividend and therefore enjoyed tax free compounded gains.
A good example of this is. A former work colleague was working for Citibank in the early 90’s; at a time when the bank looked like it was going under. The bank started to pay bonuses in stock during those years because they litteraly couldn’t pay out money. This guy received stock between $9 and $11 per share over the course of 3 years. As it was restricted stock he couldn’t sell before 5 years. The stock price eventually went to $180 per share and he had a net worth or around $50 mill. Wealth, real wealth was created in the stock market in the US. Hence the disparity.
Income is another story. The major reason wages have remained quite low at the bottom of the poll is because of the illegals problem no party is prepared to face up to. This is the tragic consequence of taking a negligent approach to managing the countries borders. There area an estimated 11 million illegals in the US that help create the environment for low pay at the low skilled level.
You are right that GDP is not a great way of making comparisons. However it is for the moment the best readily availbable measure we have. There are better ways of looking at relativities between countries. That’s by looking at consumption stats for readily used goods and services like telphones, computers (now), mobiles, cars etc.
If you look at the link I provided it shows that US poor have by and large a very high standard of living by world standards. They seem to have all the mod-cons.
Another mistake people make is to look at US poor and compare them to say the French or Germans as a whole. As the US is a large regionally based country it is wrong say to compare France and the US. In other words it is wrong to compare a Parisian to someone living in Alabama. A Parisian ought to be compared to say a Manhattanite. Someone from say Alabama ought to be compared to a poor person living in Portugal.
Poverty is also a relative concept. So when someone tells me there are a lot of poor people in the US. The proper question to ask is compared to whom. If the answer is Canadians then the questions should be which Canadians.
The best thing that could be done for the American poor is to deport the illegals. Incidently this is a point Hillary looks like she may run with.
September 22nd, 2005 at 11:41 pm
Jeff:
Yes you are right the poverty rate in the US is around 12% comapared to France at 6%. (See CIA fact sheet the link for which was provided earlier).
However, the employment rate in the US is 5% while it is running at around 11% in France. France is also carrying a social net that they will n