Nov 22 2004, 4:02 pm
In response to Gughunter
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HavenMaster
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There were around 400,000 Iraqis killed under Saddam, more than 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and Nagosaki put together.
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HavenMaster wrote:
There were around 400,000 Iraqis killed under Saddam, more than 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and Nagosaki put together. Yeah, but Saddam was in power for a long time. It would be interesting to see how many non-American civilians were killed by US forces over the same period of time. It wouldn't make it possible to compare the numbers side by side, but it'd definantly be interesting. | |
Actually, the numbers I have seen are closer to 600,000. However, that includes an estimated 500,000 who died in the wars against Iran. Saddam was in power for roughly 25 years. That translates to roughly 66 dead a day. But if we exclude casualties of war, the number drops to 11, which is probably a more accurate count.
And just FYI, IBC, a group tracking casualties in Iraq, puts Iraqi casualties at 14505 minimum (16662 max) with over 3000 identified. Less credible sources put it as high as 100,000, but represent extrapolitions and estimates rather than records. By the more credible numbers, with approximately 2 years in Iraq that translates to 20-23 dead per day, well below Saddam's average per day with the Iranian war but double his non-war average. Our own casualties in Iraq (1228, 8956 wounded) average about 2 per day. Finding information about civilian casualties caused by the US for the last 25 years is a bit more involved, since it would include military actions dating back to 1979. That would include Granada, Panama, Nicaragua, maybe Honduras, the War on Drugs, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq I, etc. For reference, though, the US has about 37,000 traffic fatalities every year, or about 100 per day. So, apparently, cars are more dangerous than war or Saddam Hussein! | |
Let's face it- Hiroshima was justifiable, because it makes GREAT TV!
Man I love those mushroom clouds. | |
You have to take into account the ratio of people driving cars in the united states to the ratio of people living in iraq, total. You might be surprised.
http://www.nationbynation.com/Iraq/Population.html According to that page, in 2002 Iraq had a population just over 24 million. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html According to this page, the use population as of its latest census is ~293 million. Their age structure shows 66% of the population is between 15 and 64 years of age, about 200 million people. Lets suppose half of that middle age group drives(imo a conservative number). That is 37,000 deaths over 25 years = 925,000 deaths total out of 100,000,000 people. 600,000 dead by saddam(war or himself) out of 24 million people. By my estimate you have less than a 1% chance of dying while driving a car, while you have a 2.5% chance of dying while living in Iraq. What would you rather do then? Live in Iraq, or drive a car? EDIT: This was probably completely irrelevent and half wrong, but I felt like over-analyzing something. | |
You have more of a 2.5% chance, 'cause it's not safety in numbers in Iraq- you're loaded down with guns, weaponry, and the enemy are LOOKING for you.
In a car, unless the other guy is insane, that's not the case. | |
Well I believe I made a pretty strong case against living in Iraq without technicalities :P
Anyway, That was living in Iraq under Hussein, not current. | |
Good point; the US is much larger than Iraq, so per capita deaths would be different.
BUT you would have to break the 600,000 dead over 24 years to compare it to a yearly population figure. That's 25000 a year, or about .1% of the population. Compared with .01% for US driving casualties (no need to restrict for age since any age can be passengers). So it would appear per capita, Saddam was about 10 times as dangerous as driving. | |
Kholint wrote:
Let's face it- Hiroshima was justifiable, because it makes GREAT TV! You can watch mushroom clouds from the bomb tests. How can you justify the slaughter and suffering of thousands of innocent people just so you can see it on TV? How would you feel if it was YOUR city that got bombed? | |
According to http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html
This is accurate- Infant mortality rate: total: 6.63 deaths/1,000 live births I would think having .63 of your baby die would be pretty disturbing. | |
Artekia wrote:
I don't think you'd be able to feel anything, as you would probally be dead. Some people didn't die instantly. They might have suffocated under rubble, or died slowly from radiation poisoning. It's not pretty. | |
Not necessarily... if you're not close enough to the bomb when it explodes, you can get horrifically injured but not killed. And then, if you survive long enough, the acid rain starts, and if you don't know about acid rain (like the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't) then you might try to drink it or use it to clean your wounds... there are some chilling horror stories from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I say "close enough", but you really don't want to be ANYWHERE near a nuclear bomb when it goes off. Especially the more modern and powerful varieties. There is no justification for the use of nuclear weapons. Yes, it ended World War II, but there are some prices nobody should have to pay. | |
Crispy wrote:
Not necessarily... if you're not close enough to the bomb when it explodes, you can get horrifically injured but not killed. Yep, I don't know how atomic bombs stack up to other forms of warfare, but in war in general, the wounded will considerably outnumber the slain. There is no justification for the use of nuclear weapons. Yes, it ended World War II, but there are some prices nobody should have to pay. This is a question that will probably be debated as long as history remembers World War II -- or longer, because the question can always be scaled down to lesser bombs. The nature of a bomb is that it kills indiscriminately, which means that it's bound to kill non-combatants when deployed anywhere but an isolated military base. I've heard arguments that to defeat Japan by conventional means could have meant the deaths of up to a million American soldiers, and there is no question in my mind that American victory in that war was preferable to Japanese victory (considering not only my own considerable personal benefit from the outcome, but also the nature of the Japanese regime at the time); so by a purely utilitarian measure, it seems like the right decision, but then again, I don't believe utilitarian measures are foolproof. Still, the nature of America (and Western liberal democracies in general) is such that whenever possible, we would prefer not to kill civilians of the enemy population. Perhaps the ideal would have been to provide the Japanese with twenty-four hours' notice to evacuate the cities -- a scenario some have proposed with regard to Mecca and Medina if there are future large-scale terrorist attacks against the United States or other democracies. Even if we had given warning, though, there is no guarantee that the Japanese government would have allowed its citizens to make use of it (just as today there is no guarantee that a given government will allow foreign-aid food shipments to reach its populace), and it's especially hard to imagine that they would have gone along with it before the first bombing, when few people knew such a weapon was even theoretically possible. All that said, I admit that I know only the most basic facts about that part of history, and I could be all wrong. No doubt there are other forum visitors who can shed more light for or against the decision. | |
Spuzzum wrote:
2,917 Last I knew that number was actually an even 3,000. 5,000 Numbers always need to be understood in context; to display these two figures side by side is to ignore the fact that context matters a lot. Now to put that 5,000 figure in context, you have to understand that many of those deaths were caused by terrorists deliberately putting civilians in harm's way and sometimes killing them outright. A good example is that van full of women and children that drove straight at a checkpoint and was fired on, during the course of the major ground operations. It was discovered not too long after the fact that the Fedayeen (gads I hope I remembered how to spell that right), the nastiest bunch of Saddam's fighters--by which I do not mean the most effective--forced those people to drive at the checkpoint by holding their families hostage. So to cut that conservative figure to liberally estimate, from that, actual coalition-caused deaths, it's probably under 20-30% of that. For further context, compare to the number of innocents who were murdered routinely (and far more savagely) under the Ba'athist regime. In the same time frame of a year and a half, you'd be looking at about 10,000+ dead--and that's an extremely conservative figure for Saddam's death toll in that much time. Of course all this raises an interesting question as to how innocent civilians are actually counted. Namely, what's to stop an actual terrorist, or many, from being counted among them? It could well be that the civilian death toll is inflated with numbers that don't belong in it, or even that it may be counting foreign nationals. (I don't really think much inflation of this figure is likely though. There seems to be widespread agreement on it when exaggerated figures are culled out.) Excluding certain obvious hot zones like parts of Fallujah, foreign nationals such as Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis, Jordanians, Pakistanis, etc. have been one of the major sources of terrorist numbers in Iraq. Point is, you can easily draw a wrong inference from a number by not understanding its context (or its source). A corollary is that it's easy to make numbers lie by presenting them in a way that implies whatever you want. Focus people's attention onto two sets of numbers and tunnel vision can make them less mindful that those numbers are both a part of something bigger. The peddlers of these figures, especially the wildly enlarged fantasies like 100,000, have an ax to grind and prefer the kinds of numbers that further their point, even at the cost of fudging them a bit. Of course I'm not lodging an accusation against you or anything. I just think it's a useless comparison, and it's important to remember all the reasons why. Lummox JR | |
A very well thought out response, Gug. I applaud your willingness to look beyond the surface on this issue.
The truth is that these questions are never easy. Accounts of the time show that Truman struggled greatly with the situation and only chose the atomic route for fear of the staggering Amercican casualties that were likely with an invasion. Recent island battles such as Okinawa had shown how vicious the fighting became when the Japanese were defending their homelands. Worse, the nature of Japanese society (hundreds of years following a feudalistic warrior-caste system which viewed losers as below contempt) was such that the Emperor was god-like in stature and was to be followed to the death, making surrender or internal collapse highly unlikely. Indeed, even an atomic detonation didn't convince Hirohito to surrender, only a second detonation (which fooled the Japanese into believing we had more bombs and were willing to eradicate Japan entirely) secured a surrender. Some have suggested that surrender may have been obtained in other ways, but most of these are highly speculative and largely ignore cultural factors and previous behavior of the nations. The nuclear attack was simply the best of a lot of bad options. War is hell, as they say, and their was no easy solution. I think it important to remember that in context of continuing Japanese death marches, bizarre and cruel medical experimentation, torture, and prostitution the loss of civillian life was a necessary evil to prevent larger scale atrocities and losses both civilian and military. I think while the analysis of the use of atomic weaponry is interesting, far more disturbing was the internment of American citizens in concentration camps as well as denial of visas and refugee status to thousands of Jews, effectively signing their Nazi death warrant. Or the continuing segregation of blacks, including those on the battlefield, including denial of school and medical services. While the bomb was certainly a shocking and horrific event, it has never been repeated while these other examples represent disturbing trends that continue to this day. Witness the mass roundup of Arab-Americans into military prisons without any substantion or the involvment of American financial institutions in schemes that involved Nazi confiscated resources, or the continuing substandard position of minority groups to this day (look at health statistics or wealth distribution charts based on US govt. data). | |
You stated it perfectly...and then some.
*edit* "it" being exactly what I was thinking when I read this post. Woo hoo. | |