The A-Bomb
I'm T.A.-ing for a class on U.S. political policy post-1945, so we've spent the last agonizing weeks talking about the A-bomb. I say agonizing because how many lectures do you really need on the A-bomb? We've now had seven, plus readings for two weeks. Interesting fact that though there was very little opposition to the use of the A-bomb,. conservatives were the ones who overwhelmingly were horrified that it was used. Statistics cited by the prof:
Loss of life
In WWII, Americans 1:100,000; Japanese 1:1000
In Iraq war, Iraqis 1:500, Americans 1:100,000
I can't vouch for the accuracy of these statistics though, like most historians, he should be very concerned with facts being correct. He might have a weird interpretation of those facts but the facts themselves shouldn't be in dispute.
Loss of life
In WWII, Americans 1:100,000; Japanese 1:1000
In Iraq war, Iraqis 1:500, Americans 1:100,000
I can't vouch for the accuracy of these statistics though, like most historians, he should be very concerned with facts being correct. He might have a weird interpretation of those facts but the facts themselves shouldn't be in dispute.
posted by Jessica Somewhere in the States at 7:40 AM
7 Comments:
I'm glad to know it isn't only science professors that fail to mention their source material!
He's obviously not using the Lancet study from two years ago, because that one claimed 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. If Iraq's population is 27 million, that would make 1 civilian death per 270. (And obviously that denominator would have decreased over the following two years.)
Riverbend, an Iraqi blogger, thinks that 600,000 is not an unreasonable estimate and probably on the low end. That would make the ratio 1 civilian death per 45. (But her rhetoric in general tends to make me believe she isn't really analyzing the data in the cold hard way that reporting such numbers would require. She's a good resource for emotional responses to events in Iraq, but cold hard data is not her strong suit.)
My own best guess is that the prof is getting this estimate from Iraq Body Count which claims minimally 54,000 civilian deaths. That would be 1 death per 500. The IBC's maximum estimate is 1 death per 450.
It certainly would be interesting to compare the methods used post-WWII in Europe and Asia to estimate civilian deaths vs. the technology and procedures available now. I betcha we have the ability to be much more accurate now, and the ability to lie about it more easily too.
I don't know, lying is something politicians have done for centuries.
I understand that the body count for Hiroshima is between 110,000-340,000 and that is the best estimate out there. With such a high discrepancy in possible numbers, presumably one would like to think we have a better system these days.
But who knows?
I guess what I mean is statistical lying, as opposed to outright reversal of facts. The more data you have, the more finely it can be sieved to get the desired result; so, for example, while it is very likely that Iraq Body Count can distinguish between reports of deaths from US/British military strikes and car bombs set off by Baathists (who never had a great problem killing anyone they wanted prior to invasion), but as far as I can tell they don't do so. The same with the military lumping Al Qaeda bombings together with local kidnap-and-ransom gangs. Iraq Body Count gets to exaggerate the level of invasion-related deaths, and the military gets to exaggerate the level of foreign terrorists in Iraq. Iraq Body Count is, I believe, being deliberately disingenuous; the reasons for the military's count I think is not deliberate, it's just seeing anybody who causes them problems as "the enemy" and not really making much finer distinctions than that.
I certainly hope we don't have a reason in the near future to do any body counts in large cities hit by atomic weapons and compare modern methods with those of 1945. But if we do soon, my guess is it will be done either in Tehran or Tel Aviv.
That's a morbid thought.
Speaking of Tehran, I just finished an interesting book called Lipstick Jihad, written by a young Iranian woman who grew up in California, the daughter of two exiles from the 79 Revolution. She has a lot of interesting to say about the psychology of exile, as well as the pre-U.S.-Iraq-war culture of young people resisting the religious government imposed on Iran after the Revolution.
A year ago or so I read Reading Lolita in Tehran, which is a memoir about a women's book club during the time that Khomeini was consolidating power in Iran. Interesting how things changed for western-minded intellectuals during that time. Around the same time I read Stolen Lives, recommended by a mutual friend of ours. In both, I was struck by how completely uninterested western governments were in actually helping western-minded intellectuals bring about any sort of change. Seems about the same today.
Well, while I am convinced that certain countries need a change, I'm not at all convinced that that change needs or should come through western-minded individuals. I'm not at all sure that western-style values and political systems are the solution to problems in societies like Iran or Zimbabwe. In fact, I'm pretty sure our ideals AREN'T the solution--they work for us but each country needs to come up with its own internal solution. So... that also means I can't proffer an alternative. I have a hunch that a) without being an expert on the country's history & culture and b) without actually living there for at least several years, I don't have the right to suggest a possible solution.
Certainly every country I know anything about could use certain changes, and I agree that western-minded individuals can have the worst possible "solution" in mind. Still, from the purely cold-hearted perspective of power politics, it's interesting that Saudi Arabian Wahhabists feel that the United States could use a Wahhabist-style transformation and eagerly recruit and fund anyone they can to bring it about, while western governments feel much less inclined to support their like-minded compatriots in Saudi Arabia (as one example).
As to who can offer solutions, I think one of the most valuable aspects of cultural exchange is just seeing that other people view your solution as a real problem (and vice versa, sometimes)! Gives us all a chance for deeper reflection.
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