French Fertility Makes The Grade

I have noted before (as have many others) that Western Europe embodies the liberal ideal in just about every respect. In essence, they have already become what liberals in America want us to become as well. The result is economic stagnation and a fertility rate that falls well below the replacement rate, which means that Europe is increasingly dependent on immigrants to fund their generous social welfare state, and those immigrants are often Muslims, many of whom are not integrated into Western society and are therefore prone to being enticed by radical Islam.

Here is a chart that shows the fertility of European countries vs. America (details can be found in this post):


As you can see, Europe falls well below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies per woman, whereas America falls at about that replacement rate. France is an exception in that its fertility rate has been increasing and is now close to the replacement rate. They have accomplished that by offering amazing economic incentives to women (essentially bribing them to have babies), but let's give credit where credit is due:

The national statistics agency says that in 2006 France had the highest birthrate in Europe. The average number of births by women of fertile age was slightly more than two.

Thus France becomes one of the two European Union states with a positive birthrate; Ireland is the other. The contrast with their neighbors is very marked. Germany, Italy and Spain all have birthrates under 1.4. The rates in the new EU members, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and even Roman Catholic Poland, are below 1.3.

Good for France. But who is having all those babies? Is it mostly Muslim immigrants, which might not be a reason to celebrate, or is it instead indigenous French women? I can never find the relevant data no matter how hard I look, but this article briefly addresses the issue:

The increase in French births seems not to be disproportionately due to immigrant births, the conventional inference, but that the native-born are having more babies.

This can't be proven by statistics since, in the name of French "égalité," French statistics do not take account of race or national origin. But children are thick on the streets of the most prosperous quarters of Paris. The city's fashionable Luxembourg and Monceau gardens on Sundays are full of young families with double strollers and toddlers dashing about. My children's school friends are having three and four children — or more.

This is hardly convincing. Just because the anecdotal observations of this one individual suggest that ordinary French women are having more babies does not make it so. If I lived in France, I'd demand that the government figure out who is having all of those babies. It's not like it doesn't matter.

After all, the article also notes this:

There is irony in this, since the demagogic anti-immigration argument has been that immigrants come to Western Europe to take advantage of its generous social benefits. They actually are needed in the active labor force to keep welfare systems afloat.

Indeed, they are. The immigrants are coming to France so that French liberals can retire in luxury at the expense of their Muslim newcomers. But it is an unsustainable Ponzi scheme, and the immigrants are going to be the ones who lose out in the end:

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying abnormally high returns ("profits") to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from net revenues generated by any real business.
...
A Ponzi scheme usually offers abnormally high short-term returns in order to entice new investors. The high returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises (and pays) require an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going.

The system is doomed to collapse because there are little or no underlying earnings from the money received by the promoter.

The Muslims are the "new investors" in the European social welfare Ponzi scheme. Thus, one wonders if they are the ones having all of the babies.

You might wonder the same thing about America. Who is have all of those babies over here? Well, whoever it is, it's not marginalized Muslims. The ethnic fertility rates in America are hard to find, but I stumbled across some numbers here:


As you can see, the fertility rates of various ethnic groups are all pretty high and in the vicinity of 2.0, except that Hispanics are well above that. This is not necessarily great news because Hispanics are starting to have a lot of babies out of wedlock (which, empirically, turns out not to be a good thing).

In an interesting essay entitled Hispanic Family Values?, Heather Mac Donald makes these cogent observations:

Nearly half of the children born to Hispanic mothers in the U.S. are born out of wedlock, a proportion that has been increasing rapidly with no signs of slowing down. Given what psychologists and sociologists now know about the much higher likelihood of social pathology among those who grow up in single-mother households, the Hispanic baby boom is certain to produce more juvenile delinquents, more school failure, more welfare use, and more teen pregnancy in the future.

True enough. Still, although these are real problems, young Hispanic males do not have a tendency to embrace radical Islam and start thinking that God wants them to ruthlessly slaughter innocent men, women, and children. So, out of curiosity, I'd like to see a similar graph for France (one that breaks down fertility by ethnicity). I think it would show that indigenous French women are well below the replacement rate (despite the economic incentives), whereas Muslin women are well above. But the French don't track the data by ethnicity, and that's probably a good thing. They might not like what the future has in store for them.

The Palestinians Need Their Civil War, Too

The Palestinians are fighting amongst themselves, and that may signal the beginning of the civil war that they really need to have (unfortunately). I used to believe that what was needed was a genuine peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but I don't think that anymore. A peace deal will become relevant only after the Palestinians get their civil war out of the way.

Do you remember the 2nd intifada?

The al-Aqsa Intifada...is the wave of violence that began in September 2000 between Palestinian Arabs and Israelis; it is also called the Second Intifada (see also First Intifada). "Intifada" is an Arabic word for "uprising" (literally translated as "shaking off"). Many Palestinians consider the intifada to be a war of national liberation against foreign occupation, whereas many Israelis consider it to be a terrorist campaign.
...
The death toll, both military and civilian, of the entire conflict in 2000-2006 is estimated to be over 4000 Palestinians and over 1,000 Israelis,[1] although this number is criticized by some sources for not differentiating between combatants and civilians. Between September 2000 and January 2005, 69 percent of Israeli fatalities were male, while over 95 percent of the Palestinian fatalities were male.

That last fact about the gender of the victims provides pretty good evidence that the Palestinians were indiscriminately slaughtering unarmed civilians, whereas the Israelis were concentrating on Palestinian fighters. In some ways, that parallels the current fight in Iraq between the forces of al Qaeda (who, like Palestinian terrorists, target innocent civilians) and the Mahdi Army (who appear to be targeting Sunni males).

But let's get back to the 2nd intifada. At the time it occurred, it made no sense to me, beginning, as it did, shortly after Ehud Barak (Prime Minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001) offered what many observers considered to be a serious proposal for peace. Some thought the offer was quite generous; others (like Arafat) didn't. Generous or not, Barak's proposal does not seem to be the kind of offer that would not only be rejected but that would also prompt a prolonged and bloody intifada. Here's how Dennis B. Ross described Barak's offer in a 2002 issue of Foreign Policy magazine:

To this day, Arafat has never honestly admitted what was offered to the Palestinians—a deal that would have resulted in a Palestinian state, with territory in over 97 percent of the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem; with Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of that state (including the holy place of the Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary); with an international presence in place of the Israeli Defense Force in the Jordan Valley; and with the unlimited right of return for Palestinian refugees to their state but not to Israel. Nonetheless, Arafat continues to hide behind the canard that he was offered Bantustans—a reference to the geographically isolated black homelands created by the apartheid-era South African government. Yet with 97 percent of the territory in Palestinian hands, there would have been no cantons. Palestinian areas would not have been isolated or surrounded. There would have been territorial integrity and contiguity in both the West Bank and Gaza, and there would have been independent borders with Egypt and Jordan.


Ambassador Dennis B. Ross is director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was the lead negotiator on the Middle East peace process in the first Bush and both Clinton administrations.

Whatever you think of that amazing offer, it does not seem to be an obvious trigger for the more than 50 suicide bombings that occurred in apparent response. Initially, my reaction to the intifada was basically one of bewilderment. Why on Earth would the Palestinians suddenly go out of their way to -- effectively -- have Sharon elected prime minister of Israel? Early in the uprising (well before the Israeli election in early 2001), it became clear that Barak was in deep trouble because of the violence that was triggered by his generous peace offer. It was also clear that the Israelis, after having been rewarded with widespread violence for their efforts to find a peaceful solution, would vote for a security-oriented leader like Sharon if the violence continued (which it did). Sure enough, Sharon was elected, as if by Palestinian design.

Could it be that the uprising was just some sort of spontaneous, unorganized response to Sharon's infamous visit to the Temple Mount that occurred in September 2000? That visit was a provocative act on Sharon's part, but few really believe that it was sufficient to cause a sustained uprising. The obvious consequence of the uprising was to bring to power the man the Palestinians hated the most -- namely, Sharon himself (an iron-fisted Israeli warrior once preposterously described as "a man a peace" by George Bush). Also, it seems obvious in retrospect that the uprising involved far too much planning and forethought to be a spontaneous outburst of anger.

So why did it happen? To me, this is an interesting and important question, one that, when answered, helps to explain why the Palestinians seem to be in need of a civil war. One place to look for such an answer is to non-radical Palestinian intellectuals. They probably don't have a pro-Israeli bias, they are not driven by emotional zeal, and they are there at ground-zero, so to speak. A 2002 article about the second intifada published in Foreign Affairs magazine (an influential, high-impact journal, I think) may have been written by someone like this. I don't really know if he is an objective analyst of the situation, but he is described in the magazine as follows:

Khalil Shikaki is Associate Professor of Political Science at Bir Zeit University and Director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.

It turns out that he is a pollster, and his article is full of poll results. More relevant to my current post is the fact that, in this article, Shikaki knowledgeably addresses the issue of the origins of the second intifada, and his analysis was illuminating to me. Perhaps it will be to you, too. Here are some selected excerpts from his article:

SUMMARY

Yasir Arafat has been neither an orchestrator nor a spectator of the second intifada; he has been its target. A young guard of Palestinian nationalists, angry at both Israel and the corrupt Palestinian Authority, lies behind the violence. Arafat must reform his government and secure a credible peace process -- before it's too late.

WHO LET THE DOGS OF WAR OUT?

Has Yasir Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), orchestrated and led the second Palestinian intifada in order to gain popularity and legitimacy while weakening Israel and forcing it to accept extreme Palestinian demands? Or has the uprising been a spontaneous response by an enraged but disorganized Palestinian "street" to Likud Party leader (and later Israeli Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon's September 2000 visit to the site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as al Haram al Sharif, and the failure of the Oslo peace process to produce an end to Israeli military occupation? Most Israelis take the first position, whereas most Palestinians take the second. Both are mistaken.

The truth is that the intifada that began in late September 2000 has been a response by a "young guard" in the Palestinian nationalist movement not only to Sharon's visit and the stalled peace process, but also to the failure of the "old guard" in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to deliver Palestinian independence and good governance.

ENDS VS. MEANS

The young guard strongly opposes any cease-fire agreement that would entail a crackdown on Palestinian nationalist or Islamist militants. Indeed, it has publicly condemned both the Mitchell Report (the conclusions of a fact-finding committee led by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell to look into the recent Israeli-Palestinian violence) and the Tenet Plan (the cease-fire and security plan put forth by Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet in June 2001). Rather than embrace these initiatives for ending the violence, the young guard wants Arafat to "come out of the closet" by publicly endorsing the intifada's goals and methods and by ordering PA security forces to join the armed confrontations. The old guard, on the other hand, doubts the efficacy of violence and is critical of even the minor involvement of some PA security forces in the fighting.

So for the young guard, a unilateral Israeli withdrawal or separation is a more attractive way of achieving Palestinian nationalist objectives: in bypassing the negotiations between the Israelis and the PA, it would render the old guard irrelevant and elevate the young guard to power.

At first the PA establishment welcomed the new intifada because it thought the increased pressure on Israel would strengthen its hand at the negotiating table. The young guard, however, saw the uprising as a means to disrupt negotiations rather than pursue them.

The "young guard" seems to be a euphemism for "Islamic terrorists" in this article. Read that last sentence in bold with that in mind and ask yourself whether or not the Israelis can negotiate peace with the Palestinians. They can't, because peace proposals elicit intifadas.

There is much more of interest in this long and detailed article, but if this analysis is anywhere close to being accurate, it means that the next step is not for Israel to make another peace gesture that offers, say, 100% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The "young guard" not only wants Israel out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they want that accomplished through violence rather than through negotiation. And, although the author does not say so, they also want the Jews out of Israel (as Hamas leaders are only too happy to acknowledge). If the old guard (represented by Abbas now) ever negotiates a new peace deal, the young guard can and will let out the "dogs of war" once again, and the Israelis can and will respond by abandoning peace negotiations and implementing harsh security measures. It's hard to see an easy way out of this. The path to peace in the Middle East may not involve a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Instead, it will probably involve a civil war among the Palestinians themselves. The beginnings of that civil war appear to be at hand, though it's not clear that it will actually come to fruition. I don't think there will be any peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians until the Palestinians get their civil war out the way (and Hamas loses).

The Saudis Declare Economic War on Iran

That's how I read this story:

Saudis signal moderation on oil price

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabia's oil minister has signaled that the kingdom plans to keep oil prices at about the current level of $50 per barrel.

Ali al-Naimi, during a recent stop in India, rejected an emergency meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Countries, The New York Times reported. Some members of the cartel were concerned when prices dipped below $50.

Earlier, Naimi, during a stop in Tokyo, said Saudi Arabia favors "moderate prices."

The Sunnis of Saudi Arabia are alarmed by the prospect of an ascendant (Shiite) Iran, and they know that Iran, which is almost entirely dependent on oil revenues for its economic well being, is in a world of economic hurt right now. Keeping oil prices low will help the already vibrant economies of the West (with the U.S. economy being especially vibrant) and further compromise the Iranian economy. Venezuela is also going to be in big trouble if oil prices do not rise. Neither country is going to receive the foreign investment they desperately need -- Iran because its leader is a nut, UN sanctions have been imposed, and there is the prospect of war; Venezuela because its leader is also a nut who likes to nationalize private industry -- and their anti-US ding-dong-ism is only sustainable so long as oil prices remain high. Saudi Arabia seems to be signaling that this is not going to happen. The Saudis have their own economic problems, but those problems are not as severe as Iran's, and they are making more progress toward attracting private investment than Iran is.

As I have said before, I like the Bush strategy with respect to Iran. Even so, I am not sure the Iranians will change their behavior because Muslim nations of the Middle East can be deliberately self-destructive for some odd reason. The best example of the that is "Palestine." Offer them two courses of action, one that will lead to a better future for their people vs. one that is certain to keep their future generations mired in abject poverty and violence, and they will happily choose the latter option every time (at least it has been that way so far). The Iranians may be like that as well, which means that, like North Korea, they'll pursue their nuclear bomb no matter what the cost to their own people. When they finally get there, their economic disaster of a nation will, I assume, be bombed by Israel or the US. It's not a good plan.

Joseph Biden Tells a (Technically True) Lie

While the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was debating the non-binding resolution to oppose the troop surge in Iraq, Senator Joseph Biden said something that caught me by surprise:

Another sponsor, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the panel's chairman, challenged Coleman's contention that progress was being made in Anbar province.

"I've made seven trips into Anbar province," he said. "I've yet to find a single, solitary military officer — from sergeant to general — who has said that we have made any substantial progress."

I, myself, have not been to Iraq, but even I know that in addition to the violence that we see covered everyday in excruciating detail (in robotic compliance with the clearly-stated aims of al Qaeda's savvy media consultants), much progress is being made. Moreover, it is not hard to find military officers who will say so. Here, for example, is a relevant article from two weeks ago that appeared in a top secret outlet called USA Today:

RAMADI, Iraq — The U.S. military is reporting a dramatic and unexpected increase in the number of police recruits in Anbar province, the center of Sunni insurgent activity in Iraq.

In the past two weeks, more than 1,000 applicants have sought police jobs in Ramadi, the provincial capital. Eight hundred signed up last month in Ramadi, said Army Maj. Thomas Shoffner, operations officer for the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division.

Those figures compare with only "a few dozen" recruits in September, the U.S. military said.

Did Biden pass up a chance to meet with Army Maj. Thomas Shoffner, or does he not read the newspapers, or does he not consider this to be evidence of substantial progress, or is he just lying to reinforce the impression that Iraq has descended into a big ol' civil war now?

Actually, he is probably telling the truth in some technical sense. It would not be surprising to find, for example, that he talked only to officers who are sympathetic to the "lost cause" mindset currently sweeping through the halls of congress. But that would say more about his search for the truth than about the situation in Iraq. And because he knows for a fact that progress is being made (even if he conducted a selective poll of officers who told him what he wanted to hear), it seems fair to say that Joseph Biden was not being completely truthful. If I had to guess, I'd say he chose not to be truthful in hopes of creating a sound bite that would make it into the media and reinforce the view that all is lost. And it did.

On the Air America web site, I found more of what Biden said:

I've made seven trips into Anbar province. I've yet to find a single solitary military officer, from sergeant to general, who has said that we have made any substantial progress. They point out that they kill the bad guys and then they have to leave, and they fill back up again. So we're talking to different folks. But I've never found a single one who says the policy that we have in place in Fallujah or any of these areas of Anbar is working.

What do you make of that line in bold? I see it as a pathetic attempt to establish a basis on which to claim that -- in some technical, legal sense -- he was telling the truth when he said that he hasn't found a single officer who will point to any progress in Anbar province. In other words, he talked only to officers who told him what he wanted to hear. I wonder if he will bring that style to the White House should he prevail in 2008 (God forbid)?

Biden knows perfectly well that, in addition to the on-going violence, real progress is being made. Both are true (i.e., violence + progress). Even if progress is being made, I have no doubt that Biden would want our generals to meet with terrorist commanders -- perhaps on a ship anchored in the Persian Gulf -- to sign papers dictating the terms of our surrender to al Qaeda in Iraq. Fine. You can hold that view without pretending that the truth is other than what it is, and I wish Biden would stop pretending. A more truthful way to put it would be like this:

"Despite some progress in Iraq, violence is escalating out of control because of the determined efforts by al Qaeda to incite civil war. Unfortunately, they have succeeded, and they knew perfectly well that Americans would respond to such violence by quickly clamoring to leave. The time has come to admit that they were right by accepting the terms of our surrender to al Qaeda in Iraq. Hopefully, they will leave us alone when they begin to use Iraq as a base of operations for global jihad."

I'm being a bit dramatic here to underscore a critical point: leaving Iraq before Iraqi forces are ready to handle the country's security is tantamount to surrendering to al Qaeda (remember them?). It's their plan for Iraq, and that plan is unfolding exactly as they envisioned. If you favor withdrawing from Iraq now, you should recognize that you are part of the plan.

Unanswered Questions Indicate a State of Denial

Defense Secretary Robert Gates states the obvious:

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that a congressional resolution opposing President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq amounts to undercutting U.S. commanders in a way that “emboldens the enemy.”

Would even supporters of the resolution disagree if asked directly about this? Would they seriously claim that the resolution in no way emboldens the enemy? Of course not, because it is not a debatable point. Instead of answering the question directly, they'd avoid the question by expressing outrage that a such a question could even be asked and then change the subject by saying something along these lines:

We have to put pressure on Prime Minister Maliki so that he does something about the Shiite death squads. He has to know that our patience is running out. The whole thing has become a sectarian war between Iranian-sponsored Shiite militias and al Qaeda-supported Sunni insurgents. We shouldn't be in the middle of that.

Yes we should. The day will come when we can be sure that the Shiites will prevail over al Qaeda, but that day is not yet upon us. Which is why supporters of the resolution will also maintain a strict code of silence about al Qaeda in Iraq. That code of silence explains why they won't answer this question either:

Was the sectarian violence intentionally sparked by al Qaeda's bombing of the Golden Mosque, in part so that Americans would become demoralized and abandon the Iraqis who are trying to make democracy work?

Still another not-to-be-answered question is this:

Are you confident that al Qaeda will not emerge as the victorious party when we "put pressure" on Maliki by leaving before the Iraqis are ready to handle security on their own?

No supporter of the resolution would ever answer these questions. It makes me wonder: are there questions that I am similarly refusing to answer because I am also in a state of denial about some other obvious fact? I can clearly see the state of denial that plagues supporters of this resolution. Their refusal to even touch the obvious questions is the best evidence of their head-in-the-sand mental state.

But am I that way, too? What are the questions that I am refusing to answer? I wish I knew what they were because I'd like to try my hand at answering them. And I sincerely wish supporters of the resolution were in a similar frame of mind.

Fretting Over Productivity

As I have noted before, America has a fabulous economy, but that fact rarely penetrates the collective psyche of either Americans or Europeans. It may have to do with the way economic news is covered by the mainstream media. Take this new report, for example:

US productivity growth lowest for decade
By Chris Giles in London

Published: January 22 2007 22:08

The US economy last year recorded its lowest rate of labour productivity growth in more than a decade, with growth in output per hour worked falling behind the EU and Japan. The fall casts further doubt on the ability of the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates as the US economy slows.
...
Gail Fosler, the chief economist of the Conference Board, told the Financial Times that the fall in productivity growth was unlikely to be cyclical and the result of weaker gains in services’ industries, raising “concerns about the long-lasting productivity impact of information and communications technology”.

If weak productivity growth continues, she said, “even in a slow growth environment, the US economy will be performing close to its potential”, restricting the Fed’s ability to cut interest rates.
...
The US slowdown in whole economy productivity growth over the past three years - to a rate half that in 2002 and 2003 - contrasts with rising productivity growth in Japan, on the back of a surge in manufacturing exports on the Conference Board's internationally comparable figures.

Japan's labour productivity grew by 2.5 per cent in 2006 as manufacturing companies took advantage of new demand from China in addition to its traditional export destinations.

Depressed? Don't be. I found the data on which this report is based here, and it turns out that the true story is a lot more interesting than this news story suggests. I'll first compare productivity per hour worked in the US vs. the 25 nations of the enlarged European Union, which consists of these nations:




Productivity per hour worked in the EU vs. the US is shown by this chart:


The news article is concerned with the fact that the percent increase in productivity for US workers in 2006 was 1.4% above the 2005 level, whereas the difference was more like 2.5% for the EU. True, but when you look at this graph, what jumps out at you? What jumps out at me is the fact that the productivity of the American worker far exceeds that of the European worker, and it does not look like that is going to change anytime soon. The change from 2005 to 2006 (which is what the story is about) appears to be a minor issue by comparison. It's true that, in this one particular year, the percentage increase in the productivity of the American worker was less than that of the European worker, but it seems a tad early to announce that an irrevocable trend is now underway and that the numbers portend economic disaster in the U.S.

The article also implies that Japan's productivity is skyrocketing while American productivity is virtually stagnant. Well, let's look at the relevant chart:


Again, what jumps out at you? The difference in productivity between 2005 and 2006 or the fact that the American worker is far more productive than the Japanese worker? Obviously, it's the latter. The fact that Japan's productivity increased 2.5% in 2006 is clearly not the critical piece of information. In this one particular year, the percentage increase in the (relatively low) productivity of the Japanese worker increased more than the (relatively high) productivity of the American worker. But the chart places that in context and illustrates the actual story that is obscured by focusing on a single detail, a strategy that obviously misses the forest for the trees.

I should point out that comparing US productivity to all of Europe is not really a fair comparison. A more reasonable comparison would involve what I call the EU-4 (France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain). I usually use these 4 nations because they are the major economies of Western Europe (e.g., all are part of the G-7). As such, they represent a reasonable comparison group for the United States (unlike, say, Luxembourg). For those 4 countries, per-hour productivity is much closer to that of US productivity:


The numbers are similar, but U.S. productivity has been increasing at a faster pace than EU-4 productivity over the last few years. Does that fact fit with the tenor of the article? No. Based on the Conference Board statistics, productivity in the US increased by 1.4%, whereas productivity in the EU-4 increased by 1.3%. In other words, the US already had a lead in per-hour productivity, and that lead increased slightly in 2006.

But that isn't half the story. In the US, people work more hours than they do in Europe. Thus, the overall productivity of the US worker far exceeds that of even the EU-4 worker, as the next chart shows:


[I had the wrong chart here earlier, and I have replaced it with the corrrect chart]. Now, you might think it is a good thing to work less and that Americans work too hard. Fair enough. But both Europe and America are facing big economic problems down the line because of our aging populations (the problem is much worse for Europe than for America, but it's bad for both), and the more productive your population is, the less of a problem this will be.

So, the per hour productivity of the American worker exceeds that of the EU-4 worker by a bit, and the overall productivity of the American worker exceeds that of the EU-4 worker by quite a lot. Moreover, the unemployment rate in America is far below that of the EU-4 (details here):


The American worker produces more per hour, produces much more overall, and is a lot more likely to be employed than his or her EU-4 counterpart.

My point is just this: read that article (which is typical of how economic news is covered in the media) and then look at my graphs for the actual story. The graphs show an amazingly vibrant American economy. The news story shows how well a reporter can disguise that fact.

Containing Iran

As I have noted before, one of the best ways to deal with Iran is to discourage the long-term foreign investments they desperately need to get at all that oil lurking underground, and a multi-pronged effort is needed to do that. First, the recently passed UN sanctions, although targeted only at nuclear activities, will serve to discourage foreign investment in that country. Moreover, those sanctions seem to have worsened Iran's immediate economic crisis:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Prices for vegetables have tripled in the past month, housing prices have doubled since last summer - and as costs have gone up, so has Iranians' discontent with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his focus on confrontation with the West.
...
The sanctions were limited to a ban on selling materials and technology that could be used in Iran's nuclear and missile programs and the freezing of assets of 10 Iranian companies and individuals.

But since then the price of fruit, vegetables and other widely used commodities in Iran - already rising - have skyrocketed, apparently because of fears of harsher punishment.

The inflation has hit Iranians hard, along with unemployment, which the government puts at 10 percent but which economists say could be as high as 30 percent. The government also says inflation is 11 percent, but experts estimate it at 30 percent.

Another way to ensure that Iran fails to get the foreign investment they need is to do things like this:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration and Congress are warning that a proposed $16 billion deal between a Chinese company and Iran could trigger economic penalties under an American law aimed at starving Iran of funding for terrorism and nuclear weapons.

Officials at the American embassy in China delivered a demarche Saturday in Beijing. They demanded an explanation of the deal from Chinese government officials and warned them that it could trigger a 1996 law, the Iran Libya Sanctions Act. The law prohibits foreign firms that invest more than $10 million in Iran's energy sector from raising capital in American financial markets.

Still another way is to keep the prospect of military action alive:

MANAMA, Bahrain - Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with senior U.S. and coalition naval commanders Thursday to plan operations in the Persian Gulf, including the arrival next month of another U.S. aircraft carrier and more Patriot missiles meant in part as a warning to Iran.

Foreign investors are surely not crazy about the idea of a $500 million investment in Iran being instantly obliterated by the missiles and planes of a U.S. aircraft carrier. But, if possible, all of this should be done without alarming too many people around the world, which allows the price of oil to continue its free fall:

NEW YORK - Oil prices plunged to a 20-month low toward $50 a barrel Thursday, after the government reported larger-than-expected jumps in crude oil and gasoline inventories.

That's not good news for Iran as oil is pretty much their only source of revenue. All of this is having some positive effects:

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has suffered a potentially fatal blow to his authority after the country's supreme leader gave an apparent green light for MPs to attack his economic policies.

In an unprecedented rebuke, 150 parliamentarians signed a letter blaming Mr Ahmadinejad for raging inflation and high unemployment and criticising his government's failure to deliver the budget on time. They also condemned him for embarking on a tour of Latin America - from which he returns tomorrow - at a time of mounting crisis.

And here is more evidence that things are not going well for lunatic who is looking to develop a nuclear bomb that he could use to fulfill his messianic vision of wiping out Israel:

Top Dissident Cleric Slams Ahmadinejad

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's most senior dissident cleric said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's aggressive nuclear diplomacy had harmed the country, joining a chorus of criticism that has included even the hard-line leader's conservative allies.

The comments by Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, released Monday, reflected a growing feeling among many that Ahmadinejad has concentrated too much on fiery, anti-U.S. speeches and not enough on the economy.
...
He said Iranians have the right to nuclear power, but questioned Ahmadinejad's dealings with the international community in obtaining it.

``One has to deal with the enemy with wisdom, not provoke it,'' he said, according to a copy of his comments made available to The Associated Press. ``This (provocation) only creates problems for the country,'' he told a group of reformists and opponents of Ahmadinejad on Friday in the holy city of Qom, 80 miles south of the capital Tehran.

Prices of fruit, vegetables and food staples have skyrocketed since the U.N. Security Council imposed limited sanctions on Iran in December for defying a resolution demanding that it halt uranium enrichment, a process that can produce material to fuel nuclear reactors or provide fuel for bombs.

This all seems pretty good to me. Meanwhile, we are finally making life difficult for Iranians who are meddling in Iraq:

The first of the three episodes began on Dec. 20 near the evening curfew when American forces stopped a car carrying two Iranian diplomats and some guards. Early the next morning, American forces raided the compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, and detained a number of Iraqis with two Iranians who turned out to be members of the Revolutionary Guard.

The diplomats were soon released, but the military officials, who the United States said were directly linked to attacks on Americans, were asked to leave the country by Iraq only after a nine-day diplomatic crisis involving the three countries. Finally, a week ago, the Americans raided what was described as a diplomatic liaison office in the northern city of Erbil and detained six Iranians. Mr. Zebari said Thursday that just one of them had been released.

Bush is taking a patient, but firm, approach to dealing with the nutball with visions of a nuclear apocalypse dancing in his head. This is better than bombing Iran into oblivion (which may yet prove to be necessary, unfortunately).

Doubling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

I haven't seen much comment on this excellent idea proposed by the president last night:

Achieving these ambitious goals will dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but it's not going to eliminate it. So as we continue to diversify our fuel supply, we must also step up domestic oil production in environmentally sensitive ways. And to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

We are obviously hampered by our dependence on foreign oil, and that's why the leaders of Iran and Venezuela have the power they do. Reducing that dependence seems like a pretty uncontroversial objective, and increasing the capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an important part of that effort. From Wikipedia, we have this:

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is an emergency petroleum store maintained by the United States Department of Energy. The US SPR is either the largest or second largest emergency supply in the world with the current capacity to hold up to 727 million barrels (116 million m³) of crude oil.
...
The purpose of the reserve is to mitigate temporary supply disruptions. According to the World Factbook, the United States imports a net 12 million barrels of oil a day (MMbd), so the SPR holds about a 57-day supply. However, the maximum total withdrawal capablility from the SPR is only 4.4 MMbd.
...
On November 13, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that the SPR would be filled, saying, "The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an important element of our Nation's energy security. To maximize long-term protection against oil supply disruptions, I am directing...the Secretary of Energy to fill the SPR up to its 700 million barrel [111,000,000 m³] capacity."

Now, Bush wants to double that capacity, which would give us a supply that exceeds more than 100 days even if all foreign oil is cut off. Of course, all foreign oil is not likely to be cut off. Saudi Arabia is not going to be terribly unhappy if we are forced to confront Iran militarily. Iran exports only about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day (none to us, but we'd feel it if it were lost to the world market). A Strategic Petroleum Reserve of 1.5 billion barrels could offset that loss for a very long time (about 2 years, if I did the math right), especially when you consider that Saudi Arabia -- which views Iran as a threat -- would probably increase their oil exports in the event of a confrontation.

Bush seems to be preparing for a showdown with Iran. Increasing the capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a great way to prepare for that day (and to communicate to Iran just how serious non-Democrats in America are about denying them nuclear capability). The confrontation may not come while Bush is in office, and I doubt the reserve can be increased anytime soon, so this is something that will be of benefit to his successor. I'm glad he is thinking ahead. We should have done this a long time ago.

Jim Webb's Response Fails the Test of Seriousness

On the issue of Iraq, the President got his facts his right in his State of the Union Address. The facts are so elementary that is almost bizarre that they need to be recited by anyone, much less the President of the United States. But because the basic facts are so often overlooked, I was pleased to hear Bush speak these words:

In Iraq, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists blew up one of the most sacred places in Shia Islam — the Golden Mosque of Samarra. This atrocity, directed at a Muslim house of prayer, was designed to provoke retaliation from Iraqi Shia — and it succeeded. Radical Shia elements, some of whom receive support from Iran, formed death squads. The result was a tragic escalation of sectarian rage and reprisal that continues to this day.
...
If American forces step back before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill out across the country -- and in time the entire region could be drawn into the conflict.

For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective.

That's the story, in a nutshell, and it is a story that involves al Qaeda as a major participant (and as the victorious party should we leave prematurely). No serious analysis of Iraq can overlook that critical fact. And that's precisely why the Democratic response by Senator Jim Webb was utterly lacking in seriousness. You can find his response here, and no matter how hard your search through his analysis of Iraq, you will not find the words "al Qaeda" anywhere. It's always that way (as I have noted over and over again).

Why can't any Democratic opponent of the war in Iraq ever provide an analysis of al Qaeda in Iraq? It's as if a memo went out to all Democratic Senators and Representatives instructing them to maintain a strict code of silence on the issue.

Here is Jim Webb's "analysis" of Iraq, such as it is:

The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable - and predicted - disarray that has followed.

The war's costs to our nation have been staggering.

Financially.

The damage to our reputation around the world.

The lost opportunities to defeat the forces of international terrorism.

And especially the precious blood of our citizens who have stepped forward to serve.

The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought; nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction.

As you can see, it is a standard, backward-looking liberal complaint session that was designed to be cathartic for angry Democrats. But it was otherwise unhelpful. Still, he also hints at something constructive, namely, a new direction. Here is the new direction he proposes, in its entirety:

Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift toward strong regionally-based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.

I see. "Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos," but "..."a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq." Got that? In a single paragraph, Jim Webb was against a precipitous withdrawal before he was for it. On top of that, he wants to engage in "diplomacy" with a Iran, a country that is doing this:

Iran Bars Inspectors

TEHRAN, Jan. 22 — Iran is barring 38 nuclear agency inspectors from entering the country in retaliation for a United Nations resolution aiming to curb Iran’s nuclear program, a senior Iranian lawmaker said Monday.

and this:

N Korea helping Iran with nuclear testing

North Korea is helping Iran to prepare an underground nuclear test similar to the one Pyongyang carried out last year.

Under the terms of a new understanding between the two countries, the North Koreans have agreed to share all the data and information they received from their successful test last October with Teheran's nuclear scientists.

In summary, the Democratic plan is to (a) engage in diplomacy with Iran as they bar UN inspectors from their country and prepare to detonate their first nuclear bomb, and (b) maintain an eerie code of silence about al Qaeda in Iraq. That plan fails the test of seriousness.

Al Qaeda Terrorists are not Insurgents

In the past, I've seen some people object to term "insurgents" to refer to combatants in Iraq. To them, the proper term is "terrorists." I, myself, don't really have a problem with the use of the term "insurgents." There really are Sunni insurgents in Iraq, and they are the Sunnis who, having once worked with Saddam Hussein, are now attacking Iraqi infrastructure, police stations, and army installations. In addition to these insurgents, there are al Qaeda terrorists who are attacking Shiite men, women and children in a deliberate attempt to provoke civil war. I object to the use of these term "insurgents" to refer to these people. So should you.

Here is the definition of the word "insurgent" at dictionary.com:

a person who rises in forcible opposition to lawful authority, esp. a person who engages in armed resistance to a government or to the execution of its laws; rebel.

That seems like a fair enough description of former Baathists who are fighting against the democratically elected government of Iraq. But it does not characterize al Qaeda terrorists who are fighting to provoke civil war and mayhem (which is a situation that they believe benefits them). That's why this story uses the term inappropriately:

Al-Qaida deputy mocks U.S. ‘surge’ strategy
On videotape, al-Zawahri vows insurgents will beat back any new offensive

NBC News and news services
Updated: 6:13 p.m. PT Jan 22, 2007

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida's deputy leader mocked President Bush's plan to send 21,000 more troops to Iraq, challenging him to send "the entire army" and vowing insurgents will defeat them in a new videotape, a U.S. group that tracks al-Qaida messages said Monday.

No, he did not vow that "insurgents" would defeat the troop surge. He vowed that al Qaeda terrorists would do that.

In these polarized times, can't we at least agree that members of al Qaeda are terrorists? They obviously deserve that label because of the method they use (namely, the intentional, indiscriminate slaughter of unsuspecting, unarmed, nonthreatening, and completely innocent men, women and children) and the objective they seek (civil war and jihad for its own sake). Don't elevate the status of these people by calling them "insurgents." There certainly are insurgents in Iraq, but al Qaeda terrorists are not among them. This key observation seems lost on mainstream media reporters, and I'm not sure why.

Christopher Hitchens penned a similar lament a year and a half ago in pages of Slate, except that he opposed the use of the term "insurgents" altogether. I disagree. A story about the fighting in Iraq that refers to militiamen, insurgents, and terrorists would be close enough to the truth in my book. Although it is perfectly OK to use the term insurgents, my complaint is that the term is routinely stretched to embrace al Qaeda.

Why does the media do that? What possible counterargument could there be to my suggestion that it is an inaccurate use of the term when a clearly better word exists (namely, "terrorists"). Surely even a liberal mainstream media reporter cannot believe that it is at all inappropriate to refer to al Qaeda fighters who indiscriminately slaughter civilians as terrorists. That, after all, is what terrorist do. Here is one definition of "terrorism" from the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy:

Acts of violence committed by groups that view themselves as victimized by some notable historical wrong...Typically, they stage unexpected attacks on civilian targets, including embassies and airliners, with the aim of sowing fear and confusion.

So, go ahead and keep referring to former Baathists as insurgents, but stop using that term to refer to al Qaeda terrorists. President Bush should use his State of the Union address tonight to make it clear that we are fighting al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, and he should clearly emphasize that it's not just a civil war. Instead, it is al Qaeda deliberately trying to provoke a civil war to advance their goals. And he should challenge anyone who decries the "civil war" in Iraq to explain their position on the role being played by al Qaeda in Iraq. Those who want to abandon Iraq to their civil war never, ever do that. It's time for that to change, and only Bush can elevate the discussion by laying down that challenge (much as he does when he asks critics to propose a better idea when they criticize the troop surge). He should say this to his critics:

"Al Qaeda is working to incite civil war in Iraq to advance their goals. Do you agree or disagree, and, if you agree, what do you propose that we do about it?"

That's the question that all troop-surge opponents should be asked to answer. Most won't, of course, because they've learned that they can get political mileage by simply criticizing Bush without offering the slightest hint about where we should go from here. That's OK for those who are merely seeking to score political points, but there must be some opponents of the war in Iraq who who actually care about the consequences of this war for America. Those are the opponents that I'd like to hear answer this question.

News from "Iraq the Model"

Mohammed at Iraq The Model has some thoughts about what Muqtada al Sadr is planning to do that seems to correspond to my own thinking (and my own hopes). He quotes this passage from an Arabic newspaper:

Commanders of the Mehdi army in Baghdad received strict orders not to fire a single bullet during the American military campaign in Baghdad…an informed source told Azzaman that the meeting was held in a place in sector 42 of Sadr city and many of the Mehdi army leaders attended it while others missed it because they were already in Iran since last week. The top lieutenants as well didn’t show up because they were ordered a few days ago to abandon Sadr city and spread in the southern provinces and other parts of the capital…the source explained that the orders were given to show full cooperation with the American forces during the raids and show no resistance even when arrests are made. The commanders were promised that the police would take care of releasing any detainees once "the storm is gone"…

Sounds good to me. I hope it plays out that way. The Mahdi Army joined the battle after being relentlessly provoked by al Qaeda. That's a fact that too few people take into consideration when they try to conceptualize the "civil war" in Baghdad. My hope is that Prime Minister Maliki will be able manage Muqtada al Sadr after the threat posed by al Qaeda is greatly diminished by the upcoming troop surge. My worry is that al Qaeda will manage to pull off an occasional large-scale suicide bombing that results in the indiscriminate slaughter of Shiite civilians, that the media will refer to the attackers as "insurgents," and that Americans -- not realizing that al Qaeda is the enemy in Iraq -- will become further discouraged by the "civil war" between Shiites and Sunnis (with no thought at all about the role being played by al Qaeda and the threat they will pose when we leave). Or do you really think that nothing like this will happen once we are gone?

WASHINGTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - The former Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once planned to send militants to the United States on student visas to carry out attacks on U.S. soil, officials said on Monday.

Al Qaeda's basic plan is to incite civil war in Iraq to bring the Sunnis closer to them, which will allow al Qaeda to establish a foothold in the Anbar Province from which they can wage global jihad.

But maybe when they achieve that goal, they'll decide to leave us alone because we were kind enough to leave Iraq. Great plan.

Al Qaeda at War with the Mahdi Army in Baghdad

I came across a couple of news that are relevant to my theory about Muqtada al Sadr. Here is an excerpt from the first one:

Officials: U.S. intel spurs shift by al-Maliki
Information on Shiite militia causes Iraqi prime minister's change of course

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki decided to drop his protection of the feared Shiite militia of a radical anti-American cleric after U.S. intelligence reports convinced him the armed group was deeply infiltrated by death squads whose actions were isolating him both in the Arab world and among moderate political forces at home, two government officials said on Sunday.

Al-Maliki's turnaround on the Mahdi Army was puzzling because as late as Oct. 31, he had intervened to end a U.S. blockade of Sadr City, the northeast Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is headquarters to the militia. It is held responsible for much of the sectarian bloodshed that has turned the capital into a battle zone over the past year.

Shiite militias began taking revenge after more than two years of incessant bomb and shooting attacks by Sunni insurgents.

Almost right. It was al Qaeda, not "Sunni insurgents" who bombed the golden mosque in a deliberate effort to bring the Shiite militias into the battle. Why do reporters get this key detail wrong over and over again? We actually captured the al Qaeda operative who carried out the attack. Confusing him with Sunni insurgents just helps to perpetuate the myth that Iraq has descended into a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis (simple as that). Actually, the truth is a bit more complicated, and it involves al Qaeda. Here is a story from several months ago that gets this point across (although even this story initially uses the word "insurgent"):

Iraq Cites Arrest of a Top Local Insurgent
Officials Call Detainee No. 2 in Al-Qaeda Group

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 4, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Sept. 3 -- U.S. and Iraqi forces have captured a top al-Qaeda leader who ordered the bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra that triggered a wave of ferocious sectarian killings, Iraqi officials said Sunday.
...
In an attempt to thrust Iraq into a full-scale civil war, Saeidi supervised Haitham al-Badri, an operative under his command, in carrying out the Feb. 22 bombing of a revered golden-domed Shiite shrine in Samarra, officials said. That attack sparked brutal reprisal killings by both Shiites and Sunnis that have left thousands of people dead.

See that? Al Qaeda wanted to foment a civil war, and they have. I wish more reporters were aware of this basic information. And, in general, they need to stop using the word "insurgent" to refer to al Qaeda terrorists. There certainly are Sunni insurgents in Iraq (they are the ones attacking soldiers and police stations and infrastructure), but al Qaeda terrorists should not be elevated to that level.

Here is the second (very similar) story that caught my attention:

Maliki Abandons al-Sadr

(Baghdad, Iraq) — Iraq's prime minister has dropped his protection of an anti-American cleric's Shiite militia after U.S. intelligence convinced him the group was infiltrated by death squads, two officials said Sunday.

In a desperate bid to fend off an all-out American offensive, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr last Friday ordered the 30 lawmakers and six Cabinet ministers under his control to end their nearly two- month boycott of the government. They were back at their jobs Sunday.

Al-Sadr had already ordered his militia fighters not to display their weapons. They have not, however, ceded control of the formerly mixed neighborhoods they have captured, killing Sunnis or forcing them to abandon their homes and businesses.

Forgive me for saying so, but the idea that American intelligence was required to convince Prime Minister Maliki that Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army was executing an ever increasing number of Sunni males is simply preposterous. It has been obvious to me (and has been painstakingly documented on my blog) for months. I'm sitting at a computer half a world away from the action. If it's obvious to me, it's much more obvious to Maliki.

And I don't really believe that Maliki has abandoned Muqtada al Sadr, although I do suspect that there will be a public relations campaign to that effect. I predict that American forces are going to target Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda operatives when they increase their presence in Baghdad. I also expect that they will forbid the Mahdi Army from continuing their execution campaign (i.e., they will keep them out of Sunni areas), but they won't go looking for a fight with them in Sadr City. So long as the Mahdi Army cooperates (as I suspect they will), I do not anticipate a large confrontation. I hope I'm right.

On the other hand, I do anticipate occasional hysterical media reports of a final showdown because there are surely rogue Shiite elements who are not under the control of Muqtada al Sadr. Any skirmishes with those elements will be incredibly magnified by a media hoping beyond hope that we crush the Mahdi Army.

I hope we don't seek out the Mahdi Army to crush it (and I hope that they, in turn, do not challenge American forces), for reasons I have explained elsewhere. I realize that I am virtually alone in the blogosphere in this regard (well, so far as I can tell anyway). The Mahdi Army was deliberately provoked into joining this fight by al Qaeda, and my hope is that they can once again go back to the sidelines if American forces prove themselves able to do what the Shiite militias have been trying to do since February.

Well, I like getting my predictions on the table in advance so that my theory can be tested. And it will be tested soon. Meanwhile, al Qaeda seems to have scored another big hit today:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 10 people were killed and 40 others wounded when a bomb exploded in a market near Baquoba, northeast of Baghdad, on Monday, police sources said.

The attack followed two nearly simultaneous bombs earlier in a predominantly Shiite commercial area in central Baghdad, killing at least 78 people and wounding at least 156, said Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamili.

The multiple attacks brought Monday's death toll to at least 88 dead, up to 200 hurt.

These renewed attacks seem to coincide with the lowered profile of the Mahdi Army. If American forces cannot get this sort of thing under control, the Mahdi Army is sure to take matters into their own hands again. And if American forces go out of their way to crush the Mahdi Army before they deal with al Qaeda, then Americans will be operating as al Qaeda's unintentional allies in Baghdad. That's not a good idea.

Anti-Victory Democrats

In an earlier post I said this:

An anti-war Democrat, as I use the term, refers to a Democrat who opposed the invasion of Iraq (or believes now that it was a mistake) but recognizes the importance of not being defeated there. An anti-victory Democrat, by contrast, is one who has chosen to believe that victory is hopeless (i.e., that defeat is at hand) and who has further chosen to believe that the humbling of America would actually be a good thing. The phrase "anti-war" is often applied to both groups, but they are so different in their thinking that different labels should be applied. One is anti-war, the other, anti-victory.

I imagine that many Democrats would bristle at the distinction (denying, I would imagine, that many of them are actually anti-victory). They might not bristle anymore in light of the results of new Fox News Poll that you have probably heard of by now. Here is one key result from that poll:

Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed? (Yes/No/DK)

Democrats 51 / 34 / 15
Republicans 79 / 11 / 10
Independents 63 / 19 / 17

It is hard to believe that 34% of Democrats (and 11% of Republicans) admit to hoping that the plan will not succeed. The true number is likely to be higher than that because it is not terribly fashionable to admit that you are hoping that your own country is defeated. You've got to love Fox News for even asking that question. You won't find anything like that in the latest Newsweek poll, which was obviously composed by someone who inherently resonates to the way that those on the left think.

Consider the next question in the Fox News poll:

Do you think most Democrats want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed and lead to a stable Iraq or do they want it to fail and for him to have to withdraw U.S. troops in defeat?

SCALE (1 / 2 / 3 / 4):
1. Most Democrats want Bush plan to succeed
2. Most Democrats want Bush plan to fail
3. (Some want one thing, some another)
4. (Don’t know)

Democrats 42 / 38 / 7 / 12
Republicans 21 / 67 / 7 / 5
Independents 30 / 42 / 11 / 17

The Democrats are evenly split on the question of whether their own party wants Bush's plan to fail (which, as the question says, means that US troops would withdraw in defeat). In other words, the Democrats themselves appreciate the anti-victory stance of many in their own party. Independents recognize that fact, too.

I was even more surprised when it became clear that many Democrats prefer defeat even though they realize that Osama bin Laden would claim victory:

If U.S. troops were to withdraw from Iraq before the country was stabilized, do you think Usama bin Laden would claim victory?

Democrats 52 / 33 / 14
Republicans 76 / 15 / 9
Independents 54 / 27 / 19

I just want to be clear about this: a substantial percentage of Democrats actively wants the US to fail in Iraq even while recognizing that it means that al Qaeda would succeed. Perhaps as many as one half feel this way (some of them secretly) given that it is not fashionable to admit ideas like this to a pollster.

It's common to hear the Democrats referred to as being "anti-war," but I think a finer distinction needs to be made. Some are anti-war, others anti-victory. They are not the same things.

Democrats often bristle at the suggestion that they are unpatriotic, but can't we all agree that the substantial percentage of Democrats who actively crave victory for al Qaeda over America in Iraq are unpatriotic? Not all Democrats, of course, but those who are, in effect, pulling for al Qaeda? Is it unfair in any way to suggest that they are unpatriotic? I don't think so, but I'd like to hear the counterargument. It also seems fair to regard these Democrats as being rather inhumane because, by their own admission, they do not want to see a stable Iraq if it would mean that Bush's plan is successful. Hoping for an unstable Iraq is hoping for thousands of civilian deaths per month. How could so many Democrats find themselves in that poisoned frame of mind?

Although, until now, I had never seen Democrats admitting their anti-victory views in a poll, I have previously noted that some liberal commentators openly treasure the idea of America's defeat:

For all of the anguish felt over the loss of American lives, can we acknowledge that there is something proper in the way that hubristic American power has been thwarted? Can we admit that the loss of honor will not come with how the war ends, because we lost our honor when we began it? This time, can we accept defeat?

Can we accept defeat at the hands of al Qaeda? No.

Kissinger: Withdrawal Is Not An Option

Henry A. Kissinger has a new column on Iraq that is worth a read. First, it passes my test of seriousness because it actually mentions the threat posed by al Qaeda in Iraq:

Withdrawal is not an option

Henry A. Kissinger
January 18, 2007
...
Of the current security threats in Iraq — the intervention of outside countries, the presence of Qaeda fighters, an extraordinarily large criminal element, the sectarian conflict — the United States has a national interest in defeating the first two; it must not involve itself in the sectarian conflict for any extended period, much less let itself be used by one side for its own sectarian goals.

Although al Qaeda is mentioned, the idea of not involving ourselves in the sectarian conflict seems a bit off the mark. We need to protect the Sunni civilians in Baghdad from the Mahdi Army by occupying Sunni areas of the city (which will also allow us to target al Qaeda cells and Sunni insurgents who are based in those areas). In that sense, we should involve ourselves in the sectarian conflict. On the other hand, I do not believe that we ought to go searching for Mahdi Army fighters in the Shiite area known as Sadr City. If the Mahdi Army will leave the Sunnis alone, we should leave them alone as well.

Kissinger seems to stray far from the facts when he says this:

Side by side with disarming the Sunni militias and death squads, the Baghdad government must show comparable willingness to disarm Shia militias and death squads. American policy should not deviate from the goal of a civil state, whose political process is available to all citizens.

Say what? There are no Sunni militias, at least not according to the Defense Department reports that are released on a quarterly basis:

Unlike the Kurdish and Shi'a militia groups, Sunni Arabs do not have formally organized militias, but rely on neighborhood watches, Rejectionists, and, increasingly, al-Qaeda in Iraq (p. 30).

I'm not sure what to make of casual mistakes like this that just happen to match the incorrect media template of what is happening in Iraq (according to which Sunni and Shiite militias are involved in a civil war). It suggests that he is not paying attention to the details or that he has access to information that the Defense Department lacks (which I doubt). Also, like most commentators, he does not take note of the fact that the Shiite militias were deliberately provoked into this fight by al Qaeda. You may believe that they should have just sat on their hands while al Qaeda killed Shiites by the hundreds and bombed their holiest mosques, but I'm not sure that I do. If you want the Mahdi Army forcibly disarmed, you should, at a minimum, ask yourself this question: why have they been killing Sunni males in large numbers since the golden mosque was bombed nearly 1 year ago? You might still want to see them attacked by American troops, but you should not want that attack merely because it's a big ol' civil war now (because that analysis completely overlooks al Qaeda's provocation). If terrorists were bombing your women and children to death on a regular basis and the government seemed completely powerless to stop them, would you sit on your hands? Or, after giving the government a chance to protect you for 2 years, would you finally go off in the search of those wretched killers yourself?

On a somewhat related note, I was interested to see a discussion by Paul at Powerline. Paul had argued against sending troops to Baghdad and instead thought they should be sent to the Anbar Province where they might be able to do some good. I initially thought so, too, but he posted this interesting information about why the President thought otherwise:

Brett McQuirk, the president's national security point man on Iraq, said that the administration considered the approach I have advocated -- focusing on killing bad guys in the western areas and leaving Baghdad largely to the Iraqis to police (or not). It rejected that approach for two main reasons. First, the administration fears a humanitarian disaster. Second, the administration fears that sectarian violence against Sunnis in Baghdad will cause Sunnis in the western provinces to tilt towards al Qaeda, making it far more difficult for us to take that outfit on there.

Pay careful attention to that last line and then think about that letter by Zarqawi that was intercepted back in 2004:

The Shi'a in our opinion, these are the key to change. Targeting and striking their religious, political, and military symbols, will make them show their rage against the Sunnis and bear their inner vengeance. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands of these Sabeans
...
If we are able to deal them blow after painful blow so that they engage in a battle, we will be able to reshuffle the cards so there will remain no value or influence for the ruling council, or even for the Americans who will enter into a second battle with the Shi'a. This is what we want. Then, the Sunni will have no choice but to support us in many of the Sunni regions.

Unlike almost everyone else in the entire world (apparently), the administration realizes that the violence in Baghdad is being deliberately provoked by al Qaeda so that the Sunnis will "tilt towards al Qaeda" (in exact accordance with Zarqawi's plan). I wish more people knew that. The media should present that possibility every time they discuss violence in Baghdad. It's not a top secret analysis (in fact, it's Bush's analysis), and the American public would be less opposed to our efforts in Iraq if they better understood that our difficulties there are being caused by our avowed enemy -- namely, al Qaeda -- not just by a big ol' civil war caused by Bush's incompetence. In fact, what many regard as the incompetence of Bush's strategy in Iraq is actually the diabolical effectiveness and ruthless skill of barbaric al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq. Hating Bush for his "incompetence" is a way of denying that scary reality. I can understand the appeal of denial, but it would be better to face reality instead. And the reality is that al Qaeda is largely to blame for our problems in Iraq. The only question is what we should do about that, and the only real options are to give up or to fight harder against them until the Iraqis can manage that fight on their own.

A Crackdown on the Shiite Militias?

There have a been a few reports of the Iraqi government and US forces cracking down on Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army in the last few days, and this has many in the blogosphere cheering out loud. Stories like this one from about 10 days ago elicited some initial good cheer:

Iraqi PM Announces Crackdown on Militias

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's prime minister promised a new crackdown on Saturday on sectarian gunmen who kill hundreds of people a week in Baghdad but has yet to endorse any proposal from President George W. Bush to send in more American troops.

This did, too:

Mahdi Army expressing siege mentality

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Mahdi Army fighters said Thursday they were under siege in their Sadr City stronghold as U.S. and Iraqi troops killed or seized key commanders in pinpoint nighttime raids. Two commanders of the Shiite militia said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has stopped protecting the group under pressure from Washington and threats from Sunni Muslim Arab governments.
...
On Wednesday, the prime minister said 400 Mahdi Army fighters had been detained in recent months, although an exact timeframe was not given.

The midlevel Mahdi Army commanders, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the group operates in secret, said at least five top commanders of similar standing were captured or killed in recent months, including one snatched in a night raid from his Sadr City hide-out on Tuesday. They refused to name him.

Today, the blogosphere celebration continues with the naming of this captured aid:

U.S., Iraqi forces arrest top aide to al-Sadr
Shiite cleric's media director reportedly held for ties to death squads

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces arrested one of Muqtada al-Sadr’s top aides Friday in Baghdad, his office said, as pressure increases on the radical Shiite cleric’s militia ahead of a planned security sweep aimed at stemming the sectarian violence ransacking the capital.

Is this the big crackdown on the Mahdi Army that we have all been waiting for (everyone except for me, that is)? I doubt it, but we'll see. I am sure that certain rogue elements of the Madhi Army will be taken out of the equation (namely, the ones who are making it clear that they will not cooperate with American forces), but, for the most part, I do not expect us to forcibly disarm Muqtada al Sadr's militia. And I don't think we should (which, I guess, sets me apart from just about everyone else). My thinking on this derives from my conceptualization of Iraq. First, as I have said over and over again, I believe that when bodies are found in Baghdad that show signs of torture before being shot to death (as an ever increasing number are), that appears to be the work of the Mahdi Army against Sunni males. Here is a story that appears to offer some support for that idea:

The U.S. military accused the main suspect captured Friday of having ties with the commanders of so-called death squads, which have been blamed for many of the killings that have left dozens of bodies, often showing signs of torture, on the streets of Baghdad.

Why are the "death squads" doing this? Just because they hate Sunnis and it's a big ol' civil war now? Well, they do hate Sunnis, but they are doing it primarily because al Qaeda deliberately provoked them into doing so by relentlessly bombing Shiite civilians and Shiite holy sites (including the revered mosque in Samarra). If we take out the Mahdi Army before we are sure that we can control al Qaeda in Iraq, it will be a disaster. You'll have 200-casualty suicide bombings every few days in Sadr City, and Shiite mosques will be exploding like a 4th-of-July fireworks show. Why? Because al Qaeda knows that only good things come from that. It will get the Mahdi Army back into the streets, killing Sunnis and, now, fighting with and killing American troops. The resulting chaos will (a) demoralize Americans, who (to my surprise) have proven themselves to be rather easily demoralized, and (b) cause Sunnis to become ever more fearful of the Shiite militias (which will bring the Sunnis closer to al Qaeda, who will help to protect them). That's al Qaeda's plan. It was stated in writing, and it is being carried out to the letter. Why don't more people appreciate this?

All of this explains why we need to mainly attack Sunnis in Baghdad, not Shiites. After we prove that we can contain Sunni insurgents and their al Qaeda allies operating in the city, only then should we address the Mahdi Army (one way or the other). If you find yourself celebrating indications that we might be attacking the Mahdi Army right away, you should pause for a moment to consider that al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgents are celebrating right along with you.

Conceptualizing Iraq

I am struck by two radically different interpretations of what is taking place in Iraq. One interpretation seems well supported by the available evidence, whereas the other is most often promoted in the news. The two conceptualizations can be summarized as follows:

1. The media view (and the Democratic view):

Iraq has descended into tit-for-tat sectarian violence involving Sunni insurgents vs. Shiite militias. Basically, it's a civil war now

2. My view (and, it seems, Bush's view):

Iraq is suffering from a spasm of sectarian violence that is directly attributable to the sustained efforts by al Qaeda to provoke that very outcome

Everything hinges on which view prevails. According to the first view, it makes sense to say that we should not leave our troops in the crossfire of a civil war, that the Iraqis themselves have to work this thing out, that the Iraqi government needs to prove itself to be self-reliant or suffer the consequences, etc. According to the second view, it would be borderline insane to hand a victory to al Qaeda on a silver platter by leaving Iraq just as they predicted we would when they provoked the Shiites into attacking Sunnis. It seems obvious, if you adopt the second view, that we cannot leave until we are sure that the Iraqi government can defeat the threat posed al Qaeda. Even those who adopt the first view must secretly know that, which why they never mention al Qaeda when calling for withdrawal (not even to dismiss the idea that they pose a threat).

My own rule for decoding what is happening in Iraq goes like this:

a. if the story involves attacks on oil infrastructure or police stations or Iraqi army recruits or IED attacks on American troops in the Anbar Province, that is the work of Sunni insurgents trying to restore themselves to power (that's their goal)

b. if the attack involves the random slaughter of unarmed, unsuspecting, completely innocent men, women and/or children (most of whom are Shiites) by suicide bombers, it is the work of al Qaeda attempting to incite sectarian violence (that's their short-term goal)

c. if the story involves several dozen people having been tortured and shot, that is usually the work of Shiite militias against Sunni males in an effort to stop terrorists from attacking Shiite civilians and insurgents from attacking Iraqi security forces (that's their goal)

It's part "b" that does not show up in the news often enough. Take the most recent bombing in Baghdad that killed many college students, most of them women. Here is how it is covered in the news:

Bombers in N. Iraq kill 27
By Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writer
10:26 AM PST, January 17, 2007

BAGHDAD -- Car bombs here in the capital and in northern Iraq killed at least 27 people today, even as mourners buried the dead from devastating blasts a day earlier.

At least 70 Iraqi college students were killed and more than 170 others wounded Tuesday when a pair of car bombs exploded almost simultaneously at a Shiite-dominated university in the capital, apparently the latest salvo in the civil war between Sunni Arab insurgents and Shiite Muslim militants.

Really? It's just part of the civil war, and no more analysis than that is needed? That's not so apparent to me. The Sunni insurgents have nothing at all to gain from this attack, but al Qaeda has everything to gain. And this is al Qaeda's style. Attributing the attack to al Qaeda is at least as plausible as attributing it to Sunni insurgents waging civil war. In fact, it is more plausible. But it doesn't fit the civil war mold, so to most reporters, it simply does not compute (and, so, is not mentioned).

You might ask "What does it matter if the reporter gets this minor aspect of the story right?" Because it is the difference between the two conceptualizations of Iraq summarized above, and that difference is everything. Abandoning Iraq to al Qaeda (the terrorist organization that everyone agrees is our enemy) is fundamentally different from abandoning Iraq to a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. That is the key point.

My fear is that most Americans are adopting the first conceptualization -- the one preferred by Democrats and pushed by the media -- even though the second is much more plausible and is the one held by the President of the United States, as you can see in this story:

At least 70 people have been killed and 170 injured in a double bombing at a university in Baghdad

A car bomb blew up outside Mustansiriyah University and a suicide bomber targeted students as they fled.

The attack came as the United States President George Bush defended his decision to send thousands more troops to Iraq.

In a television interview, he expressed frustration at the ongoing violence, but said the bloodshed would get "a lot worse" if the US did not step in.

Last week Mr Bush ordered 21,500 additional US troops to Iraq, mainly to Baghdad, for a new security drive to rid the city of daily sectarian attacks.

He blamed al-Qaeda for triggering the sectarian violence, saying it was "important for the American people to understand it is al-Qaeda that is doing a lot of these spectacular bombings".

Yes it is important for them to realize that. It is very important. Why is it so little discussed? That is a great mystery to me.

American reporters could reasonably be accused of journalistic malpractice by not at least acknowledging this alternative view when they report the news of what recently happened in Baghdad. The latest bombing is al Qaeda's style and fits with al Qaeda's stated intention to deliberately provoke the Shiites into attacking Sunnis. In addition, the President has interpreted bombings like this in terms of al Qaeda, so it's not exactly a top secret analysis. Just because reporters disagree and prefer to believe that it is all just a big ol' civil war and that our troops are caught in the crossfire does not give them license to simply assert that the latest bombing was "apparently" perpetrated by Sunni insurgents as part of a civil war. They don't know that it wasn't al Qaeda, their President thinks it was, and readers should be informed of that possibility. If they were, they'd know that their natural desire to pull our troops from the battle zone unfortunately means abandoning Iraq to al Qaeda (not just to a civil war).

This seems so important to me, yet hardly anyone is discussing it. It's as if the differing views are of minor significance. If that were true, Democrats who insist on withdrawing our troops would not have adopted a code of silence about the consequences for al Qaeda in Iraq. But they have. And some Republicans have a similar problem. Here is Chuck Hagel, whose position on Iraq simply cannot be taken seriously because, like his Democratic allies, he says nothing (not one word) about al Qaeda when he articulates his position on Iraq:

“I am opposed to the escalation of American involvement in Iraq, including more U.S. troops. This is a dangerously wrong-headed strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at a great cost. It is wrong to place American troops into the middle of Iraq’s civil war. It is not in America’s national interest to increase our troop presence in Iraq."

Fine. Then are you saying that it's OK to abandon Iraq to al Qaeda? Or that al Qaeda is not a threat in Iraq? Or what? Note how ridiculous his proposed solution sounds when you think about al Qaeda while reading these words:

“Instead of increasing our troop presence in Iraq, we should be focused on helping the Iraqis find a political solution and creating a policy that allows us to leave Iraq honorably, has the sustained support of the American people and does not further destabilize the Middle East. This will require redefining our mission and our involvement in Iraq."

Should we negotiate a political solution with al Qaeda, too? If not, what exactly should we do about al Qaeda in Iraq (especially if they begin to make gains when we leave)? He doesn't say. No proponent of withdrawal ever does, as I have repeatedly noted in the past. The reason they don't mention al Qaeda seems clear: doing so immediately discredits the policy they prefer.

It is only because the media promotes one conceptualization of Iraq (the first one above) that politicians can actually get away with not even mentioning al Qaeda in Iraq when they promote a plan that amounts to surrendering to al Qaeda in Iraq. I want to jump up and down and shout "this is huge," but one thing I've learned is that whenever anyone says that, you can be sure that it's not huge. So I'll confine myself to saying that this issue simply feels huge to me. Whether or not it actually is huge is up to others to decide, and they seem to have already decided that it isn't by not talking about it very much at all. President Bush is talking about it (and so am I!), but the thundering silence elsewhere is almost deafening. I don't get it.

Comparing Crime Rates in States With and Without the Death Penalty

One of the most common -- and the most ridiculous -- arguments in support of the idea that the death penalty does not deter crime is that states that have the death penalty often have high murder rates, whereas states that don't have low murder rates. Therefore, the death penalty does not deter murder.

You see this argument everywhere. For example, you can go to antideathpenalty.org and click on their "Reasons to be against the DP" button, where you'll find this:

Is not a deterrent; crime rates have not gone down.

In fact, the murder rate in the US is 6 times that of Britain and 5 times that of Australia. Neither country has the DP. Texas has twice the murder rate of Wisconsin, a state that doesn't have the DP.

I don't mean to insult your intelligence by explaining the flaw in this line of thinking, but I thought I should address it just for the sake of completeness.

Let me illustrate the flaw by first discussing a related issue where the flaw is easier to see. New York is a state with a high number of police officers per capita (39 per 10,000), whereas Vermont is a state with a low number of police officers per capita (15 per 10,000). New York is also a state with a high violent crime rate (441.6 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants), whereas Vermont is a state with a low violent crime rate (112.0 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants). Therefore (according to one curious way of thinking), having more police officers does not serve as a deterrent to crime. After all, New York has more police officers and more violent crime. So let's do away with all of those extra police officers. They just seem to making the problem worse anyway.

Actually, when the number of police officers per capita in New York increased during the 1990s, crime in New York decreased. The police force was enlarged precisely to deal with the high crime rate, and it appears to have had its intended effect.

I ran a quick calculation based on numbers provided here and found that, for the 23 cities they provided data for, as the numbers of police officers per capita went up, the crime rate went up, too (each point on the graph represents a different city):



Now, can you think of a reason why this might be? If you think like some death penalty opponents, you'll conclude that police officers are obviously causing more crime (or, at a minimum, they aren't doing anything to bring the crime rate down). But that's silly. Obviously, cities with higher crime rates attempt to address that problem by hiring more police officers. Does anyone really believe that doing away with police officers would have no effect on the crime rate in New York?

So, in summary, some states tend to have high crime rates, whereas others tend to have lower crime rates (for an infinite number of reasons ranging from population density, to unemployment, to the number of teenage boys from single-parent households, etc.). States with higher crime rates take steps to address that problem. That's why New York has both a higher crime rate and more police officers per capita than Vermont. It's also why -- and this is the key point -- New York has the death penalty and Vermont does not. I don't know that the death penalty has a deterrent effect at the level of the state, but it does seem clear that the reason why high-crime states have the death penalty is precisely because they are trying to lower those high crime rates.

The Evidence Behind my Theory of the Battle in Baghdad

Over the course of the last few days, a number of people have asked me why I believe what I do about what is happening in Baghdad. What's happening there is usually described as "sectarian violence" or as a "civil war," but I have been characterizing it as an ever more lethal extermination campaign conducted by Shiite militias against Sunni males.

I don't really know that this is true, of course, but it's a theory I came up with by piecing together information from various sources. The particular kind of news story that has been occurring with greater and greater frequency over the last few months indicates than another X bodies were found in Baghdad, many showing signs of torture and all having been shot to death. The stories rarely say anything about the victims, so why do I think they are all (or almost all) Sunni males?

First, why males? The reports rarely specify the sex of the victim, but occasional reports do. And when they do, they usually say that they were all males. Here is one example from a few days ago:

Bush stands by Iraq invasion

By David Savage and Solomon Moore, Times Staff Writers
January 14, 2007
....
In Baghdad Saturday, police patrols discovered 37 bodies, all of the victims middle-aged men apparently killed by gunfire. Some of the bodies showed signs of torture.

It's always that way. Of course, the fact that the victims are usually male is the least surprising part of my theory. After all, testosterone and violent death have a tendency to go together. Why do I think these victims are Sunni?

I've read several Defense Department reports to congress on the situation in Iraq, and one of them made it clear that the Shiites have organized militias, but the Sunnis don't. Here is what one such report said:

Unlike the Kurdish and Shi'a militia groups, Sunni Arabs do not have formally organized militias, but rely on neighborhood watches, Rejectionists, and, increasingly, al-Qaeda in Iraq (p. 30).

This report also commented on the methods used by the Shiite militias and their Sunni opponents (note that "JAM" refers to Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army, the main Shiite militia in Baghdad):

Sunni and Shi'a extremists, particularly rogue JAM elements and al-Qaeda in Iraq, are, as noted, interlocked in retaliatory violence and are contesting control of ethnically mixed areas to expand their areas of influence. Throughout the past quarter, rogue JAM members continued a campaign of overt executions and mass kidnappings of Sunni civilians. At the same time, Sunni extremists continued to respond by carrying out large scale and mass-casualty bombings of Shi'a gatherings and culturally significant sites (p. 34).

So, according this analysis anyway, the Shiite militias tend to rely on executions, whereas Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists tend to use mortars, car bombs and suicide bombers. Recent deaths in Baghdad are all starting to look like the former (and less and less like the latter). In today's news, we have an example of the Sunnis (perhaps al Qaeda in Iraq) making themselves heard:

Bombings across Baghdad kill at least 26
Dozens wounded after twin blasts at market, explosion near university

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two bombs were detonated five minutes apart Tuesday in a used motorcycle marketplace in central Baghdad, killing at least 15 people and wounding 74 others, police said.
...
The blast appeared to target the mainly Shiite neighborhood near the market but also was near the Sheik al-Gailani shrine, one of the holiest Sunni locations in the capital.

The story expresses some uncertainty about who the intended victims were, but they were most likely Shiites given that the method used was typical of Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda (though, occasionally, I've noticed that the Shiites use bombs as well). Despite this new story, the vast majority of deaths in Baghdad are the "overt execution" variety, and that phenomenon is spiraling upward. In January so far, there have been about 450 overt executions in Baghdad and about 80 deaths from other kinds of violence (according to my rough tabulation of the numbers at icasualties.org). This is a radical change from what news reports suggested 6 months ago.

Next, I tracked polls of the people in Iraq up until last September (which is the last one I've been able to find). Especially in Baghdad, those polls show that the Shiites are pretty happy with the current state of affairs and they increasingly want us to get out. The Sunnis, by contrast, who had always angrily demanded that US troops leave Iraq, suddenly no longer want us to do that. Instead of more than 80% of them demanding that we leave, only about 57% were making that demand across Iraq. In Baghdad, that number had dropped to 25%. Here is the relevant quote from the report:

Shias show a growing a sense of urgency, with the numbers calling for withdrawal [of American troops] in six months rising from 22 percent to 36 percent. On the other hand, the Sunnis’ earlier overwhelming eagerness for withdrawal has moderated, with the percentage calling for withdrawal within six months dropping from 83 percent to 57 percent. Among those living in Baghdad support is even lower at 24 percent.

It's the Sunnis, not the Shiites, who are starting to panic in Baghdad. Finally, I note news reports saying that Sunni families in Baghdad are constantly being uprooted from their neighborhoods, but I see very little of that happening to Shiites (though some of it is happening to them in other parts of Iraq). Here is a recent example of a story like that:

Iraqi Shiites seize Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad

By Sabrina Tavernise Published: December 23, 2006

BAGHDAD: As the United States debates what to do in Iraq, this country's Shiite majority is already moving toward its own solution.

In a broad power grab in Baghdad Shiite militias are pushing Sunnis out, forcing them to flee to an increasingly embattled territory in the western part of the city. At least 10 mixed neighborhoods have become almost entirely Shiite this year, say residents, local officials and U.S. and Iraqi military commanders.

It is a fight for control of Baghdad that Sunni militants were once winning. For the first two years of the war, they forced Shiites out of neighborhoods across the city, systematically killing bakers, barbers and trash collectors, jobs often held by Shiites. But in February, after the bombing of the Samarra mosque, Shiite militias struck back, pushing west from eastern strongholds and redrawing the sectarian map of the capital.

Shiites are seizing power broadly. The Shiite-dominated government is demanding more control over the Iraqi security forces, but militias have settled deeply within their ranks and the Sunni public is terrified at the prospect.

I put all of that information together to support my theory that it's not a civil war (at least not in Baghdad). Instead, the Sunnis are just being annihilated. Obviously, I could be wrong about that, but I just thought I should review the evidence on which my theory is based.

UPDATE: That bombing today in Baghdad caused more casualties than the early stories suggested. As the story makes clear, this was an attack on Shiites, and the methods used are ones that have been previously associated with the Sunnis and al Qaeda (i.e., suicide bombs), though there was a drive-by shooting that added to the casualties as well. The CNN story attributes this to the recent hanging of Saddam's half-brother, but I wonder if it might be more related to the fact that Muqtada al Sadr had just pulled his Mahdi Army off the streets in anticipation of the coming troop surge (as some reports have suggested). If so, al Qaeda seems to have wasted no time in taking advantage of the opportunity. I had previously noted that a large scale attack like this had not happened since November, but I guess al Qaeda is, unfortunately, still a force to be reckoned with in Baghdad. At least I assume this is al Qaeda in action. I'm sure they'd like to see the Mahdi Army on the streets when the Americans arrive because it increases the chances of armed conflict between those two forces. After this, my guess is that the Mahdi Army will, indeed, be out in force.

The Evolution of Affirmative Action

It's Martin Luther King day, so I thought it would be a good day to get a few thoughts down about affirmative action. In my prior liberal incarnation, I had not really thought much about the issue, yet I was strongly in favor of it. Awarding points for underrepresented minorities and women just looked like "social justice" in action. In my first few years as an academic, however, I was stunned to see how affirmative action was actually practiced. It did not match my idealistic vision at all. Among other things, I realized that elite universities were competing hard for underrepresented minorities, but not to make the lives of those minorities better. Instead, the motivation was to make the university look like a place that loves diversity. It was, in essence, an accounting gimmick. There was a small pool of qualified minorities applying to be professors, and the major universities would go to ridiculous lengths to attract them. The effort that my university put into this competition was amazing, and a similar phenomenon occurred in the competition for minority graduate students and undergraduates. We were not really increasing the size of the small pool of qualified minorities; instead, we were just in a bidding war for those who had made it into that pool.

And how did they get into that pool, anyway? It did not take me long to realize something that should have been obvious all along. Very often, the people we were competing for were advantaged (not disadvantaged) minorities. After all, who is more likely to make it into the pool of applicants to be a professor at a major research university, a black kid who grew up in the ghetto or a black kid whose parents were both doctors and who attended the best schools? Generally speaking, it is the latter, and it makes perfect sense that it would be that way.

Instead of engaging in a frenetic competition for the small pool of qualified minorities, what was clearly needed -- and what was really hard to accomplish -- was a way to enlarge the pool of qualified applicants. Instead of concentrating efforts on that difficult problem (i.e., the real problem), universities would just compete for the limited pool of qualified minorities and then pat themselves on the back if they managed to beat out Harvard or Stanford. If that happened often enough, Harvard and Stanford would look like they did not value diversity, but the reality would be that they simply did not go to sufficiently ridiculous lengths to attract the small number of qualified applicants who would be just fine whether they attended Harvard or not.

Moreover, after looking into the matter a bit further, I eventually realized that affirmative action had somehow morphed far away from its original intent that held some appeal for me. The original intent, I assume, to was to address past discrimination against blacks. By the time I became a professor, affirmative action instead meant adding points to an applicant if the proportion of that applicant's ethnic or racial or gender group in the university was less than the proportion in the population. I was horrified to realize what the underlying theory was. The theory holds, for example, that if 50% of Sociology Ph.D.'s are awarded to women, yet only 30% of Sociology professors are women, then discrimination against women necessarily exists and an affirmative action program should be implemented to bring those numbers more into alignment. The idea that a statistical disparity necessarily implies the existence of discrimination is not at all compelling, yet it was regarded as a fundamental law of the universe (like e = mc^2). It is one possible explanation, but self-selection is an obvious possibility, too. Or do you think that discrimination against men accounts for the fact that women now greatly outnumber men in clinical psychology Ph.D. programs? I doubt anyone sees that as an obvious example of gender bias, yet change the specialty to mechanical engineering and all of a sudden the fact that men greatly outnumber women means that something sinister is necessarily afoot. Even if something sinister is not afoot, then affirmative action proponents would still want to add points to the applications of women because they sincerely believe in the "role model" theory (according to which discrimination against unnamed men to put women into desirable positions will inspire young girls instead of turning them off).

Note how radically different that idea is from the idea that the US government actively and undeniably discriminated against blacks for centuries and that, because of the lingering effects of that discrimination, the US government has a debt to pay. Nowadays, a much different idea applies. Now, if some statistics are out of synch, one leaps to the conclusion that discrimination by "society" is responsible, so points must be added to applicants from underrepresented groups to rectify the situation. The former rationale holds some appeal for me. The latter seems borderline insane. Thus, I am not surprised at all that voters are doing away with affirmative actin when they are given a chance to weigh in on the issue. Even the liberal state of Michigan just voted against it in a semi-landslide (58% to 42%). More states are going to do that in future, as well they should.

Although diversity-based affirmative action has given affirmative action the bad name it deserves, my own feeling is that the original version of affirmative action -- which was targeted at blacks because the US government intentionally discriminated against them for centuries (at first by allowing them to be held as slaves, no less) -- deserves some further consideration. It is a case of ethical principles coming into conflict. It is unethical to discriminate against someone on the basis of skin color, which is what affirmative action must do. It is also unethical to have laws in place discriminating against blacks for centuries and then pretending that no debt is owed once those laws are removed. Harm was done, and one must endeavor to undo that harm, somehow.

You might think that any debt incurred to blacks has already been repaid (e.g., by the years of affirmative action since the 1960s). Or you might think that past discrimination against blacks did not have lingering economic effects, in which case there is no debt to pay (because those who suffered the harm are all gone). Or you might agree with the idea that trying to redress past discrimination makes sense in principle but that it is just too unmanageable in practice (e.g., how many drops of white blood do you need before you are no longer considered to be black?). Still, I think that most Americans would agree that (a) our government discriminated against blacks for a very long period of time and that (b) if the effect of that discrimination lingered into future generations (even after discrimination was finally outlawed), something should be done in an effort to redress the problem. Exactly what should be done (or if enough has been done already) is a really hard problem, but it's a problem that's worth thinking about on Martin Luther King day.

It's Not a Civil War...

...it's an extermination campaign. So far in the month of January, 600 civilian deaths have been recorded by the media in all of Iraq. Of those, 470 occurred in Baghdad. Of those, 400 were executions (of, I assume, Sunni males -- killed by Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army). You could call it a civil war, but that phrase usually suggests one side fighting against the other. This is more like one side simply executing -- in ever larger numbers -- the men who belong to the other side.

I am making some inferences here because the relevant news accounts refer to victims of "death squads" (and I take that to mean the Mahdi Army) and they refer to the victims as "bodies" (and I take that to mean "Sunni males"). I believe that these are safe assumptions, but one cannot be certain about that.

The fact that Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army is almost single-handedly responsible for the high level of civilian deaths we have seen over the last few months in Iraq has led many to call for an attack against him to restore order in Baghdad. But I have previously noted that U.S. officials are remarkably reluctant to come right out and say that the coming offensive in Baghdad will target his Mahdi Army militia. That makes me think we are not going to target them, which I take to be good news. According to my long-standing theory, Muqtada al Sadr's militia was given the green light to confront Sunni insurgents and their al Qaeda associates operating in Baghdad in a way that American troops never could. Whereas American troops are required to direct their fire at enemy combatants (who reveal themselves only when they fire first), Muqtada al Sadr is, I assume, summarily executing any Sunni male he encounters (after first torturing him for information that he might have about the insurgency).

As I noted before, American officials will not say that they are going to confront Muqtada. As it turns out, neither will Prime Minister Maliki:

Baghdad: The Iraqi prime minister on Saturday issued his first comment on the new Bush administration plan for restoring security in Baghdad, declaring it "identical to our strategy and intentions."

Nouri Al Maliki, however, continued to avoid naming the Mehdi Army Shiite militia of one of his key supporters as a target of the military operations to cleanse the capital of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia and death squads.

We are not going to confront the soldiers of the Mahdi Army because, although they hate Americans, they are nevertheless serving as effective allies in the war against the Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq. They are cooperating with the Maliki government (I think), and I hold out hope that they will cooperate with the coming troop surge. For one thing, civilian casualties would plummet, in which case the world would consider the troop surge to be a great success. For another, American casualties might be minimized.

This might be wishful thinking on my part, but there is, in fact, some indication that the Madhi Army will cooperate:

Mahdi Army lowers its profile, anticipating arrival of U.S. troops

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Mahdi Army militia members have stopped wearing their black uniforms, hidden their weapons and abandoned their checkpoints in an apparent effort to lower their profile in Baghdad in advance of the arrival of U.S. reinforcements.

"We have explicit directions to keep a low profile . . . not to confront, not to be dragged into a fight and to calm things down," said one official who received the orders from the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
...
Militia members say al-Sadr ordered them to stand down shortly after President George Bush's announcement that the U.S. would send 17,500 more American troops to Baghdad to work alongside the Iraqi security forces.

If this is true, it fits with my theory that Muqtada al Sadr has been doing our dirty work, so to speak. Now that he has made some progress, he is going to let us try our hand at controlling the Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad. Here is some more information from the article suggesting that there may be no confrontation with the Mahdi Army in store for us:

"If the Mahdi Army is attacked, they will defend themselves," said Sheikh Abdul Razzaq al-Nidawi, a senior al-Sadr official in Najaf. "American troops are the enemy troops . . . if the Americans want armed resistance, we are ready, but we will work hard not to get involved in an armed opposition and we will work hard to endure the pressure even if we make sacrifices to keep our people and country safe."

Across the capital residents described a changed Mahdi Army - in Sadr City, a Shiite slum of more than 2 million people, in Talbiyah on the outskirts of Sadr City, and in Hurriyah, a formerly Sunni Muslim neighborhood in the north of the capital that in recent weeks has been taken over by the Mahdi Army.

Checkpoints in those locations were gone. Instead, young men in jeans and buttoned shirts directed traffic, helped the Iraqi army and wandered the streets nonchalantly.

The Mahdi Army is not the target (according to my theory, at least). Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists are. President Bush said so in his speech to the nation (as I noted before), and Prime Minister Maliki makes the same point:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite whose political backers include al-Sadr, has told legislators and advisors that security forces under the new plan will first go after the Sunni insurgency, which is responsible for most of the capital's car and roadside bombs that target Shiites and U.S. forces.

After that, he's said he'll move to quell militias, including the Mahdi Army, who are suspected in the killings of dozens of Sunnis.

Dozens of Sunnis? That's an understatement. But this does seem to be the plan: the Mahdi Army will be dealt with after the insurgents are confronted (not at the same time). And here is more along those lines:

American officers here say they have no plans to go after militia groups as long as the militias do not attack.

"We're not necessarily going after the militias if the militias don't come after us," said Army Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a military spokesman for the Multi-National Division-Baghdad. "Our mission is not to take down the militias, that's a function of the government."

Weighing against my theory is this new article by two reporters who work for the Boston Globe:

U.S. military says it has new mandate to pursue Shiite militias
Officials say new approach includes strikes against leaders

WASHINGTON: U.S. military officials say the Bush administration has given them new authority to target leaders of political and religious militias in Iraq who are implicated in sectarian violence, including the powerful Shiite Muslim cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
...
The officials said that the new approach would include pinpoint strikes against top leaders in the Mahdi Army as well as other militias from the Shiite majority, which are accused of kidnapping and murdering civilians from the Sunni Muslim minority. The officials said they would focus on methodical manhunts for key leaders, like the one in June that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a key Al Qaeda operative, rather than full-scale battles.

Unlike the previous article I was quoting from, this article does not name any of the "officials" who made these statements, so I am inclined to give it less credibility. I sincerely doubt that Muqtada al Sadr is going to be assassinated (not by security forces, anyway). But the test of my theory is about to get underway, so we'll soon find out.

While these two news stories seem to completely contradict each other, they both note that few people believe that Maliki, a Shiite himself, will ever go after Shiite militias. I really don't believe that Maliki will go after the Shiite militias either. He is aiming for a political agreement with Muqtada once the insurgency in Baghdad is crushed and the Sunnis in Anbar Province come to their senses.

I hope that is how it will all play out. Unfortunately, the Sunnis do not appear to be rational to me, so it is easy for me to envision a post-surge future in which Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army extends its Sunni extermination campaign to the Anbar Provice. Still, if anything can change the self-destructive attitude of the Sunnis, it's the execution campaign underway in Baghdad. It has given them a glimpse of the future they face doing things their way.

Uses and Abuses of Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate

I came across this interesting scholarly article on the death penalty published in the Stanford Law Review (vol. 58, 2006):

USES AND ABUSES OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE IN THE DEATH PENALTY DEBATE
John J. Donohue and Justin Wolfers

I was intrigued by this paper because the authors compared the Canadian and American experiences with capital punishment, as I have, so I assumed they'd reach the same conclusion I did. Instead, they reached the exact opposite conclusion. Their conclusions were based on this graph:



Unlike me, the authors consider dates of court decisions and the like to be potentially important, so the vertical lines denote years in which laws were changed (instead of years in which executions ceased or resumed). But their real point is this:

"The most striking finding is that the homicide rate in Canada has moved in virtual lockstep with the rate in the United States, while approaches to the death penalty have diverged sharply."

Their conclusion is that variables other than the death penalty must be accounting for all of the variation we see in the graph because death penalty laws were changed at different times in the two countries, and the U.S. even reinstated the death penalty in the late 1970s, yet the murder rates changed in "virtual lockstep" anyway.

At first glance, the data do seem to be consistent with that claim, but it is largely an illusion (a fact that only becomes clear when you take a closer look at the data). For starters, let me plot the same data with two different vertical lines:


The red line if the first year that the number of executions in the U.S. fell below 40 (and then it dropped to 0 by 1966). The green line is the first year that executions again reached 40 per year. One possibility is that you need about that many executions per year to influence the murder rate in this country. In fact, that is my current tentative suggestion in light of what the data seem to suggest. But what's going on in Canada?

Canada stopped executing murderers in 1962 (about where that red line is placed), though executions may have reached very low levels in the few years before that. And in those years, the Canadian murder rate began to climb. Because executions dropped to low levels (and ultimately to 0) in the early to mid 1960s for both countries, I've been concentrating on the period 1965 to 1975 to assess the effect. Let's zoom in on that time period:


Sure enough, the murder rates in the two countries move in lockstep over this period, a result that is consistent with both theories. That is, the results are consistent with the idea that (a) executions deter murder and (b) some extraneous variable is simultaneously influencing murder rates in both countries.

To see if the murder rates in the two countries really do move in lockstep during other periods, lets examine some other slices of time. First, let's look at the period from 1950 to 1965:


Over this 15-year period, the Canadian murder rate increased by 40%, whereas the U.S. murder rate decreased slightly. Thus, the two countries were clearly not in lockstep in the 15 years before executions dwindled down to low levels.

OK, so let's look at the 20 years after murder rates had already skyrocketed between 1965 and 1975. That is, let's look at the period from 1976 to 1995:


Over this long time period, the Canadian murder rate declined steadily to a level about 33% below the peak, but the U.S. murder rate remained essentially unchanged. Again, the murder rates do not really move in lockstep. One function is clearly decreasing for 20 years and the other is not. That is a long time to be out of step.

What about the most recent 7 years for which statistics are available?


Here, the U.S. murder rate drops by about 20% (perhaps because executions had again reached 40 per year), but the Canadian rate moves hardly at all.

The point is that the idea that the murder rates move in "virtual lockstep" is mostly a visual illusion created by two things:

1. the murder rates really did move in lockstep (and they moved a lot) between 1965 and 1975, which is the period after which both countries ceased executions.

2. The murder rates in both countries eventually decreased in later years, and it is not easy for your eyes to appreciate the fact that they decreased at different times (not in lockstep). Even though the decreasing trends begin nearly 20 years apart (as I have shown), your eyes get the impression that the functions drop in lockstep. They don't.

There is only one period of time after 1950 during which the murder rates clearly move in lockstep, and that is the period of time following the cessation of executions in both countries (about where that red line is placed in my graph above).

As usual, I do not mean to suggest that this evidence proves that executions serve as a deterrent to murder. I do mean to suggest that the attempted debunking by Donohue and Wolfers is a little misleading. In addition, these authors reach a downright preposterous conclusion when they say:

"As to whether executions raise or lower the homicide rate, we remain profoundly uncertain."

The idea that the evidence is equally consistent with these two possibilities cannot be taken seriously by anyone who is interested in the truth of the matter. Uncertainty about the deterrent effect of the death penalty is certainly warranted, but there is simply no basis to suggest that executions might actually increase the murder rate. Such a claim gives their game away (i.e., they do not appear to be seeking truth so much as pushing an ideology) and, ironically, their stance could be regarded as an abuse of the evidence.

The rest of their article concerning the the deterrent effect of the death penalty in different states is more interesting and, to me, more compelling. I'll touch on the details some other time, but, in a nutshell, they show that trends in the murder rate are quite similar in states with and without the death penalty (and whether or not those states change their death penalty policies). This is how I would imagine it would be because, as I have said before, the mechanism by which executions deter murder (if, in fact, there is a deterrent effect) does not involve murderers paying close attention to the details. Changing laws has no effect (either at the state level or the national level), and most of the people who are prone to commit murder probably do not even know that the threat of execution varies from state to state. My belief is that it is very difficult to communicate information to people about the consequences of murder. In fact, as I already noted, I recently served as a juror in a murder trial in which we were all under the mistaken impression that you could be executed for murdering your wife. That may be true in some states, but it is not true in California (and I imagine that very few people know that).

Executions may penetrate the thick fog and get the point across that if you commit murder, you might be executed. And that's pretty much the only information that is absorbed. Whether a law was just passed in your state abolishing capital punishment, or whether your state uses the death penalty only under special circumstances -- none of that really gets through. Even if it does, it might take a long time to have an effect because the deterrent effect is not a cognitive phenomenon. That is, a potenital murderer does not think to himself "gee, the state legislature just passed a temporary moratorium on executions, so I think I'll run out and kill Joe Blow before that changes." That kind of cognitive computation is not (in my view) how executions would deter murder. Executions speak to an older, more primitive part of the brain, one that is hard to communicate with (but one that places survival above all else).

The Coming Campaign in Baghdad

When you have a theory and you look for evidence bearing on it, you tend to be somewhat blinded by "confirmation bias." That is, you are hyper-alert to evidence that supports your theory, and you tend to overlook evidence that weighs against it. I might be doing that now.

My theory is that Muqtada al Sadr has been asked to do the grim work of eradicating Sunni insurgents and their al Qaeda allies in Baghdad over the last few months because U.S. forces who are constrained by the Geneva Convention were unable to do that when they tried to pacify Baghdad a few months ago. That is, contrary to the prevailing view, the violence in Baghdad is not best described as a spasm of sectarian violence involving Shiite militias against Sunni militias. There are no Sunni militias. Instead, there is a Shiite militia (the Mahdi Army) that is wreaking havoc on Sunni insurgents and their al Qaeda associates. And it all appears to be pretty one-sided now (i.e., the Mahdi Army is doing almost all of the killing). Here is a chart that shows the number of civilians killed over the last few months in Baghdad according to how they were killed (the numbers for January represent a projection that assumes that the rest of the month will continue as things have gone for the first 11 days of the month):


The numbers are from icasualties.org, and the deaths classified as "executions" are all based on stories like this:

BAGHDAD - Police recovered the bodies of 60 people with gunshot wounds and signs of torture from various parts of Baghdad in the 24 hours to Wednesday evening, an Interior Ministry source said.

I can't be sure, but I have long believed that everyone of these reports reflect the work of Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army operating against Sunni males. I don't see any evidence that the Sunnis are putting up an increasing fight. Instead, if the rest of January continues on the current pace, it would seem that they are beginning to weaken because deaths due to all other causes do not seem to be on the increase and may actually be on the decline.

When the new surge of troops arrives, my prediction has been that they will take over the fight against al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgents while simultaneously protecting the Sunni population from the Mahdi Army. If the new security forces in Baghdad can keep al Qaeda from setting off car bombs in Sadr City (a Shiite slum) and firing mortars into Shiite neighborhoods, then Muqtada al Sadr will call off his dogs and relative peace may return to Baghdad.

Note how different my theory is from the prevailing view that we are finally going to go in there and pound the Mahdi Army into the ground. I'll be really surprised if we do that, and everywhere I look I see evidence that seems to confirm my theory (as I said, I might be suffering from confirmation bias).

What evidence? First, American officials are amazingly reluctant to answer a direct question about this. Here is one example:

Asked if the new U.S. and Iraqi offensive would go after Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-U.S. radical Shiite cleric, Gates said, “All lawbreakers are susceptible to being detained or taken care of in this campaign.”

He could have just said "yes." And here is another:

When asked whether soldiers will target radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia is blamed for much of the sectarian violence, Gates said: "All parts of Baghdad are going to be involved in this campaign, including Sadr City."

That sounds a little more threatening, but he did not come right out and say that, yes, our soldiers will target al-Sadr (which is what the question asked). And then I noticed this story, which seems to articulate my prediction almost exactly:

One al-Maliki aide told The Times that the Baghdad offensive would first concentrate on outlying Sunni insurgent strongholds that “choke” the capital — such as Abu Ghraib, Latifiya and Salman Pak — rather than taking on al-Mahdi Army.

“The Prime Minister has said that if the surge is used to tackle the areas sending car bombs into Baghdad he will approve it, but if it is used to do the same as before, he would not be very enthusiastic,” he told The Times.

“He argues that the way to deal with the Mahdi Army is to bring down the level of terrorist attacks so ordinary Shia don’t feel the need for the Mahdi. Right now they think the Mahdi is bad, but without them they would be killed by al-Qaeda and the others.”

After four to eight weeks — once ordinary Shias see a reduction in insurgent killings — the Government would be in a stronger position to persuade the militia to disband.

That's almost exactly how I predict it will play out. Muqtada al Sadr has done (and continues to do) preliminary work needed to make the surge succeed by summarily executing any Sunni male suspected of having any association whatsoever with the insurgency. He has been strategic, not random, in his targeted killings. He is going to keep doing that for a while, but he may slow down if the Iraqi and American troops can suppress the Sunni insurgents on their own. In fact, given that al Sadr is responsible for most of the civilian deaths in Iraq these days, our success is in his hands. If he decides to halt his execution campaign, the reduction in civilian casualties will be evident to all, and the troop surge will be seen as a resounding success.

I hope it unfolds like that, and, for the moment, I am predicting that it will. However, al Qaeda proved my predictions for 2006 to be quite wrong, and one would have to be crazy to rule out the possibility that they could do it again. That terrorist organization -- the one that attacked us on 9/11 -- knows that if they can keep the carnage going, the Democrats will push even harder to bring our troops home. And if we do that, al Qadea will have achieved an unprecedented victory over America. I am continually amazed by the fact that no Democratic proponent of withdrawal will ever address that issue directly. It's almost surreal that they won't talk about it and that reporters won't ask them about it even though it is the critical issue. And they think Bush is in a state of denial.

I'm Almost Proud of the Democrats

In response to the president's plan to send a surge of troops to Baghdad and the Anbar Province in Iraq, the Democrats have generally explained why they are opposed to the plan. And I'm almost proud of them for that. Why? Because they stated actual reasons for their opposition instead of angrily vilifying their own president in a time of war. For example, they argued that a surge of troops would not lead to success, that we have given the Iraqis long enough to succeed, that our troops should not be in the crossfire of a big ol' civil war, and that the Iraqis need to work this out for themselves. I was nearly bursting with pride that they had finally learned to simply disagree with the president instead of acting like juvenile delinquents by saying that "the president is continuing to mislead this nation into war," or that he is only interested in "blood for oil," or that "it's all about Halliburton," and so on. This time, the debate was different. The president predicts that the surge of troops will lead to success, but the Democrats disagree and predict that it will fail, which is why they are opposed to the plan. And that's how it's supposed to be. I'm almost proud.

In the last presidential campaign, the Democrats sunk to a dangerous and unpatriotic low by vilifying the president for his (supposedly) impure motives instead of disagreeing with his position and then defending their own position with rational arguments. I thought they had finally moved beyond all that nonsense, but then I read this:

Bill Nelson, D-Fla., noted his own past support for the administration on the war but said he could not continue. He declared, “I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses, and the American people have not been told the truth.”

Forgive me for saying so, but I consider Senator Bill Nelson to be engaging in unpatriotic behavior here. I am sure that Nelson is a patriot, but even someone who loves his country can engage in unpatriotic behavior from time to time. He's doing that now by accursing the president of lying instead of clearly stating his opposition to the troop surge and defending his position with a sensible argument. It's behavior that I would characterize as cheap and unbecoming of a U.S. senator. It's how the Democrats behaved in the last presidential election, and it's one reason why I am still a little embarrassed to be a member of that party. I hold out hope that liberalism will recover its senses someday, but Bill Nelson is making it hard to keep that hope alive.

The President's New Plan of Attack

I was impressed by the fact that the president had a lot of the basic facts right in his speech. I shouldn't be impressed, but it is surprisingly rare to see a politician appreciate the simple fact that sectarian violence reached new levels after al Qaeda bombed the golden mosque in Samarra back in February. Here is what Bush said about that:

But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq — particularly in Baghdad — overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. Al-Qaida terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq's elections posed for their cause. And they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis. They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam — the Golden Mosque of Samarra — in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq's Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.

He might have noted that this provocative attack was in exact accordance with Zarqawi's plan for inciting sectarian violence in Iraq, but at least he got the essential facts correct. In 2006, al Qaeda's plan for Iraq made great strides, whereas America's plan suffered a setback.

Has any Democrat who is opposed to pursuing victory in Iraq acknowledged why sectarian violence increased in 2006? Not that I have seen. To do so would be to acknowledge the key role played by al Qaeda and to accept that withdrawal is tantamount to surrendering to the terrorist organization that attacked us on 9/11. That's not a tenable position, so the thing to do (if you are a liberal opponent of victory in Iraq) is to simply ignore al Qaeda in Iraq and hope that no one notices. Democrats do that all the time, as I have repeatedly noted (see here for one example). Whenever you read an article on what to do about Iraq written by a liberal opponent of the war, search the document for the words "al Qaeda." Generally speaking, you'll find no mention of that terrorist organization, and on those rare occasions when you do, the assertion will be that they are of minor significance in Iraq (as if they did not intentionally trigger the current wave of sectarian violence with the bombing of the golden mosque). Some of these same people ironically believe that President Bush is in a state of denial. I can understand why many have become tired of this war and want us to get out. What I don't understand is how anyone can reasonably translate that understandable desire into an action plan in light of what it would mean for al Qaeda in Iraq (not to mention for the millions in Iraq who really do support the democracy we are trying to offer them).

What's most interesting to me about the president's new plan is how it will interact with what Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army has been doing in Baghdad. According to my long-standing theory, the Mahdi Army has been executing Sunni males suspected of having any association whatsoever with the Sunni insurgency (or with al Qaeda). And I believe that the Mahdi Army has been operating this way with the tacit (or, perhaps, explicit) approval of the Maliki government. The reason Maliki gave his approval (I surmise) is because he came to the conclusion that soldiers operating under the rules of the Geneva Convention were not going to root out Baghdad-based insurgents any time soon. So Muqtada al Sadr was given a chance to root them out for a while using his own methods. And, in case you have not noticed, their execution campaign has greatly reduced the effectiveness of al Qaeda, which has not pulled off a large-scale bombing in some time.

So, are American forces really going to "clear and hold" Shiite areas of Baghdad? I don't think so, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. I predict that the clear-and-hold strategy will focus mainly on Sunni areas. These areas will be cleared of insurgents and al Qaeda and then the remaining Sunni population will be protected from Shiite militias. The president said this:

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents.

If I have it right, he is talking about Sunni insurgents and terrorists here. These are the same insurgents and terrorists that the Mahdi Army has been going after because our efforts to do the job have not succeeded. But we might succeed now that the Mahdi Army summarily executed a big part of the problem. Unlike al Qaeda, the Mahdi Army has not been setting off bombs in market places to randomly kill innocent men, women and children. They have been engaged in a targeted execution campaign against Sunni males who might have any connection whatsoever to the insurgency (including, I assume, merely being related to someone suspected of being an insurgent). This fact seems so obvious to me, yet it is never, ever mentioned in the news. Perhaps I will turn out to be wrong about this, but that is how it has long seemed to me. In the news, the violence is always portrayed as random sectarian violence, with no further analysis. It seems to me that there is more to the story. Also unnoticed by the media is the fact that as civilian casualties have increased, the victims have changed dramatically. The large majority of victims now are Sunnis in Baghdad. According to the statistics at icasualties.org, there have been 517 civilian deaths in Iraq recorded by the media in the month of January. Fully two-thirds of those deaths (348) consist of executions in Baghdad. Exactly 0 are victims of large-scale al Qaeda attacks against Shiites.

In any case, I'll be surprised to see us clearing Shiite areas of Muqtada al Sadr's militia. I'll be surprised despite reports like this:

Al-Maliki gives Mahdi Army blunt ultimatum
Iraqi PM tells Shiite allies to disarm or face wrath of U.S.-backed forces

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq’s prime minister has told Shiite militiamen to surrender their arms or face an all-out assault by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, senior Iraqi officials said Wednesday, as President Bush said he will commit an additional 21,500 American combat troops to the war.

While we might have to confront some renegade Shiite groups that are no longer under the control of Muqtada al Sadr (and there may be a fair number of these), I suspect that most of what will happen is that the Mahdi Army will agree to tone down its attacks in accordance with Maliki's wishes. Remember what Maliki said back in October:

Regarding setting a time, I don't think we could determine it specifically. The problem of militias, in countries throughout the world, requires time. The most important thing is that we have started and started strong. We have given a clear message: Militias should reconsider their existence. ... The more success we have on the political side will help us deal with this issue. The initial date we've set for disbanding the militias is the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

I read this to mean that he had decided to give Muqtada a few more months to complete the groundwork for a subsequent phase of operations. And, back then, he was telling us that Muqtada had agreed to stop the execution campaign down the line a bit. I hope that's right, and I guess we are about to find out.

Prior Posts on Capital Punishment

I've been posting a lot on the issue of the possible deterrent effect of capital punishment. Here are the relevant links, in case you are interested:

Academic Research on the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment:

What you Need to Know about the Death Penalty

Popular Support for Capital Punishment

The World Strongly Supports Capital Punishment

The Death Penalty Experiment in America:

Let the Evidence Influence Your Opinion of the Death Penalty

When Executions Go Wrong

The Death Penalty Experiments in Canada, Australia and England:

Capital Punishment in Canada

Capital Punishment in Australia

Capital Punishment in England

Further Explorations of the Apparent Deterrent Effect (+ summary graphs):

The Capital Punishment Control Group

Fascinating Twist in my Capital Punishment Argument

Population Trends and the Murder Rate in America

Media Coverage of the Death Penalty:

The Death Penalty and Murder Rates, in the News

Moral Exhibitionism + Denial

Speaking of Murder...

Did you happen to watch Dateline NBC last night? It was the story of a man with two wives (i.e., a polygamist) who was on trial for killing one of them. They all lived in the same house, along with some of their kids. It's an amazing story, and the details can be found here. In a nutshell, when one wife was away on a short trip with the kids, the polygamist killed his other wife and then cut off her fingers and removed her teeth to make it hard to identify the body. He then buried her body under a pile of rocks in the Arizona desert, came back home, and started sending e-mail messages from her account to create the impression that she was still alive. Those messages indicated that she had decided to run off to Europe with another man (hence, her sudden absence).

The police work required to piece it all together was absolutely amazing, and the prosecutor was masterful in presenting the case. I know because I was a member of the jury (jury foreman, in fact). If you watched the show (or if you visit the web site), you'll know that Dateline interviewed 8 of the 12 jurors as a group. I was one of the 4 jurors who chose not to participate in that interview.

As the trial came to an end, I readied myself for battle with the other jurors. The evidence was overwhelming, but I expected to encounter jurors like those who served on the O.J. Simpson trial. I put many hours into thinking about the case, formulating arguments and counterarguments that I would use to persuade other jurors of this man's guilt. I could not stop thinking about the case, and, believe me, when the door closed and jury deliberations started, I was ready for verbal combat. I intended to be polite and respectful, but I was confident that I would overwhelm anyone who wanted to argue that this was something other than first degree murder. As it turned out, the other jurors were as convinced of his guilt as I was, and no argument was really necessary. I prepared harder for that argument than I did for my dissertation defense, but, in the end, I was glad that I did not have to do battle with anyone.

I was surprised that the defendant was not eligible for the death penalty (others were as well), and the experience drove home a point to me: for the most part, we have no idea of what the penalties are for the crimes we might commit. Lots of people probably think that if you kill your wife and stash her body in the desert, the death penalty could be in store for you. And people believe that to be true (I would imagine) because killers are occasionally executed for murder. As it turns out, killers are executed only for murder with "special circumstances" (e.g., killing a police officer in the line of duty). To me, that's how it should be. Since people do not pay attention to the details, the fact that executions occasionally occur is enough to serve as a deterrent to crime.

Ideally, a nation should execute the minimum number of murderers needed to deter crime. I'm not sure what that number is, but striving to achieve that balance should be the evolving standard of decency in western nations. As things stand, that so-called evolving standard in most countries is myopically concerned with the welfare of guilty murderers like this at the expense of innocent people like this. It's downright indecent if you ask me.

Prior Posts on the Economy

As I occasionally do, I am providing a handy-dandy reference guide to some of my prior posts on the economy:

Our fabulous economy (Clinton vs. Bush years):

Americans Hate Their Fabulous Economy

The Rich Were Better Off Under Clinton Than Bush

America: I can't get no...Satisfaction

Poverty Rates and our Fabulous Economy

Judging the Republican Economy

The income story:

Why Does Average Income Go Up When Median Income Goes Down?

The Median Family Income Picture is Bright, Too

The "Wages and Productivity" Hoax

The federal deficit:

Update on the Federal Budget Deficit

The value of the US dollar:

The Falling Dollar

U.S. vs. European economies:

On Top of the World (and Pulling Away)

A Look at the Rich, the Poor and the Middle Guy in America and in Europe

Population Trends and the Murder Rate in America

Although I have presented this information before, here are a few summary graphs that show the effect of ending the enforcement of capital punishment on the murder rate in the four nations that did that in the 1960s (relevant data here). The solid red line shows when executions ceased and the dashed blue line shows the later point in time when the death penalty was officially outlawed according to various Wikipedia articles cited in my prior posts (though, in America, it was legalized again in the early 1980s):


The Canadian graph is the most interesting because it illustrates the flaw in the argument that you find on quite a few anti-death penalty web pages. Here is one example:

The abolition of the death penalty in Canada in 1976 has not led to increased homicide rates. Statistics Canada reports that the number of homicides in Canada in 2001 (554) was 23% lower than the number of homicides in 1975 (721), the year before the death penalty was abolished.

What would these people say if you pointed out to them that the murder rate clearly increased when executions ceased -- not when an unenforced law was changed -- and that this effect was observed in all 4 countries? Well, rather than accepting the information at face value (as they obviously do when it seems to support their case), they would look for reasons to explain away the apparent causal connection between executing murderers and a lower murder rate (and, in fact, a lower crime rate in general).

In trying to explain away the effect myself, I looked into another variable that might account for the sharp rise in the murder rate that was observed in America after executions stopped in 1966. The increase in the murder rate is so large that it cannot all be due to the cessation of executions.

I believe that most crime is committed by relatively young males, so if the proportion of the population that consists of young males increases dramatically, you can be fairly sure that the crime rate will increase pretty dramatically as well. I found this useful web site for computing the relevant population statistics and found that between 1965 and 1975 the proportion of the male population in the 15- to 24-year-old age range increased from 16% to 21%. That change alone could not possibly explain the huge increase in America's murder rate (the rate more than doubled over that time period), but it is undoubtedly a contributing factor. Perhaps the increase in the murder rate after executions ceased would have been more similar to that seen in other nations when they stopped enforcing capital punishment were it not for the contemporaneous increase in the proportion of young males.

This exercise serves to illustrate an important point: if I keep looking (and I will), I know that I will keep finding variables that could partially account for the rise in the U.S. murder rate after we stopped enforcing capital punishment. That's because there is an infinite number of potentially relevant variables out there, and some of them must have changed between 1965 and 1975 in a way that could be construed as contributing to the observed effect. And when I find enough of them, I can put them all together and declare "that's why the murder rate coincidentally increased after executions ceased, which means that there is still no proof that executions deter murder." But that's just a silly game that pro-death penalty opponents can play just as easily. For example, if I were not interested in seeking the truth of the matter, I could make my position completely secure like this: "common sense says that executing criminals will deter crime, and there is still no proof that this way of thinking is wrong." See how the game is played? Just demand "proof" that your position is wrong and no amount of evidence will influence your position.

A better approach to the problem is to conduct experiments in the way that America, Canada, Australia and England have. Stop executing murderers and see what happens to the murder rate, then repeat the experiment elsewhere. The more often you see the murder rate increase, the more confident you should become that the enforcement of capital punishment serves as a deterrent to murder (even if you can find other correlated variables that might explain away the effect). No matter what story you can make up using correlated variables, the fact that the results of these 4 separate experiments turned out the same way should have an influence on your confidence that the enforcement of capital punishment serves as a deterrent to murder. Beyond any reasonable doubt, one's confidence about that should increase -- not decrease -- in light of the death penalty experience in these 4 nations. If you are a skeptic, perhaps your confidence about that will increase only a tiny amount, but increase it must.

Washington Post on Casualties in Iraq

I've long tried to get a handle of civilian casualties in Iraq, so I took note of a report a week or so ago suggesting that, in 2006, there were 16,273 Iraqi civilians and security forces killed (14,298 of which were civilians). The report was said to be from the Iraqi ministries of Health, Defense and Interior. Now, the Washington Post reports this (via Powerline):

War's Toll on Iraqis Put at 22,950 in '06
Statistics From Health Ministry Official Show Tripling of Civilian, Police Deaths
...
In the first six months of last year, 5,640 Iraqi civilians and police officers were killed, but that number more than tripled to 17,310 in the latter half of the year, according to data provided by a Health Ministry official with direct knowledge of the statistics. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said those numbers remained incomplete, suggesting the final tally of violent deaths could be higher.

What they should say in their headline is this:

War's Toll on Iraqis Put at 22,950 in '06 according to Anonymous Health Ministry Official

Or something like that. If you go on the 2nd page of the article (I assume 90% of readers don't), you find this:

The numbers are considered so sensitive that some Iraqi officials, when told of the Health Ministry data, dismissed them as exaggerated, but at the same time did not offer any other numbers. Previous reports about such body counts have drawn similar denials.

"I don't know of these numbers," said Health Ministry spokesman Qasim Yahya. "The Ministry of Health does not give out such numbers."

So, should we trust the secret anonymous source? And did this reporter, who claims that no other figures were provided, miss the other figures that were released a week ago? I didn't. Those are the official figures (not figures elicited from an anonymous source), and any competent reporter would have known that and would have included the information in this article.

The casualty figures may be higher than originally reported, but the Washington Post reporter who decided to air these new figures needs to take a course in critical thinking skills. Here is the chart that shows the casualty figures provided by the anonymous official:


I object to the source listed in the figure. It is not an official set of statistics, as the attribution clearly implies. It should read "SOURCE: Anonymous Official of the Iraqi Health Ministry."

And here is more from the first paragraph of the article:

More than 17,000 Iraqi civilians and police officers died violently in the latter half of 2006, according to Iraqi Health Ministry statistics, a sharp increase that coincided with rising sectarian strife since the February bombing of a landmark Shiite shrine.

Let me see if I have this right: the mosque being bombed in February caused civilian casualties to instantaneously triple in July compared to June? I don't think so. Sectarian violence increased immediately after that mosque was bombed and then increased to new levels in more recent months, as I detail here. Here is the chart that shows the casualty trend based on reports in the media as tabulated by icasualties.org (a reliable method even though it provides an undercount):


The red line marks al Qaeda's bombing of the golden mosque in Samarra back in February of 2006, and you can clearly see the immediate effect.

I don't know the true story of casualties in Iraq, but this new report does not help me much at all. The key issue concerns how to count bodies that show up at the Baghdad morgue. Are the morgue counts independent of or are they redundant with the hospital counts? Is that anonymous official up to speed on that critical issue? Did the reporter even ask? If not, why not?

Because what this story really means is this: I, esteemed reporter for the Washington Post, was able to find someone who claims to be informed and who will say in words what I believe to be true.

Maliki, Muqtada and Sistani

Even occasional readers of my blog may know my theory about the role being played by Muqtada al Sadr in Iraq. In a nutshell, my theory is that he is alive and well (and free to operate) because he is bad news for a Sunni insurgency that refuses to give up the fight. If that were not true, I believe that the Iraqi government would have allowed us to confront him long ago.

My current suspicion is that the prime minister of Iraq essentially gave the green light to Muqtada al Sadr for a certain period of time so that he could do serious damage to Sunni insurgents and their al Qaeda allies operating in Baghdad. During that whole time, people have been asking why something isn't being done about this renegade killer. The reason (perhaps) is that he is laying the foundation for a secure Baghdad by exterminating radical Sunni elements in a way that no Geneva-Convention-bound military force could ever do. Remember that a berm was built around Baghdad at the end of the summer to keep more insurgents from coming in (and, I assume, to trap inside those who were already there):

"Pace said a berm designed to encircle Baghdad and restrict the movement of death-squad members and insurgents in and out of the city had been completed recently and that 28 checkpoints staffed by Iraqis controlled the entrances to the city."

We were going to restore order to Baghdad using our troops, but it did not really work out too well, in part because of incidents like this November bomb blast in Sadr city:

That coordinated strike, which killed more than 200 and wounded more 250 Thursday, is considered the worst of the Iraq war, and Sunni militants are widely assumed to have carried it out.

Well, I think al Qaeda carried out this attack (it's their style). Reporters often describe the fight in Baghdad as sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite militias. But I don't think the Sunnis really have any militias, and I don't think the insurgents generally attack civilians. But al Qaeda does (it is, in fact, what they do for a living). I further believe that nearly all of those being executed (say, 90% of them) are Sunnis. And most of this violence does not involve random terrorism. Instead, it consists of Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia systematically executing any Sunni male suspected of having the slightest association with the insurgency or al Qaeda.

Something will be done about Muqtada, I assume, but only after he completes his essential work. People may not remember what Prime Minister Maliki said in an interview about 3 months ago:

Regarding setting a time, I don't think we could determine it specifically. The problem of militias, in countries throughout the world, requires time. The most important thing is that we have started and started strong. We have given a clear message: Militias should reconsider their existence. ... The more success we have on the political side will help us deal with this issue. The initial date we've set for disbanding the militias is the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

Why wait? Because someone needed to kill large numbers of Sunni extremists in Baghdad (along with their male friends and relatives, I assume), and that takes a little while. Also, the Sunnis needed to be given a real taste of what is in store for them if they don't begin to cooperate. As such, according to my theory, Muqtada was given the green light to kill, and kill he did. Here is my tabulation of the number of executions in Baghdad carried out (presumably) by the Mahdi Army against Sunni males:


These numbers come from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, and they are based on a tabulation of deaths that are described in the media like this:

BAGHDAD - A total of 40 bodies were found, shot dead and most showing signs of torture, in different districts of Baghdad on Tuesday, an Interior Ministry source said.

I believe that these casualties are Sunni males being executed by Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army. This is what he has done in the months since Maliki said that the militias would be addressed around the beginning of the new year. Note that large-scale, high-profile attacks in Baghdad by al Qaeda have pretty much been eliminated during this period of time (since mid-November anyway). That could obviously change before I finish writing this post, but I suspect that the reduction in violence by al Qaeda so far has a lot to do with what the Mahdi Army has been doing.

Well, according to that interview of Maliki, the time for giving Muqtada the red light is upon us. Sure enough, Maliki seems to be taking a new approach:

BAGHDAD — Iraqi soldiers killed 30 suspected insurgents in a furious gun battle Saturday in downtown Baghdad, authorities said, in what appeared to be the opening salvo of a new plan by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to secure the capital.

I believe these are Sunni insurgents. Maliki is not going to start killing Shiite soldiers in the Mahdi Army. But he may be about to call off the Mahdi Army dogs who have (perhaps) finally made it possible for Iraqi Army to take on the remaining Sunni extremists (including al Qaeda) in Baghdad. I assume that bringing Muqtada under control is what this meeting was about:

Radical cleric Sadr meets top Iraq Shi'ite Sistani
07 Jan 2007

NAJAF, Iraq, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Radical young Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr met the reclusive spiritual leader of Iraq's Shi'ite majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani, on Sunday, aides to Sadr said.

The reason for their first meeting in more than a year was not clear. The talks at Sistani's residence in the holy city of Najaf are part of delicate power relationships among the Islamist leaders of Iraq's now dominant Shi'ite majority, all of whom acknowledge Sistani's role as patron of their movement.

An aide to Sadr, Issam al-Moussawi, said the meeting was "cordial" and touched on "the security and political situation".

The fact that al Sadr is on good terms with both Prime Minister Maliki and Grand Ayatollah Sistani explains why we are not going to just rush into Baghdad and take him out. It could be that this month or next will be the last of the Muqtada al Sadr execution campaign. So far this month, there is no sign of the execution campaign coming to an end as 223 out of 323 civilian casualties recorded by the media throughout the entire country of Iraq consist of executions in Baghdad (against, I assume, Sunni males who were tortured for information and then killed, I assume, by Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army).

The rag-tag Mahdi Army is not a highly disciplined military force, so even if Muqtada gives the cease-fire order, we are not going to see the sudden cessation of executions. But, if he does give such an order, I would imagine that we'd see a measurable drop in the monthly count of civilian casualties. I obviously don't know if that will happen, but I anticipate just such a drop in the not-too-distant future. But the fact that I am also hoping for that outcome may explain what may appear to some to be an unreasonably optimistic prediction.

Fascinating Twist in my Capital Punishment Argument

To review my journey thus far:

First, I decided to check what happened to murder rates in various countries when they stopped enforcing capital punishment. Did the murder rate go up, go down, or did it stay the same? America, Canada, Australia and England all stopped executing people in the 1960s, and, in each case, the murder rates increased shortly thereafter. France did not stop executing people until quite a bit later (1977), and neither Germany nor Italy has executed anyone since WW II. These three countries did not change their execution policies between 1965 and 1975, and their collective murder rates did not increase during that time period either. Here, again, are the averaged results for each group (plotted in the way that reader CFC recommended):


This is factual information. Make a copy of it and have it handy for the next time someone tells you that capital punishment does not deter murder.

You might think that including America in this chart is unfair because its murder rate is so much higher than that of the other nations (so perhaps America is a qualitatively different case and should not be included). But when you remove America, the effect is still evident:


That is, the countries that ceased executions in the 1960s saw an increase in their murder rates, whereas those that did not saw their murder rates vary unpredictably (and, on average, the overall murder rate did not change much at all). At one level of analysis, this is important information because it simply refutes claims like these made by Russ Feingold:

When Canada abolished the death penalty for murder, the homicide rate per 100,000 population fell from a peak of 3.09 in 1975, the year before abolition, to 2.41 in 1980, and has remained relatively stable since. Canada’s abolition of the death penalty has not led to more murders.

Well, yes it has led to more murders if you look at what happened when they stopped enforcing capital punishment in 1962 (instead of when they passed a largely symbolic law in 1976). And the same increase in the murder rate was observed in America, Australia and England when they stopped executing murderers, too. It's a real phenomenon that requires explanation.

One explanation for this -- the one that has seemed increasingly likely to me -- is that the enforcement of capital punishment sends a clear message to potential murderers. In so doing, it deters some of them from carrying out their crime and therefore saves innocent lives (quite a lot of them, actually). I still think this is true, but in a way that is more complicated -- and much more interesting -- than I thought.

Yesterday, it occurred to me to look at how other crime rates in America changed during the 1965 to 1975 time period (data here). If executions speak only to potential murderers, then other crime rates should not have increased over this period. Somewhat to my surprise, they changed in the exact same way that the murder rate changed. Here is a graph showing the murder rate in America along with the rate of all other violent crimes (excluding murder):


Quite obviously, violent crime in general went up, not just murder. And, even more surprising, precisely the same trend is seen for non-violent property crimes:


What's going on here? How could stopping executions in 1966 cause property crimes to increase over the next decade?

One simple theory for what might be going on is this: potential criminals do not pay close attention to the laws passed by state legislatures that specify the sentencing guidelines for various crimes. That is, someone who is about to burglarize a house knows very well that he could go to jail for doing that, but he does not really know if the likely outcome is probation, a year in jail or 10 years in jail. Similarly, in California, he does not know that if he has been convicted for felonies twice in the past, his 3rd conviction could send him to jail for life. In other words, this theory holds that potential criminals have only a vague idea of the legal consequences for their criminal activity, and it is not easy for society to get the message through to them. The mere act of passing laws that dictate long sentences does not do it because, for the most part, the potential criminals don't know about it.

How can society get the message through to people who are not paying attention? Criminals who do not pay attention to the passage of state legislation may sit up and take notice of the fact that the state just executed someone. That is, the message sent by an execution may not be transmitted solely to potential murderers. Instead, a more general message may be transmitted. That message may say "society's attitude is such that the consequences for criminal activity are severe." Similarly, when "evolving standards of decency" are such that no one is executed even if they rape and torture a woman to death (or when they do that to a child -- or even multiple children), the opposite message may come across, in which case crimes of all kinds increase. According to this view, the enforcement of capital punishment deters crime in general, not just murders. It is an indication that society has taken a rather unforgiving attitude toward criminal behavior (e.g., it says that society does not care all that much if you had a tough childhood).

A variant of this theory, one that gets a bit more esoteric but that nevertheless seems more likely to me, is that the real deterrent effect lies elsewhere (and is amorphously spread throughout society). According to this idea, the enforcement of capital punishment is, indeed, a signal that society is intolerant of crime, but that attitude is pervasive and shows up everywhere. Here is a simple diagram that gets the point across:


Some general attitude on the part of society leads to the abolition of capital punishment (e.g., "an evolving standard of decency" or a more tolerant, "humanitarian" attitude toward deviant behavior). That same attitude is apparent in the way that teachers teach, in what is shown in movies and on TV, in how parents rear children, etc., and it all leads to a disinhibition of crime in general. So, it's not that the removal of capital punishment directly caused an increase in the murder rate. Instead, it is just one of many indications that societal attitudes and cultural practices that ordinarily keep criminal behavior under better control have decreased. And when capital punishment is reinstated, as happened in America in the early 1980s, it is one measure that a different attitude is now in place:


According to this view, executions per se may not be deterring murders. Instead, executions are a sign that society in general is inhibiting criminal behavior in many, many ways. Society's message of intolerance is coming through everywhere, not just in the execution of murderers.

After thinking through this, I went running back to an e-mail message sent to me by a thoughtful reader. He alerted me to this book called "The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order" in which the author, Francis Fukuyama, makes a much more detailed argument along these lines. A reviewer of the book said this:

Fukuyama argues that civilization is in the midst of a revolution on a par with hunter-gatherers learning how to farm or agricultural societies turning industrial. He finds much to celebrate in this cultural, economic, and technological transformation, but "with all the blessings that flow from a more complex, information-based economy, certain bad things also happened to our social and moral life." Individualism, for example, fuels innovation and prosperity, but has also "corroded virtually all forms of authority and weakened the bonds holding families, neighborhoods, and nations together."

Well, I'll have to read the book to understand his exact thesis, but he may be making my case better than I ever could.

For the moment, my suggestion is that the enforcement of capital punishment may, in a sense, be an indirect deterrent to murder. It is a marker -- an indicator -- that the collective mentality and behavior of a society is such that criminal behavior is inhibited. Fukuyama might say that, under those conditions, some good things are inhibited as well. Perhaps that's true.

My research into the issue of capital punishment has turned out to be just like the research that I do as part of my job -- the truth is always more interesting than it seems to be at first glance. Still, at the level at which these things are usually debated (i.e., the level of debate seen on anti-death-penalty web sites and in anti-death penalty speeches), it is the first chart up above that is the most relevant. In fact, one can add that the enforcement of capital punishment not only deters murder, it deters crime in general by sending a message that would not otherwise get through to potential criminals (the message being that society is not tolerant of misbehavior). The reality is probably a bit more complicated than that, but, in any real-time debate, you can only go so far. The bumper-sticker argument goes like this:

Death penalty opponent: "the abolition of the death penalty does not lead to more murders. When Canada outlawed capital punishment, the murder rate did not increase. In fact, it decreased, which just shows that executions have a brutalizing effect that sends the message that it's OK to kill."

Death penalty proponent: "abolishing the death penalty does lead to more murders if you look at what happens after executions cease (instead of looking at what happens after symbolic laws are passed). When a society stops enforcing capital punishment, it's not just murders that increase -- forcible rapes and aggravated assaults and burglaries and robberies all increase as well because the attempted humanitarian gesture sends the wrong message to criminal minds."

There is a lot to be said for bumper-sticker arguments like this. Even though the truth is more complicated, it's the surface level arguments that will shape the opinions of most. That being the case, it's important to pay attention to how a complicated theory translates into a surface level description.

Et tu, Charles Krauthammer?

I don't often disagree with the brilliant Charles Krauthammer, but this time I do. In his latest column, Krauthammer laments the incompetence of Saddam Hussein's trial and appears disgusted by the fact that his execution looked more like a sectarian lynching than anything else. All of that seems fair enough. Where I part company with him is his suggestion about how we should deal with the current government of Iraq:

We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a government. This governing coalition -- Maliki's Dawa, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Sadr's Mahdi Army -- seems intent on crushing the Sunnis at all costs. Maliki should be made to know that if he insists on having this sectarian war, he can well have it without us.

My reason for disagreeing with him is the same reason I have for disagreeing with everyone who advocates withdrawal: they never say what the consequences would be for al Qaeda in Iraq. To me, it's a critical test, and I cannot take seriously any suggestion that we leave Iraq without some analysis of how it would play out for al Qaeda.

It's true that, right now, the government is facilitating a sectarian war against the Sunnis of Iraq. But it's important to appreciate the fact that the Sunnis practically begged for that to happen by refusing to stop an insurgency that cannot be stopped by American forces. To put this another way, the reality on the ground appears to be this: the only way to stop the Sunni insurgency is through a brutal sectarian war, one that the Sunnis will definitely lose.

The sectarian war that the Sunnis brought upon themselves was on hold for 2 years while the insurgents did everything they could to get the Americans out of the way so that they could restore themselves to power. But when al Qaeda bombed the golden mosque about a year ago, the Shiites finally lost patience, and the sectarian war was officially underway. The Mahdi Army wil now do what neither the Americans nor the Iraqi security forces seem able to do. It would have been better to give the security forces more time to develop, but al Qaeda made that impossible by inciting this sectarian war.

The Sunnis asked for this by aligning themselves with al Qaeda, and they got what they asked for. Now they are in real trouble. They need to stop the insurgency while they still can so that American forces can surge in protection of them. For that to happen, they also need to turn against al Qaeda. If they choose not to do that, then they are, in effect, begging the Shiites to slaughter them. Like the Palestinians, the Sunnis appear to be irrationally self-destructive, so I predict that they will continue to, in essence, request that Shiite militias eradicate them in large numbers, and the Shiite militias seem only too happy to comply.

Unfortunately, we need to at least ensure that the Sunni/al-Qaeda alliance does not win their war against the Maliki government. That's why I disagree with Krauthammer's suggestion that we throw the Maliki government to the wolves. I understand the impulse, but allowing the Sunnis and al Qaeda to achieve a grand victory in Iraq is much too high a price to pay for washing our hands of this sectarian conflict.

The Capital Punishment Control Group

Over the last few days, I've shown that the murder rates in America, Canada, Australia and England all went up in the years after the enforcement of capital punishment came to an end. I also lamented the fact that all four of these natural experiments occurred at about the same time (i.e., the executions in each country ceased in the 1960s). Ideally, the experiments would have been spread out over several decades because the fact that they occurred at roughly the same time allows for the possibility that the increased murder rates reflect some worldwide phenomenon unrelated to capital punishment that just happened to occur at about the time that executions ceased (e.g., a global recession, to name one of a million possibilities).

Because the experiments occurred more or less simultaneously, what is needed is a control group, so to speak. That is, we need to look at murder rates in culturally similar nations with large populations that did not alter their execution strategies during the years in question. If their murder rates also increased in the mid to late 1960s, then it would weaken the argument that the increases in America, Canada, Australia and England were due to the fact that executions in those countries ceased at about that time.

Three good candidates for the control group are France, Germany and Italy. These are western nations with large populations that did not alter their execution policies during the time period in question. In France, executions continued until 1977 (well after the other countries I have considered). In Germany and Italy, no executions have occurred since WW II. Their homicide rates bounced around during the mid 1960s to mid 1970s, but it seems certain that none of those changes occurred because of the cessation of executions.

Did their murder rates increase anyway, perhaps because of some global phenomenon that was influencing the murder rates of all western nations? To find out, I gathered homicide data for France, Germany and Italy from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. I used the on-line query method to conduct this research (accessed here), but you might need a university computer to get access to it. I averaged the homicide rates for these 3 countries in an effort to reveal any general trend that might exist, and here are the results:


The vertical lines mark the critical range from 1965 to 1975, which is when America, Canada, Australia and England all showed dramatic increases in their murder rates (all shortly after executions ceased). You can see that for the comparison countries (France, Germany and Italy), the murder rate barely changed at all over the 10 years in question, though it did tick up slightly after 1970. That slight increase occurred because the murder rate in Italy increased in the 1970s a bit more than Germany's rate decreased (with France remaining mostly unchanged). On average, it's a slight increase. For comparison purposes, here is the average of the 4 countries that ceased executing murderers in 1960s:


In those countries, the murder rates clearly increased. The difference between the experimental group (America, Canada, Australia and England) and the control group (France, Germany and Italy) looks real to me.

I want to be clear about something. I am inquiring into this issue because I want to know the answer. I did not set out to "prove" that the enforcement of capital punishment deters murder. Until a few months ago, I honestly believed that it did not. But everywhere I look, the answer is the same: when executions cease, the murder rate increases. When the execution policy remains unchanged, the murder rate varies unpredictably. If there was some global phenomenon (unrelated to executions) influencing murder rates, it should have affected France, Germany and Italy as much as the other nations between 1965 and 1975. Instead, murder rates increased in the large western nations that stopped executing murderers, but they stayed about the same (on average) in the large western nations that did not change their execution policy. I looked at Japan, too, because they did not change their execution policies over this time, though they may be too culturally dissimilar to count as a comparison nation. Still, it's worth noting that their murder rate declined steadily between 1965 to 1975 (again, contrary to the idea that some global phenomenon explains the pattern seen in the experimental group).

These findings do not prove that executions deter murders, but you have to admit that the results are compelling. They don't prove the point because there are an infinite number of potentially relevant variables (e.g., economic measures, such as the unemployment rate; population issues, such as the proportion of the population consisting of adolescent males; social issues such as marriage rates, etc.), and there is simply no doubt that one or more of those variables will correlate with the changes in murder rates. Still, I am surprised by what I have discovered, and I, myself, find the results to be fairly compelling. Soon, I'll turn my attention to some really ridiculous arguments that death penalty opponents make by looking at state-level analyses (e.g., comparing murder rates and executions in Texas with those of Vermont). For now, my point is just that country-level analyses seem to show that the enforcement of capital punishment deters the crime of murder.

Did I say that France stopped executing murderers in 1977? Yes, I did:

Hamida Djandoubi (c. 1949–10 September 1977) was the last person to be guillotined in France, at Baumettes Prison in Marseille. He was a Tunisian immigrant who had been convicted of the torture and murder of 21-year-old Elisabeth Bousquet, his former girlfriend, in Marseille. Marcel Chevalier served as chief executioner.
...
After a lengthy pre-trial process, Djandoubi eventually appeared in court in Aix-en-Provence on charges of torture-murder, rape and premeditated violence on 24 February 1977. His main defence revolved around the supposed effects of the amputation of his leg six years earlier which his lawyer claimed had driven him to a paroxysm of alcohol and violence, turning him into a "different" man. It was all to no avail, however: on 25 February he was condemned to death. An appeal against his sentence was rejected on 9 June, and in the early morning of 10 September 1977, Djandoubi was woken to be informed that all hope of a presidential reprieve had failed. Shortly afterwards, at 4:40 a.m., he was executed.

Nowadays, if you rape and torture a woman to death in France, you need not fear the guillotine at all. I think that might be good news to someone who is prone to do that sort of thing (but bad news for innocent women who are horribly victimized by such animals). What happened to the murder rate when the French government, in a humanitarian gesture (ironically), transmitted the cheerful good news about the death penalty to potential homicidal maniacs? It went up:


Admittedly, the results here are a little ambiguous. The murder rate did increase from 0.9 in 1977 to 1.3 in 1984, but there was already a bit of an upward trend prior to that, so it is easy to imagine that it would have occurred even if executions had not ceased. Also, the increase is not dramatic (though even a "small" change in the murder rate like this translates into about 250 lives lost per year). Still, this is yet another test that could have weighed against the deterrence hypothesis had the murder rate dropped after executions ceased. Instead, the results, while somewhat ambiguous, weigh more in favor of the deterrence hypothesis than against it. That makes 5 out of 5 tests that are consistent with the deterrence hypothesis.

I don't think it is possible for anyone to argue that there is "no evidence" that the death penalty deters murder. If you want to cling to your belief that it doesn't, you must say there is "no proof" that the death penalty serves as a deterrent. And if that's your standard, you need not worry about the empirical evidence ever again because it's not the sort of issue that can be proven one way or the other. The most we will ever have is compelling evidence, and I think we have that already (although I'll keep looking for alternative interpretations for what I have found).

Capital Punishment in England

My current obsession is the issue of capital punishment, not because I have any special connection to the issue but because I was simply astonished by what I discovered when I first started looking into the matter. My astonishment only increased further as I kept digging. The results are so utterly contrary to what I have heard all of my life that I can hardly believe that the evidence suggests that the enforcement of capital punishment lowers a nation's murder rate.

Today, I look at England's experience. According to this encyclopedia entry, capital punishment in England was going out of style in the 1950s, and the last execution occurred in 1964:

1964: On 13 August at 8am Peter Anthony Allen, at Walton Prison in Liverpool, and Gwynne Owen Evans, at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, are both executed for the murder of John Alan West becoming the last persons executed in Britain.

The enforcement of capital punishment ended in 1964, and one wonders what happened to the murder rate after that. Here is what happened (data from Table 1 of this report):


This is getting ridiculous. When America stopped executing murderers in the mid 1960s, the murder rate increased (but it came down again after capital punishment was reinstated in the 1980s). When Canada stopped executing murderers at the end of 1962, the murder rate increased within a few years. When Australia stopped in 1967, the murder rate went up. And when England stopped in 1964, the murder rate went up as well (as you can plainly see).

These are 4 separate experiments conducted in 4 different but culturally similar countries, and the results are the same in each case. Why isn't this information already well known? How is it possible for people to be so confident that the death penalty does not deter murder in light of findings like these?

Assuming that I found the right data sources, the facts I present are indisputable. You are not compelled to conclude from these facts that there is a direct causal relationship between the enforcement of capital punishment and a reduction in the murder rate, but you must admit that it is a distinct possibility.

In defense of the increasingly implausible idea that capital punishment fails to deter murder, death penalty opponents often point out that the Canadian homicide rate declined after capital punishment was outlawed in 1976. They find that example to be extremely compelling despite the fact that it happened in a single country. Moreover, as it turns out, Canada did not stop executing murderers in 1976. They merely passed a law on that date, one that formalized what had been true since 1962 (which is when executions in that country ceased). When they stopped executing murderers, the murder rate increased. Moreover, the exact same phenomenon was observed in 3 other countries. In all 4 countries, the murder rate increased shortly after the enforcement of capital punishment ceased.

To be consistent in their reasoning, death penalty opponents would have to point to the charts I have created as compelling evidence in favor of the idea that the enforcement of capital punishment lowers the murder rate. There is simply no doubt that had all 4 trends gone in the opposite direction (as once seemed to be true in Canada), death penalty opponents would be trumpeting such evidence as proof that the death penalty does not deter murder (just as they now mistakenly trumpet the Canadian data in that regard). To the extent that you would have found such evidence to provide compelling support for that claim, you must find the actual evidence to be compelling support for the opposite claim.

If I could have run these 4 experiments myself, I would not have run them so closely together in time. They all stopped executions in the 1960s, but I would have stopped them in 1960 in one country, 1970 in the next, 1980 in the next, and 1990 in the last. Instead, the experiments were run simultaneously, which will always allow one to imagine there was some worldwide phenomenon (e.g., a global recession) that caused the murder rate in these 4 countries to increase nearly simultaneously in the mid to late 1960s. According to this view, it's just a remarkable coincidence that all four countries abolished the enforcement of capital punishment right before the increase in the murder rate occurred.

You can make up a story like that in an attempt to cling to your belief that executing murderers does not save innocent lives, but, at a minimum, you must let go of your prior high confidence about that. If you don't, then your opinion is not being shaped by the available evidence, and you might as well free yourself from ever considering the relevant evidence again.

Presidential Preferences

There is a fascinating poll result presented at pollster.com concerning 2008 presidential preferences. People were asked if they'd like to see a particular candidate run or not, and the results came out like this (you may need to click on the figure to make it large enough to see clearly):


As this graph is constructed, it's bad to fall high and to the left, but it's good to fall low and to the right. If you fall high and to the left, it means that many more people hope that you won't run compared to those who hope that you will. If you fall low and to the right, the opposite is true.

What is intriguing to me is that only 2 names fall into the region that means that a majority hopes that the candidate will run: Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. By contrast, John Kerry falls way up and to the left (people don't want to see him run again). Al Gore falls up there, too.

This is interesting to me because of what it means about our policy in Iraq. If you poll Americans directly, they'll now express pessimism about Iraq's future say that we should have left well enough alone. However, it's important not to read too much into a result like that.

If Americans really believed that the situation in Iraq was hopeless and that defeat was at hand (as many on the left do), it would not be surprising to find that they wanted John Kerry to run for president again and wanted John McCain to retire. After all, Kerry wants to accept defeat and withdraw our troops as soon as possible. By contrast, McCain is the leading advocate of a surge in troops in order to secure victory. Yet the same people who think that Iraq is a hopeless mess apparently want a leader who will nonetheless lead us to victory instead of defeat. That makes me think that their expressions of hopelessness are really just expressions of unhappiness over the way things are going in Iraq right now. The only poll that really matters is the presidential poll in 2008, and, at the moment, no one who wants to surrender to al Qaeda in Iraq is looking very good. By contrast, Giuliani and McCain -- both of whom recognize the importance of victory in Iraq -- are looking quite strong. I think that says something important about the American mind set that could easily be overlooked in polls that reflect pessimism about Iraq. Giuliani and McCain may not be there in the end, but the fact that they are currently the preferred candidates suggests that, as of now, America's resolve remains strong.

Capital Punishment in Australia

The approach I am taking to evaluate the effect of capital punishment on a nation's murder rate is an experimental approach. Specifically, I ask: what happens to the murder rate when executions cease, and what happens when they resume? I do not base my analyses on the year in which a law was passed outlawing capital punishment. Instead, I base them on the year in which capital punishment stopped being enforced because it is my belief that executions -- not unenforced laws -- might serve as a deterrent to murder.

Only America conducted the complete experiment by first eliminating and then bringing back the practice, but a number of nations that are culturally similar to America conducted the first part of the experiment by abolishing enforcement of the death penalty. In America, the murder rate increased when executions ceased. In Canada, the same trend was observed despite the frequent claim that the opposite was observed.

If the same trend is observed repeatedly across different culturally similar nations, then it becomes increasingly plausible to argue that there is a causal connection between the enforcement of capital punishment and a reduction in the murder rate (or, equivalently, between the elimination of capital punishment and an increase in the murder rate). That's the rationale behind the analyses that I have been conducting of late.

The results from America and Canada could not be more clear. What happened in Australia when executions ceased? The death penalty for murder in Australia was abolished in 1973, but the last person executed in Australia was in 1967 (and, as I said before, it is the enforcement of capital punishment, not an abstract, unenforced law, that deters murder). What happened to the murder rate in Australia in the years after the last execution in 1967? It went up (data found on page 9 of this report):


The red line marks the last year that someone was executed in Australia. You don't need a Ph.D. in statistics to see that the murder rate was stable between 1952 and 1967 but started to increase right after that. It could be a coincidence, but the number of coincidences are starting to add up. It happened in America, in Canada, and -- as the above graph makes clear -- in Australia. In each case, when capital punishment stopped being enforced, the murder rate began to climb -- either immediately or within a few years.

As I noted yesterday, when Canada stopped executing murderers in 1962, the murder rate when up. When they finally outlawed the practice in 1976, the murder rate began a slow decline for reasons having nothing to do with the death penalty. Many people failed to notice that executions stopped long before the death penalty was outlawed, so they gleefully connected the drop in Canada's murder rate to the elimination of the death penalty. Here are some of many, many examples:

Amnesty International:

Contrary to predictions by death penalty supporters, the homicide rate in Canada did not increase after abolition in 1976. In fact, the Canadian murder rate declined slightly the following year (from 2.8 per 100,000 to 2.7). Over the next 20 years the homicide rate fluctuated (between 2.2 and 2.8 per 100,000), but the general trend was clearly downwards.

Death Penalty Information Center:

Homicide Rates Fall in Canada After Abolition of Death Penalty

The abolition of the death penalty in Canada in 1976 has not led to increased homicide rates. Statistics Canada reports that the number of homicides in Canada in 2001 (554) was 23% lower than the number of homicides in 1975 (721), the year before the death penalty was abolished.

National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty:

The murder rate in Canada has dropped by 40% since the death penalty was abolished in that country in 1976.

Legal Arguments Against the Death Penalty:

by Professor David L. Gregory
St. John's University, School of Law
Canada abolished capital punishment in 1975, yet the murder rate in Canada declined consistently over the next decade.

The reason I mention this is that it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that many people take the experimental approach seriously, even if the result they focus on was observed in a single country. And they should take the experimental approach seriously and let it affect their views. The only problem is that they all made the mistake of assuming that executions ceased when Canada outlawed capital punishment. In fact, executions had ceased 14 years earlier. Using the exact same reasoning that death penalty opponents have already shown themselves to be fond of (appropriately enough), the results clearly show the opposite of what they initially seemed to show. Removing the enforcement of the death penalty is followed by an increase in the murder rate, and it is not just Canada that exhibits that trend. Canada, Australia and America all show the same result. If you don't believe me, it's easy enough to go collect the data and check for yourself (links to the primary data sources are provided in every one of my posts).

Tomorrow, I'll present the results of my inquiry into the British experience with capital punishment. They, too, performed the relevant experiment. Care to guess what happened when they stopped enforcing capital punishment? As you contemplate your prediction, let common sense be your guide.

Moral Exhibitionism + Denial

Here is a classic example of how anti-capital punishment groups argue:

NJ Panel Urges death penalty Abolishment

TRENTON, N.J. Jan 3, 2007 (AP)— A special commission recommended abolishing capital punishment in the Garden State and replacing it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, saying the death penalty costs taxpayers more than paying for prisoners to serve life terms.

The report released Tuesday, authored by a 13-member commission created in late 2005 by the Legislature, also cited other states reconsidering the death penalty, federal court moves to restrict executions of the mentally retarded and juveniles, and religious opposition to the punishment.

The governor favors abolishing the death penalty, as do leaders of both houses of the Legislature.

"There is increasing evidence that the death penalty is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency," the report said.

The commission cited a number of conflicting studies in concluding that there is no "compelling evidence" that the state's death penalty deters people from committing murders.

Note the "evolving standards of decency" argument -- which is not true -- followed by the quick attempt to create the impression that the death penalty does not deter murder.

Liberal opponents of the death penalty must believe that capital punishment does not deter murder because, if they didn't believe that, they would not be able to cast themselves as being on the side of "decency" (which automatically makes you indecent, if you support capital punishment).

This is an example of moral exhibitionism in conjunction with the state of denial. The evidence from the American experiment and the Canadian experiment -- not to mention a considerable body of recent social science research -- provide fairly compelling evidence that executing convicted murderers deters other murderers. Tomorrow, I'll present the results of the Australian experiment. Care to guess to what happened when they stopped executing murderers? If you do, let common sense be your guide.

Federal Budget Deficit 101

Debates about the tax cuts and the federal budget deficit are exasperating. I just saw this on CNN:

As he prepares to deal with a Democratically-controlled Congress for the first time, Bush is also asking lawmakers to extend tax cuts.

"We've got to make sure we spend the people's money wisely," the president said in a Rose Garden statement.

And the White House and Congress need to "keep this economy growing by making tax relief permanent," Bush said.

Democrats were immediately circumspect.

"I know people don't like to pay taxes, but the fact of the matter is is that this administration has produced a record deficit that is really threatening in long measure our ability to make the kind of investments we need to keep America safe," Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, said in a Fox News interview.

Does Mary Landrieu not know the truth, or is she lying? Let's look at the federal budget deficit as a percentage of the nation's GDP, which is the only sensible way to look at it (data here):


What you can see is that the 2006 deficit is not even close to being a modern record (that record occurred back in the Reagan years when it reached 6% of GDP). In fact, the current deficit, far from being a record, is below average for the last 30 years. It is a "record" only in absolute terms, but that record is not meaningful.

Does that really need to be explained? In 1950, the US has a GDP of about $300 billion. If the budget deficit had been $100 billion in that year, it would have been huge (33% of GDP). In 2006, the GDP is closer to $12 trillion. Even a budget deficit twice as large (namely, $200 billion) -- which could be described as a "record" -- is actually of much less significance because it amounts to less than 2% of the 2006 GDP. I can hardly believe that Mary Landrieu needs to have that elementary point explained to her.

There may be good reasons to raise taxes on the wealthy. For example, if income inequality really is increasing at a rapid rate, it might make sense to increase taxes on the wealthy. Whether or not income inequality really is increasing is a matter of debate. Still, it is a much better argument than the "record budget deficit" argument.

Capital Punishment in Canada

I favor capital punishment, but only to the extent that it serves as a deterrent to murder. If capital punishment did not deter murder at all, or if it actually increased the murder rate, I'd be against it. I'd be against the death penalty even though, in certain cases (e.g., child rapist/murderers), I would very much want to see the criminal killed. In fact, I would regard you as being psychologically abnormal (not as being especially "decent") if you did not feel that way. Still, feelings are one thing and intellectual principles are another. If the death penalty does not deter murder, I'd let killers live so long as I could be assured that they would be sentenced to life in prison without any possibility of parole.

The best way to find out if the death penalty serves as a deterrent to murder is to conduct an experiment. That is, take away executions for 20 years and then monitor what happens to the murder rate. Later, bring the executions back and see what happens then. Experiments like that cannot really be run by social scientists, but a natural version of it took place in America some years ago. And the results were fairly clear. Specifically, as I explained here, the murder rate increased when executions came to a halt in the late 1960s and came back down after executions resumed in the early 1980s. It amazes me that this fact is not more widely known.

Still, every experiment should be replicated because you can never be sure that the results mean what they appear to mean. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that the murder rate went up when executions ceased, and perhaps it was just another coincidence that the murder rate came back down when executions started up again. Can the result be replicated? To find out, I decided to investigate what happened in other countries when they took away the death penalty. As a start, I looked into the Canadian experience, and I was surprised by what I found. Amnesty International, which opposes the death penalty on humanitarian grounds (ironically, in my view), summarizes the surprising result:

Contrary to predictions by death penalty supporters, the homicide rate in Canada did not increase after abolition in 1976. In fact, the Canadian murder rate declined slightly the following year (from 2.8 per 100,000 to 2.7). Over the next 20 years the homicide rate fluctuated (between 2.2 and 2.8 per 100,000), but the general trend was clearly downwards. It reached a 30-year low in 1995 (1.98) -- the fourth consecutive year-to-year decrease and a full one-third lower than in the year before abolition. In 1998, the homicide rate dipped below 1.9 per 100,000, the lowest rate since the 1960s.

I looked up the data, and sure enough, here is the story (homicide rates through 1994 found here; rates for 2001-2005 found here):


The red line marks the year in which the death penalty was abolished in Canada. Although I can't find the murder rate data for a few years (1995-2000), the results seem fairly clear: after the death penalty was abolished, the murder rate began a slow downward trend, just as Amnesty International suggests. I would not have predicted that outcome, and it seems entirely inconsistent with the American experience.

After thinking about this, it occurred to me that Amnesty International, though well meaning, is an activist organization that is not highly skilled in the analysis and interpretation of empirical evidence. As such, I decided not to let them do my thinking for me. It did not take me long to realize that they have it all wrong. What follows is the actual story.

The law abolishing capital punishment was, indeed, passed in 1976, but it turns out that executions stopped long before that. And it is actual executions -- not abstract, unenforced laws -- that serve as a deterrent to murder. In the U.S., executions ceased well before the Supreme Court decision in 1972 that legally ended the practice. And the murder rate increased when the executions ceased (not when the Supreme Court made it official).

So, when did executions cease in Canada? On a second check, I realized that Amnesty International had the necessary information right there on their web page:

There were 710 executions in Canada between 1867 and 1962. The last execution was carried out on December 11, 1962 when 2 men were hanged in Toronto, Ontario.

As you can see, there were no executions after 1962 (which can be confirmed by going here). The law that was passed in 1976 merely formalized what had long been true. It's not the unenforced law that deters murder; it's the executions. Amnesty International does not say what happened to the murder rate when the executions ceased after 1962, but that's what you really want to know. So, let's look at that chart again, this time placing the red line at the date that Canada ceased executing murderers:


Obviously, just a few years after Canada stopped executing murderers, the murder rate went up at a rapid rate, which is the exact opposite of what Amnesty International argues. It was not an instantaneous effect, but no one would argue that it should be. Moreover, the timing is right: executions stopped first, and then the murder rate began to climb not long after. Had executions ceased in the middle of an upward trend in the murder rate, the results would have been ambiguous. But it's not that way.

Lots of people make the mistake of claiming that the Canadian experience shows that capital punishment does not deter murder. For example, here is a speech by Russ Feingold in 2000:

A New Millennium: Time To Stop Tinkering with the Machinery of Death

Remarks of Senator Russ Feingold

Columbia University School of Law
April 10, 2000
...
When Canada abolished the death penalty for murder, the homicide rate per 100,000 population fell from a peak of 3.09 in 1975, the year before abolition, to 2.41 in 1980, and has remained relatively stable since. Canada’s abolition of the death penalty has not led to more murders.

Well, as it turns out, Canada’s abolition of the death penalty did lead to more murders. To be consistent, anyone who found the Amnesty International argument to be compelling (as I did at first glance) must now find the alternative interpretation to be equally compelling. When Canada stopped executing murderers, the murder rate increased just a few years later. It is not a debatable point, but, so far as I can tell, no one in the world is aware of it. It's bizarre.

To summarize: the results from Canada replicate what was found in America. That is, the experiment was done twice and the results were the same in both cases. In both cases, doing away with executions on humanitarian grounds was followed by the clearly non-humanitarian effect of more innocent people being murdered. In America, the murder rate dropped when executions resumed. These trends are not debatable. Anyone can get their hands on the relevant numbers and plot them up, as I did. If they do, they'll get the same result. All of this strengthens my belief that the enforcement of capital punishment serves as a deterrent to murder.

My rough calculations suggest that the increase in the murder rate in Canada following the cessation of executions (the murder rate increased from about 1.5 per 100,000 to about 2.5 per 100,000, on average) translates to more than 270 innocent Canadians a year being killed. Think about that the next time you worry that an innocent person might be executed on very rare occasions. Executing an innocent person is an undeniable tragedy, and a society must go to great lengths in an effort to ensure that it does not happen. However, many more innocent people may die if we try so hard to avoid that mistake that we never execute anyone. Perhaps that's why Canadians favor capital punishment as much as Americans do (according to that same Amnesty International web page):

A national poll conducted in June, 1995 found that 69% of Canadians moderately or strongly favoured the return of the death penalty, exactly the same level of support as 20 years ago.

Obviously, the death penalty is not the only variable that affects the murder rate. Canada's murder rate really did start to come down after 1976, and that decline had nothing at all to do with the death penalty. What helped to bring it down? This explanation makes a lot of sense to me:

John Manzo, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Calgary who specializes in criminology, told globeandmail.com the decline in murders is difficult to explain but has been common among many industrialized countries over the past three decades.

"If I had to say there was one central reason for it, I'd say it's a maturing population," he said. Canada's population has been steadily getting older as the baby boomer generation ages and fewer children are born. (The portion of Canada's population over age 65 is expected to rise to 20 per cent by 2025 from 13 per cent today.)

Sounds reasonable. Murder is mostly committed by the young (especially in America, where young black males commit murder at an alarmingly high rate). But let's be clear: the mere fact that multiple variables influence the murder rate should not obscure the additional fact that an experiment performed in America and then replicated in Canada shows that one of those variables is the enforcement of capital punishment. More specifically, the results in both cases suggest that more innocent people die when we decide to keep all guilty people alive.

Iraqi Officials Provide Casualty Figures

A new story from the AP about casualties in Iraq has me a little puzzled. The story says this:

Government officials on Monday reported that 16,273 Iraqi civilians, soldiers and police died violent deaths in 2006, a figure larger than an independent Associated Press count for the year by more than 2,500.

The tabulation by the Iraqi ministries of Health, Defense and Interior, showed that 14,298 civilians, 1,348 police and 627 soldiers were killed in the violence that raged in the country last year.

The Associated Press accounting, gleaned from daily news reports from Baghdad, arrived at a total of 13,738 deaths.

I usually get my casualty statistics from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count because they have always seemed like the most reliable source of information. Like the AP, they base their casualty counts on deaths that are reported in news stories. It is a reliable method, but it is imperfect in that they miss any death not reported in the news (and how many they miss is unknown).

The central question in my mind today revolves around how to treat information provided by morgues in Iraq. When I exclude deaths reported by morgues, I come up with a total of 12,504 civilian casualties for 2006 using the numbers at Iraq Coalition Casualty (ICC) Count. This is a bit below the AP count of 13,738, which is itself a bit below the count of 14,298 reported by Iraqi officials. However, the numbers are all in the same ballpark. Using the ICC figures, here is the unfortunate story of civilian casualties dating back to March of 2005:


The red line marks al Qaeda's bombing of the golden mosque in Samarra back in February of 2006. That act was designed to incite sectarian violence, and it did (sad to say). Civilian casualties immediately jumped from the 400-600 range to the 800-1000 range, and then it has jumped to the 1600-1800 range lately (mostly due to Muqtada al Sadr's execution campaign in Baghdad).

The AP story also says that 1975 Iraqi security forces were killed (1,348 police + 627 soldiers). This fits with the figure of 2090 killed reported on the ICC web site. This consistency lends credibility to the civilian casualty report.

So, it all seems fine, except for one thing noted in the article:

The United Nations has said as many as 100 Iraqis die violently each day, which translates into 36,500 deaths annually.

This higher figure reported by the UN is obtained by adding in casualty statistics from morgues in Iraq (mainly the Baghdad morgue). But Muqtada al Sadr's political group is in charge of the Ministry of Health and the Baghdad morgue. So why would the official statistics -- which were based in part on statistics provided by the Iraq Ministry of Health -- exclude those morgue figures? Either the morgue statistics are redundant with the hospital statistics (in which case they should be excluded) or the numbers being reported are deliberately white-washed to make things seem better than they really are. This seems like a critical issue to sort out.

How many bodies are brought straight to the morgue by police or civilians without first being brought to a hospital (where they can be officially counted)? News stories often suggest that many bodies are taken straight to the morgue, and I have always assumed that to be true. But is it true? If not, civilian casualties are about half of what they have been reported to be by the UN. It's bad in Baghdad, but how bad is a bit of an open question. Some enterprising reporter should try to get to the bottom of this.

The Strength of the Insurgency in Iraq

As I have noted before, it's important to distinguish between the insurgency in Iraq and the sectarian violence that has gotten out of hand lately. Because of the impression created by the increased sectarian violence, the insurgency is often mistakenly thought to be growing in strength. The New York Times says so on a regular basis, with this being just the latest example:

Several American security consultants, all former members of government intelligence agencies that deal with terrorism, said in interviews that the ineffectiveness of efforts to impede the revenues to the insurgents was reflected in the continuing, if not growing, strength of Iraq’s militants. “You have to look at what the insurgency is doing,” Mr. Lang said. “Are they hampered by a lack of funds? I see no evidence that they are.”

The best way to determine whether or not the insurgency is actually growing in strength is to look at casualties of US and Iraqi forces (whereas the extent of sectarian violence can be measured by looking at civilian casualties). Here is a chart that shows US military deaths over the last 3 years (from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count):


As you can see, the numbers are essentially constant (slightly decreasing, actually). Thus, the insurgency is not becoming increasingly lethal, but it is not being shut down either. Here is a chart showing the number of US soldiers wounded over the last 3 years:


Again, no sign that the insurgency is gaining in strength. If anything, it might be weakening to some extent. And here is a chart that shows Iraqi Security Force casualties:


Once again, no sign that the insurgency is increasing in strength even though various reports suggest that the number of attacks launched by the insurgents has increased over the last year. Their attacks apparently become decreasingly effective as they increase in number.

With respect to the insurgency, one gets the picture of a standoff. That's what we are going to hand over to the Iraqi Security Force when they are up to the job. And that's fine with me, although I had hoped for a better outcome.

Why isn't the Iraqi Security Force already up to the job? There are now 322,600 trained security forces, about half of which make up the Iraq Army, according to the latest Defense Department report to Congress entitled Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq. That's a pretty big force. You'd think they could manage security in the whole country, yet here is the picture of how ready they are to assume responsibility for various provinces:


Anbar Province -- that big red area to the left (red means "not ready for transition") -- is the center of the insurgency. It's where the Sunni resistance mainly operates along with al Qaeda in Iraq. Most US military casualties occur there as well. Why can't the Iraqis take on the responsibility for Anbar Province now? There are a number of reasons, but one reason cited in the Defense Department report caught my eye:

For divisions facing sustained combat operations within their normal operational area, the Iraqi Army reports AWOL rates of 5%–8%. These rates have risen to more than 50% when units were directed to deploy to areas of combat outside of their normal areas of operations (p. 48).

We can send US military forces halfway around the world to fight, but we can't send trained Iraqi forces halfway across their own country to fight.

The biggest mistake in our pre-war assessment of Iraq was not about the WMDs. Instead, it was to assume that Iraqis could be quickly trained to be a modern fighting force. All of the reasons why that might not be easy were well known in advance. In fact, the intrinsic problems plaguing Arab armies -- such as their primitive and militarily ineffective tribal loyalty structure -- have been known for a long time. Still, it was possible to imagine that things would be different with a concerted training effort.

The Iraqi forces remain fairly ineffective, but progress is being made. It's important to understand that because it's not how defeatists portray the situation. To them, the final chapter has been written. As they see it, it all descended into a big ol' civil war, the Iraqis will never be able to manage their own security without a genocidal strongman at the helm, so let's get out now.

But the final chapter has not been written, which is why it is premature for al Qaeda in Iraq to celebrate the grand victory over America that the recent American elections seemed to portend. It is taking longer than we had hoped to train the Iraqi army, and al Qaeda exploited that difficulty by successfully inciting sectarian violence before we could complete the job. But that doesn't mean that we are not going to complete the mission. We are, despite the difficulties, because we really have no choice -- unless surrendering to al Qaeda becomes politically feasible in America. Not even Democrats want to do that (at least I hope not). Until the Iraqis are ready, US forces will have to fight the insurgency to a standoff.