Casualties in Iraq: February, 2008

For the sixth month in a row, civilian casualties in Iraq remained lower than anyone thought possible as recently as September, which is when General Petraeus testified before infinitely skeptical Democratic politicians. The American public has a sense that matters have improved in Iraq, but I don't think they appreciate the magnitude of the improvement. This chart gives you some idea of just how much things have improved (from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, with standard corrections to the data described here):


The dark purple bars show the months during which the troop surge has been underway. As you can plainly see, civilian casualties casualties are now about 1000 per month lower than they were when Bush ordered the surge. These statistics are incomplete, and when the more complete statistics compiled by Iraq Body Count come out in a month or so, they will show the exact same trend (as is always the case), but all of the numbers will be essentially doubled. That is, at the peak of violence (which is when the Democrats wanted to rapidly withdraw our troops, whereas Bush ordered the surge), about 3000 civilians were dying each month. Now, about 1000 are dying each month. Thus, Iraq is still a very violent place, but the last 6 months have seen about 12,000 fewer dead civilians than would have occurred if Barack Obama had prevailed on the troop surge. I know, I know, in response to this observation, you want to change the subject and talk about how many civilian lives would have been saved had Barack Obama been president and allowed the dictator with the blood of more than 1 million people on his hands to remain in power indefinitely. It's hard to know how many would have died had we followed that path, and any estimate largely hinges on what you believe would have happened to the no-fly zones that were protecting the Shiites and Kurds. After all, we didn't have the no-fly-zone policy in effect for no reason whatsoever. We had it in effect because, without it, those people would have been slaughtered (as they had been before) by Saddam Hussein's forces. One problem that few people who opposed the war want to discuss is that the idea of keeping the no-fly zones in effect indefinitely was not tenable:

Monday, 19 February, 2001, 19:07 GMT

No-fly zones: The legal position

The two no-fly zones over Iraq were imposed by the US, Britain and France after the Gulf War, in what was described as a humanitarian effort to protect Shi'a Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north.

The justification was that an acute humanitarian crisis made it necessary to infringe the sovereignty of Iraq in this way.

However, unlike the military campaign to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the no-fly zones were not authorised by the UN and they are not specifically sanctioned by any Security Council resolution.
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Critics add that whatever was justified in 1991 is not necessarily justified more than 10 years later, when the reasons for continuing the air patrols may have changed.

France no longer takes part in policing the no-fly zones, and the US and the UK are now alone in the Security Council in insisting that their frequent bombing of Iraqi targets is covered by international law.
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Other countries, notably China and Russia, have condemned the no-fly zones as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, and they insist there is no backing for the policy under international law or UN resolutions.
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Since UN weapons inspectors withdrew from Iraq shortly before a three-day US-UK bombardment in late 1998 known as Operation Desert Fox, the two Western powers have kept up their attacks whenever Iraqi air defences have locked onto aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones.

Baghdad says more than 300 civilians have died in these attacks...

The US and British air forces have disputed some of these figures, and insist they never target civilian areas.

However, the raids have provided ammunition for Iraqi efforts to garner support for an end to its international isolation.

Now try to imagine keeping the no-fly zones in place after UN inspectors decided that Iraq had no WMDs (which is probably what they would have said had they been allowed to continue their cat-and-mouse game with Saddam in 2003). There is no possible way.

One can argue forever about what would have happened had Saddam been allowed to maintain his ruthless grip on Iraq, but there is not much argument about what would have happened had we withdrawn our troops at the height of violence in 2006. Something like this would have happened:


People are still fond of saying that our invasion of Iraq is somehow serving the purposes of al Qaeda. But remember what was said in the National Intelligence Estimate that Democrats gleefully leaked because it indicated that Iraq had become a cause celeb for jihadists. It said something else that is relevant to the question of whether or not troop withdrawal at the height of violence was a good idea:

The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.
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we judge that al-Qa’ida will continue to pose the greatest threat to the Homeland and US interests abroad by a single terrorist organization.
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Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

Now, I ask you, which policy -- troop withdrawal at the height of violence or a troop surge now that is now crushing the life out of al Qaeda in Iraq -- is more likely to cause jihadists leaving Iraq to perceive themselves, and to be perceived, as having failed? This is not a hard question to answer. Obviously, the Clinton/Obama option would have inspired many more jihadists to carry on the fight, and the entire world would be harshly condemning the United States for abandoning Iraq after causing a "civil war." It is the McCain option that is hurting the jihadist cause by reducing civilian casualties and demonstrating that America no longer just abandons its allies when the going gets tough. And not only are civilian casualties way down (despite the fact that the jihadists are trying to keep it as high as possible), U.S. military casualties are way down as well:


The fight is not over yet, and victory over al Qaeda in Iraq is not yet assured. But Barack Obama was perfectly comfortable accepting certain defeat for America (and a perceived victory for the jihadists) when the going got rough. He's a nice guy, but that tells me all I really need to know about him. He might win, but he will not get my vote.

Of the 566 civilian casualties recorded at the ICC web site, it is important to understand that 291 (i.e., about 50%) are attributable to al Qaeda. Of these, 213 were caused by suicide bombers (always attributable to al Qaeda, and correctly so), 63 were unconvered from mass graves in areas that had previously been under the control of al Qaeda in Iraq, and 15 were killed by simultaneous car bombings (the kind of attack that is a hallmark of al Qaeda).

Of course, al Qaeda is not the only deadly force in Iraq. Another 97 were killed, execution-style, in Baghdad. I believe that these killings represent sectarian violence by rogue elements of the Mahdi Army (such that most of the victims are Sunni males). At the height of violence, more than 1000 Sunnis were being killed each month in Baghdad as the Mahdi Army sought to suppress al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign against Shiite civilians. Unless al Qaeda is allowed to make a big comeback (which is what Barack Obama will allow them to do), it's hard to see the Mahdi Army getting back to that kind of killing spree. But some of that is still taking place.

Meanwhile, as America achieves a resounding victory over and Qaeda and works to stabilize Iraq with remarkable success, American attitudes are slowly changing:


Incredibly, 40% of Americans still believe that our efforts are not reducing civilian casualties despite the fact that, for 6 straight months, they are about 1/3 of what they once were. Slowly but surely, though, they are getting the picture. And then there is this:

Opinion on the critical question of whether the U.S. should keep troops in Iraq is now about evenly divided, the first time this has happened since late 2006. About half of those surveyed (49%) say they favor bringing troops home as soon as possible, but most of these (33%) favor gradual withdrawal over the next year or two, rather than immediate withdrawal. Similarly, just under half (47%) say that the U.S. should keep troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, with most of these (30%) saying that no timetable should be set.

The Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are all united with 160,000 American forces fighting al Qaeda in Iraq. Even so, al Qaeda was responsible for 50% of the civilian casualties last month. Never underestimate al Qaeda, and don't even think about voting for the man who seriously believes that we should withdraw our forces from Iraq to go fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan.