Like most people, I read the news in a kind of emotional spin cycle of pride, grief, anxiety, determination and wonder. And then every so often I manage to change my perspective, and grasp at something that amuses me. Usually it’s dark amusement these days, but it’s amusement nonetheless.<\/p>\n
Recently, it’s been the litany from those who opposed the war in the first place who now trip over themselves to tell us how badly it’s going. They seize on the casualties and delays to explain that if we’re not actually losing the war, we’re certainly approaching a stalemate.<\/p>\n
And, thinking about the misperception of risk in this, I manage a dry chuckle.<\/p>\n
See, it’s like this.<\/p>\n
The population of South-Central Los Angeles is about 300,000, last time I checked. Goes up and down as you define neighborhoods in and out.<\/p>\n
Last year there were over 250 murders there.<\/p>\n
Two hundred and fifty people died. Moms, dads, kids, grandparents, teenagers. Going to the grocery store. Selling groceries. Leaving church. (Yeah, some were selling drugs.)<\/p>\n
That’s about twenty deaths a month, a little over two every three days.<\/p>\n
In one neighborhood.<\/b><\/p>\n
In all of California, we had about 2,066 murders (including non negligent manslaughter) in 2000. The total population of California in 2000 was about 38 million (as compared to an estimated population of Iraq of 29 million). That’s about five and a half deaths a day.<\/p>\n
In one state.<\/p>\n
Based on the list of deaths in Fox News, we suffered 43 deaths…including hostile action and accidents from March 20 to March 29. Ten days, 43 deaths. Each one a tragedy, as are the deaths here in California. Four and some tragedies per day.<\/p>\n
So what does this tell us?<\/p>\n
That in a country about the size of California, in a FREAKING WAR ZONE<\/b>, the daily number of deaths among our soldiers is comparable to the daily number of murders in California as a whole.<\/i> If I were to pull out the accidents from the war deaths…14 of them…there are fewer war deaths than murders.<\/i> (Note: I know that some Iraqis are dying as well, and that the rates per population are higher…)<\/p>\n
Let’s use a real population as a comparison. Figure that the population of South-Central LA is roughly the population of the US forces (it’s probably close); it is roughly five times more dangerous to be a soldier in Iraq than to simply go out and buy groceries in South Central.<\/p>\n
Does this detract from the courage of the troops in Iraq? Of course not.<\/b> Does it mean there are too many murders here in California? Of course it does.<\/b><\/p>\n
But before we panic at the ‘slaughter’ of our troops caught in a ‘quagmire’, let’s remember than in any group of a third of a million people, a certain number will die every day. Add heavy equipment and guns, and even with no hostile action, we will see a significant number of deaths.<\/p>\n
And our troops have a whole army facing them, and in spite of it, they are being killed at a rate comparable to that of the average resident of neighborhoods in California.<\/b><\/p>\n
Now, I’m not a military historian or a tactician. And there are some alternative ways to look at the data. But I will suggest that this suggests that the opposition our troops are facing … relative to their individual abilities, training, determination, technology, and tactics … isn’t doing a very good job of fighting them.<\/p>\n
Look, these numbers aren’t exact. I’m pulling them from quick Google searches and public databases, and if I was going to hold them up, I’d need to do a lot of refinement and adjustments (correcting time bases, getting exact populations, etc. etc.).<\/p>\n
But they aren’t off by an order of magnitude (factor of 10).<\/p>\n
So the next time you read someone who tells you that we’re being fought to a stalemate, that the war is lasting too long and there are too many casualties…ask yourself how it can be true when one can look at these numbers and have them be even roughly comparable.<\/p>\n
I can only think of one answer, and it is that the war is going pretty darn well from our side.<\/p>\n
Let’s hope it keeps doing so.<\/u><\/p>\n
And let us keep in mind that those deaths that statistics can dismiss are real, and that to the loved ones they leave behind, it is no consolation that only a few died if it is their daughter, son, wife, husband, mother or father who comes home under a flag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like most people, I read the news in a kind of emotional spin cycle of pride, grief, anxiety, determination and wonder. And then every so often I manage to change my perspective, and grasp at something that amuses me. Usually it’s dark amusement these days, but it’s amusement nonetheless. Recently, it’s been the litany from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}