Monday, May 24, 2004
The Price and The Value
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
--Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde must have been watching the news and reading the papers.
Here's a lead paragraph from an Associated Press story today:
Well, obviously, morgue statistics don't include many deaths at the hands of Saddam Hussein's security forces: they preferred to do their work in mass graves outside of town.
And to its credit, the AP does make that point in the story--and even cites unnamed human rights organizations to support a figure of 500,000 deaths at Saddam's hands--which is substantially more than the 300,000 figure the US claims and is the one I hear thrown around most often.
So kudos to the AP for at least trying to bring the prewar body count numbers into perspective.
But here's the missing link:
According to the United Nations' own prewar estimates, up to 5,000 Iraqi children were dying *every month* as a result of the sanctions.
That's 60,000 children dying every year.
Which I gather isn't much of a concern at all for Anthony Zinni, or for the majority of the UN, but it kind of bothered me at the time.
So now the sanctions have been lifted for almost a year. It will take a bit of ramp up time to fix the damage done by years of sanctions and neglect. And that damage was substantial.
But there's no escaping the fact that tens of thousands of children were saved last year, and even more will be saved this year, as a result of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Yet there's no mention of that in the story whatsoever.
Yes, the cost is terrible. Over 800 US lives, dozens of other coalition soldiers, and thousands of Iraqis.
But the more you weight the costs, then the more you must weight the value of what is gained.
In terms of Iraqi lives, the unit of measurement is exactly the same. But the numbers are telling. Disregard the fact that a substantial but substantially unkowable number of the Iraqi violent deaths after the occupation are killings of terrorists, Saddam Fedayeen, revenge killings of Baathist monsters, and others who got what was coming to them. The number of lives saved dwarfs the increase in violent deaths in the last year.
You cannot arrive at truth by decontextualizing the loss of Iraqi lives--separating them from the broad gains of Iraqi society. To do so is to dishonor the dead by cheapening their sacrifice.
To do so is to become Oscar Wilde's poster boy.
To do so is to teach the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Splash, out
Jason
--Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde must have been watching the news and reading the papers.
Here's a lead paragraph from an Associated Press story today:
More than 5,500 Iraqis died violently in just Baghdad and three provinces in the first 12 months of the occupation, an Associated Press survey found. The toll from both criminal and political violence ran dramatically higher than violent deaths before the war, according to statistics from morgues.
Well, obviously, morgue statistics don't include many deaths at the hands of Saddam Hussein's security forces: they preferred to do their work in mass graves outside of town.
And to its credit, the AP does make that point in the story--and even cites unnamed human rights organizations to support a figure of 500,000 deaths at Saddam's hands--which is substantially more than the 300,000 figure the US claims and is the one I hear thrown around most often.
So kudos to the AP for at least trying to bring the prewar body count numbers into perspective.
But here's the missing link:
According to the United Nations' own prewar estimates, up to 5,000 Iraqi children were dying *every month* as a result of the sanctions.
That's 60,000 children dying every year.
Which I gather isn't much of a concern at all for Anthony Zinni, or for the majority of the UN, but it kind of bothered me at the time.
So now the sanctions have been lifted for almost a year. It will take a bit of ramp up time to fix the damage done by years of sanctions and neglect. And that damage was substantial.
But there's no escaping the fact that tens of thousands of children were saved last year, and even more will be saved this year, as a result of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Yet there's no mention of that in the story whatsoever.
Yes, the cost is terrible. Over 800 US lives, dozens of other coalition soldiers, and thousands of Iraqis.
But the more you weight the costs, then the more you must weight the value of what is gained.
In terms of Iraqi lives, the unit of measurement is exactly the same. But the numbers are telling. Disregard the fact that a substantial but substantially unkowable number of the Iraqi violent deaths after the occupation are killings of terrorists, Saddam Fedayeen, revenge killings of Baathist monsters, and others who got what was coming to them. The number of lives saved dwarfs the increase in violent deaths in the last year.
You cannot arrive at truth by decontextualizing the loss of Iraqi lives--separating them from the broad gains of Iraqi society. To do so is to dishonor the dead by cheapening their sacrifice.
To do so is to become Oscar Wilde's poster boy.
To do so is to teach the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Splash, out
Jason
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