Every year, some group places white flags in the park blocks to represent people killed in Iraq. This year the red flags represent US soldiers killed, the white flags each represent “at least” 5 Iraqis killed. The flags cover several city blocks.
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March 13th, 2008 at 9:32 am
It would be interesting to see where “this group” gets their data on “Iraqi” casualties from. It’s easy to quantify American GI casualties - but Iraqi casualties seems a bit more ambiguous to determine.
First: Exactly how is said group determining who is and who isn’t actually “Iraqi”…I would submit that even the most well-meaning groups suffer from an overly concerned and ignorantly optimistic ethnocentric-based approach that only sees “Arabic” or “brown” people and assumes them to be “Iraqi” (yes, overly-concerned white liberals are just as guilty of boxing people in as anyone http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/62-knowing-whats-best-for-poor-people/ )…so I’m not sure one should, in good conscience, accept their data-set without the ever-so-large and proverbial “grain of salt”. This is not a traditional war of US vs. Iraqi military - but one of (mostly) US vs. other fighters that come from various chromosomal sets in the Arabic world and don’t wear a particular flag on their sleeve. If I may be blunt, it would be like calling all hispanics in the United States “Mexicans”…it’s a fallicy that really doesn’t sit well with hispanic people who aren’t Mexican by geography or ethnicity…and a disservice to actual Iraqi people.
Second: Exactly how empirical is the data-set that this group (and others like them who want to count deaths of undocumented people) is using to base their assertions? What are the data-collection methods? Is there a bias, political pressure, or funding stipulation that would taint the data being collected? Who actually goes out into the streets and homes and counts the dead bodies and determines which ones are Iraqi and which ones aren’t? Is there really a network of Iraqi coroners offices who actually are staffed to keep up with the numbers that this group purports? Does the US Military actually have the time to accurately (even to within 10,000 bodies) quantify the amount of enemy deaths? The amount of civilian casualties?
I’m just sayin’…
At any rate, I just like to point out that it is easy to look at a display such as this and be caught up in the emotional side of our sensibilities as humans…but please, let’s all consider the ability to reason that God gave us as well. I’m not saying that their facts are wrong…but simply littering in a public space with flags is a non-sequitur approach that preys on people’s natural aversion to war and death. In fact, aside from the physical energy it takes to complete such a display, it is actually probably intellectually lazy and proves only that they can read what someone else published on a Website somewhere…and don’t give me any grief about the “data” coming from a major corporate news outlet…we all have our biases. And since you just “lobbed the grenade” without any context for it, I wonder exactly what you were hoping to accomplish with this post? Hoping it would stand on its own? If I know you to be the kind of person I think you are, I think maybe you just wanted to spark conversation? Well, for what it’s worth, this is the way I see it.
In the end, next to nobody heard about the display mentioned in this post and so if anything, those who disagree with me will at least consider something more effective next time - that is - if they really want to influence the influencers and create opportunities for real change. I’m not defending war, I’m merely defending those who think rationally but don’t speak up for fear of what the group-think mobs might say about them! No non-sequitur arguments, please.
Chris, this is a great blog, I’m glad I found you online and I’ll see you at church sometime! (And no, I’m not a Republican, I just like to be free of group-think.)
March 13th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
It seems that it has sparked a response in you, Robert.
A couple of thoughts:
1. This is a public demonstration, not an argument; as such it has goals and criteria for “success” than does an argument. One of the things it is not susceptible to is non-sequiter. A demonstration is not crafted to convince but to heighten awareness, or at most to assert something. Statements are not susceptible to fallacy, only arguments are.
2. As a statement, this doesn’t even depend on the numbers being absolutely correct. The power of the statement lies in the relationship between the white and red flags. There is no doubt that the number of American deaths are miniscule compared to the number of non-American deaths in Iraq. There is further no doubt about the fact that only a small percentage of those who have died do to violence or disease stemming from the near-total collapse of public services in Iraq deserved such a death. Here I will assert something: those non-American deaths were just as tragic as the American ones. There have been studies done, actually, by reputable academic institutions (I am thinking of the one done about a year ago by Johns Hopkins in particular), which have estimated the Iraqi deaths, and the estimates have been very high, and in each case the institution doing the study said that the estimates themselves were conservative.
http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2006/burnham_iraq_2006.html
3. “peoples natural aversion to war and death” Indeed! But that’s just it, war and death are bad. Its not as though we should put our emotions away and reason ourselves into the position that war is a good thing! Its not. Involving people’s emotions in this truth is not “preying.” And people did emotionally respond to this display, the park blocks around PSU were noticeably quieter. I don’t imagine that people’s minds were changed by the display, but I for one was reminded of the huge cost of this folly, and reminded in a way that numbers on paper cannot convey. Yes this display was directed at the emotions, but to be emotionally engaged another’s death is not just human but in fact ethical.