Innumeracy and Context
I was working out a couple days ago and watching ABC News while running on a treadmill and I saw the beginning of a story that seemed to me to capture precisely what is wrong with the Mainstream Media and its client, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. (I say "client" because the MSM nowadays essentially functions as a p.r. firm for the Dems.)
The story was read by a very nice looking youngish female reporter. It had to do with the 3rd anniversary of the beginning of the War in Iraq, and the lede was that we've had 2300 servicemen and women killed in Iraq and are now spending $6 billion a month on the war. Everything about the story was wrong-headed in a particular way that is typical of the MSM -- innumeracy coupled with a lack of historical context.
First, it simply is not that accurate to say that the war is now 3 years old and counting. The "war" was over in six weeks and was a tremendous triumph for the American military in terms of strategy, tactics, logistics, execution, courage, heroism, etc. The "war" succeeded in toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein quickly and with very little loss of life, remarkably little from any serious historical perspective, and remarkably little compared to the estimates of most commentators on the left, who predicted a bloodbath. What has been going on since has been the reconstruction of a country that had been destroyed, not by us, but by decades of neglect, corruption, and tyranny under Hussein. That reconstruction has, unfortunately, been made more difficult due to the presence of terrorists within the country. But, nevertheless, what is going on now is not "war" per se, but a series of counterinsurgencies trying to root out the terrorists. And the missing context is that, in our own Civil War, political reconstruction of the South arguably was not complete for a hundred years, until the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s. And, of course, the reconstruction of Germany after World War I was a complete failure, leading to World War II and a decades long reconstruction of Europe -- we tend to forget that we still have tens of thousands of troops in Germany, Japan and Korea a half-century after WWII and the Korean War ended.
Second, it is not accurate to say that we've lost 2300 dead. As I've written elsewhere, and as many have written, that figure includes men and women who died in accidents, illness and suicide. When you have a population of 130,000 people anywhere, some of them will die of accidents, some will get sick and die, some will kill themselves because they were jilted by their lovers or because they have manic depression, etc. In short, a significant chunk of the 2300 would have died anyway, wherever they were.
But the real innumeracy is simply that 2300 people over 3 years is just not that much. I know, I know, every death is a tragedy, every death is horrible to the individual and his or her family. But 2300 deaths in 3 years is less than the number of people murdered in any two of the top five American cities during the same span. (New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Houston, you pick 'em.) It's somewhere around 1/50th or 1/60th of the number of people who die in car wrecks. To give it a military context, it's significantly less than the number of Americans who died on one day on D-Day, or in any one of a number of other battles in WWII, or in any one of dozens of battles in the Civil War. It is, in short, a remarkably small number by any meaningful comparison, not a large number, as the ABC story meant its viewers to believe.
Third, it is meaningless to say that we're now spending $6 billion a month in Iraq, unless you only care about propaganda. The number sounds like a lot and, of course, it is a lot if you are a viewer making $30,000 a year, or $50,000 or even $100,000. But government spending is on a different scale, and that scale is what matters. $6 billion a month has meaning only if you put it in the context of what government spends in total, and what government spends on other things. For instance, the 2006 budget showed around $880 billion in spending on Social Security and Medicare, or about $75 billion a month, more than 12 times what we're spending on the War in Iraq. And, of course, the total government budget is now around $2.8 trillion, or about $230 billion a month -- the War in Iraq is about 2.5% of this figure.
Wouldn't the story have been more fair if ABC had said we're spending 2.5% of our budget on the War in Iraq?
This type of subtle, everyday propaganda from the MSM is why many of us no longer watch the nightly news, and instead get our information from blogs and primary sources.
The story was read by a very nice looking youngish female reporter. It had to do with the 3rd anniversary of the beginning of the War in Iraq, and the lede was that we've had 2300 servicemen and women killed in Iraq and are now spending $6 billion a month on the war. Everything about the story was wrong-headed in a particular way that is typical of the MSM -- innumeracy coupled with a lack of historical context.
First, it simply is not that accurate to say that the war is now 3 years old and counting. The "war" was over in six weeks and was a tremendous triumph for the American military in terms of strategy, tactics, logistics, execution, courage, heroism, etc. The "war" succeeded in toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein quickly and with very little loss of life, remarkably little from any serious historical perspective, and remarkably little compared to the estimates of most commentators on the left, who predicted a bloodbath. What has been going on since has been the reconstruction of a country that had been destroyed, not by us, but by decades of neglect, corruption, and tyranny under Hussein. That reconstruction has, unfortunately, been made more difficult due to the presence of terrorists within the country. But, nevertheless, what is going on now is not "war" per se, but a series of counterinsurgencies trying to root out the terrorists. And the missing context is that, in our own Civil War, political reconstruction of the South arguably was not complete for a hundred years, until the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s. And, of course, the reconstruction of Germany after World War I was a complete failure, leading to World War II and a decades long reconstruction of Europe -- we tend to forget that we still have tens of thousands of troops in Germany, Japan and Korea a half-century after WWII and the Korean War ended.
Second, it is not accurate to say that we've lost 2300 dead. As I've written elsewhere, and as many have written, that figure includes men and women who died in accidents, illness and suicide. When you have a population of 130,000 people anywhere, some of them will die of accidents, some will get sick and die, some will kill themselves because they were jilted by their lovers or because they have manic depression, etc. In short, a significant chunk of the 2300 would have died anyway, wherever they were.
But the real innumeracy is simply that 2300 people over 3 years is just not that much. I know, I know, every death is a tragedy, every death is horrible to the individual and his or her family. But 2300 deaths in 3 years is less than the number of people murdered in any two of the top five American cities during the same span. (New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Houston, you pick 'em.) It's somewhere around 1/50th or 1/60th of the number of people who die in car wrecks. To give it a military context, it's significantly less than the number of Americans who died on one day on D-Day, or in any one of a number of other battles in WWII, or in any one of dozens of battles in the Civil War. It is, in short, a remarkably small number by any meaningful comparison, not a large number, as the ABC story meant its viewers to believe.
Third, it is meaningless to say that we're now spending $6 billion a month in Iraq, unless you only care about propaganda. The number sounds like a lot and, of course, it is a lot if you are a viewer making $30,000 a year, or $50,000 or even $100,000. But government spending is on a different scale, and that scale is what matters. $6 billion a month has meaning only if you put it in the context of what government spends in total, and what government spends on other things. For instance, the 2006 budget showed around $880 billion in spending on Social Security and Medicare, or about $75 billion a month, more than 12 times what we're spending on the War in Iraq. And, of course, the total government budget is now around $2.8 trillion, or about $230 billion a month -- the War in Iraq is about 2.5% of this figure.
Wouldn't the story have been more fair if ABC had said we're spending 2.5% of our budget on the War in Iraq?
This type of subtle, everyday propaganda from the MSM is why many of us no longer watch the nightly news, and instead get our information from blogs and primary sources.
posted by PDB at 7:06 AM
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