In the wake of the July 7, 2005 London bombings, the Independent’s John Rentoul commented:
“A Muslim friend of mine in the East End of London says that the sense of victimisation and injustice goes so deep among his fellow religionists that he sometimes despairs. 'This all goes back to the burning of The Satanic Verses,' he says. It was in 1988 that we should have realised that we were up against a culture - he doesn't like the term 'Muslim community' - that tended to irrationalism and self-pity. Salman Rushdie did not create that culture, but he provided a focus for it and fed its sense of grievance.
“The Iraq issue serves much the same purpose today.” (Rentoul, 'Islam, blood and grievance,' The Independent, July 24, 2005)
According to Rentoul, then, the invasion of Iraq and the mass slaughter that followed was feeding irrational self-pity in Muslims. He added:
“The worst succour that the anti-war left in Britain can give to the terrorists, however, is to entertain the idea that there is a moral equivalence between the deliberate killing of civilians and the casualties of military action in Iraq. Of course, people who think the war was unjustified feel passionately about civilian deaths. But let us get two things straight. First, even Iraq Body Count, an anti-war campaign, puts the total attributable to coalition forces at under 10,000, rather than the figure with an extra zero that is the common misconception of anti-war propaganda. And second, the purpose of the invasion of Iraq, whatever you think of George Bush's motives, was not to kill civilians.”
Noam Chomsky commented on the recurring theme of “moral equivalence” in a rare BBC interview:
"The term moral equivalence is an interesting one. It was invented, I
think, by Jeane Kirkpatrick [former US ambassador to the United
Nations] as a method of trying to prevent criticism of foreign policy
and state decisions. It is a meaningless notion, there is no moral
equivalence whatsoever." (BBC Newsnight interview with Chomsky, May 21, 2004)
Rentoul’s
“extra zero that is the common misconception of anti-war propaganda”
had of course been provided by the 2004 Lancet study of mortality in
Iraq, which estimated that 100,000 more Iraqis had died since the March
2003 invasion than would have been expected had the invasion not
occurred. We were to believe that the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School,
Columbia University, Baghdad's Al-Mustansiriya University, and The
Lancet (and its peer-reviewers) - the organisations behind the 2004
study - were all anti-war propagandists.
It is easy to
understand why Rentoul would be so perturbed, now, by the suggestion
that an additional “extra zero” should be added to the 100,000 figure -
because it is now likely that one million Iraqis have died as a result
of the war.
"It
is surprising, to put it gently, that the question of whether or not
the 1 million figure is right arouses such little interest."
You added:
"If
a million people have died in violence in Iraq since the invasion, you
might have thought this shocking enough for The Independent, or any
other national newspaper, to report it when the survey was published in
January. But there was nothing in the British press at all."
In
fact it's not at all surprising. Typically, very little attention is
paid in the Western media to the victims of Western violence. A study
by the University of Maryland last year found that most Americans
believed that less than 10,000 Iraqis had died because of the invasion.
That's a reflection of media indifference. After all, a poll last year
found that about half the American public were able to correctly
identify the number of US soldiers killed. And how many people know
that senior UN diplomats described US-UK sanctions on Iraq from
1990-2003 as "genocidal"? In 2006, Hans von Sponeck, the former UN
humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad who ran the oil-for-food programme,
wrote a book called A Different Kind Of War - The UN Sanctions Regime
In Iraq (Bergahn Books, 2006). The book describes in meticulous detail
the complete US-UK indifference to the mass death caused by sanctions.
The book has never been reviewed in the UK press. Again, that's very
standard.
You wrote
"One group that is certainly not
interested is the absolutist opponents of the invasion, whose
representatives will no doubt soon appear in the Comments below. For
them, 1 million is a fact – indeed, it is an under-estimate –
regardless of the evidence. Just as the invasion was a 'crime' based on
'lies', so the minimum death toll is the highest number that any
remotely authoritative source has ever come up with. For some time that
was The Lancet’s 655,000, and never mind that 54,000 of that was heart
attacks, strokes and other illnesses, or that the survey methods had
been challenged."
Most legal experts are clear on the
criminality of the invasion, and you'd have to have been living on Mars
not to have noticed the lies. But who has asserted the 1 million figure
as "a fact"? Certainly we at Media Lens haven't. We have simply
reported the most credible scientific advice on the most credible
numbers. And as you know, science is not about offering certainty -
it's about offering the most reasonable view in light of the currently
available facts.
Your link to the 'challenge' is to ’Data Bomb,’
by Neil Munro and Carl Cannon. It's inappropriate to suggest that
serious, peer-reviewed science by some of the world's leading
epidemiologists and published in the world's premier science journal,
has been "challenged" by a couple of hacks writing in a right-wing
American magazine. The most serious charge involved Professor John
Tirman, Executive Director and Principal Research Scientist at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies
(MIT). Munro and Cannon wrote:
"Open
Society Institute funded a public education effort to promote
discussion of the mortality issue. The grant was approved more than six
months after I commissioned the survey, and the researchers never knew
the sources of funds. As a result, OSI, much less George Soros himself,
had absolutely no influence over the conduct or outcome of the survey.
This was told to the authors of the National Journal article at least
twice. One must conclude that their misrepresentation of this — -among
many other issues — -was intended to sensationalize their version of
the story and color the readers' opinion about 'ppolitical bias.' This
is contemptible malpractice on their part. It is also a grotesque
injustice to Mr. Soros, whose philanthropy has braced and enlivened
whole regions of the world." (Email to Media Lens, January 15, 2008)
Tirman commented elsewhere:
"I told this to Munro on the telephone and in an email. He nonetheless
implied that Soros money had funded the survey from the start, possibly
at Soros' behest. That is a disgraceful lie, and Munro knows it.” (‘John Tirman on Munro and Soros,’ January 11, 2008)
You can see Tirman's demolition of 'Data Bomb' (a truly awful article) here.
By the way, I wouldn't make too much of the fact that Les Roberts
and co are "anti-war". Most sane people are "anti-war". Many scientists
are also anti-malaria and anti-famine - it doesn't stop them doing good
science.
Best wishes
David Edwards
Rentoul replied the same day:
Mr
Edwards
rateful for the confirmation that you are not interested in the
methodological basis of the Opinion Business Research survey either.
Yours
John Rentoul
We also responded on the same day:
Hi John
Thanks, that's also an important subject. The Lancet authors seem to find corroboration in the ORB results. See here.
My understanding is that ORB is a respected polling organisation
used by the BBC and so on (of course we can argue about how respectable
the BBC is).
I think we "generalists" need to be very careful
before pronouncing on issues of epidemiological methodology - we have a
habit of ending up in ditches in the way of Munro and Cannon. Curious
that you would focus on finding confirmation of what I think on
something I didn't discuss in a fairly long email about what I do think
on a variety of important issues.
I recommend you have a
careful read of Tirman's demolition of 'Data Bomb'. Settle in with some
tea and biscuits and really give it some thought - it might change your
view on this issue. It's vital that we examine the suffering we've
brought to the Iraqi people as honestly and carefully as we can - it's
that suffering that really matters.
Best wishes
David
We have received no further response from Rentoul. John Tirman had previously posted a comment on Rentoul’s blog on April 2:
“Rendel
[sic - Rentoul] misses a point all journalists do: the five surveys of
mortality in Iraq show significant congruence. The Iraq Ministry of
Health survey he cites (as a WHO survey) did estimate 151,000 violent
deaths, but their data also shows more than 400,000 ‘excess’ deaths
overall. Many experts see in the data tables evidence of ambiguous
categories where those fearful of the Sadrist MoH interviewers would
attribute deaths to ‘non-violent’ causes. In any case, the 400,000+ as
of June 2006 would translate into 600-700,000 today. The MoH also could
not survey 11% of its sample, because those places were too dangerous.
It demonstrates not inconsistencies between the surveys, but, more
important, just how difficult it is to do such surveys in Iraq,
precisely because it is so violent.
"As for plausibility of the high mortality figures, consider this: five
murders per day in the 80 ‘urban centers’ of Iraq (pop.>20k) would
equal 730,000. The high deaths also track with what we know from many
other conflicts regarding the ratio of displaced to death — -that ratio
is rarely more than 6-1, and there are 4.5 million Iraqis displaced
from their homes. See analysis.
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