Devaluing Death

Ten days ago, a blogger who goes by the BlogCatalog.com member name of ConservativePost began a discussion thread titled Can Voting For Liberals Get You Killed?   Early in the thread, I participated in the discussion and now I wish I had not.  We all end up in debates or arguments where we walk away and then later think of what we should have said.  One nice part about oline discussions is that you can usually go back and add those afterthoughts.

Here is how he opened the discussion, in its entirety and verbatim: 

In 2006, we lost 822 American soldiers in Iraq. In 2006, 406 Americans were murdered in the city of Phialadelphia alone… a city completely dominated by liberal politicians. There hasn’t been a Republican Mayor in Philly in 55 years.

The crime stats are undeniable… those of you voting for liberal are putting your lives at risk in America’s big cities.

Read the full story here theconservativepost.com/WordPress/index.php

Would love to hear from anyone who disagrees…

What follows is what I said there to end my participation in the thread.  It is also what I wish I had said in my first comment.

This question, its phrasing, and basic thesis says a lot more about the kind of person who would post it than about the issue under discussion. This is a question by someone for whom society, politics, and crime have lost all meaning and become a game of "gotcha". I’ll ignore the actual title of the post since it’s an obvious attempt to get people to click and read the actual discussion and it was very effective as the comment count (currently at 78) shows.

Look at the basic statement itself: "In 2006, we lost 822 American soldiers in Iraq. In 2006, 406 Americans were murdered in the city of Phialadelphia(sic) alone… a city completely dominated by liberal politicians. There hasn’t been a Republican Mayor in Philly in 55 years." The numbers are not in doubt. They are easily verifiable, but I find the way they are used to be extremely distasteful. Those 802 soldiers and the 406 murder victims were living, breathing human beings. To have their deaths reduced to a Bill O’Reilly style talking point is offensive. It is offensive to the memory of the dead, it’s offensive to surviving family members of the dead, and it should be offensive to society as a whole.

There is nothing wrong with pointing out the loss of life in Iraq and Philadelphia. There is something wrong with reducing those lives to a bumper sticker. The fact that it’s done using stats that were selected for their emotional impact instead of a true desire to make a comparison is exceptionally dishonest on the part of ConservativePost.

ConservativePost chose these numbers so I will work with them. During most of 2006, the U.S. troop presence ranged from 126,000 to 135,000. (source: www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/ss_iraq_09_09.asp October 10, 2007). Because there is a range, to be generous I will use the high end of the range, 135,000. In 2000, the last year for which US census data is available, the Population of the city of Philadelphia – the city alone, not the outlying suburbs, was 1,517,550. However, to be generous again, I will use Wikipedia’s estimate of 1,448,394 for the Philadelphia city population for 2006. It’s a little lower than the 2000 census, but I want to do give ConservativePost every possible benefit of the doubt in terms of the numbers and facts. I am also going to let his 822 figure stand for US troops killed in Iraq for 2006 despite the numbers reported elsewhere, in detail by month, being higher at 869. I hate to do this, since those extra 47 people were individuals whose deaths should be counted and remembered, but maybe ConservativePost has a reason to exclude those people, so I will follow his lead. (source: www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm Jan2006-Dec2006) There were also 6580 troops wounded in action during that time frame in case anyone wondered.

Percent of the population killed in Philadelphia in 2006, rounded to nearest thousandth of a percent is 0.028% The percent of US troops in Iraq in 2006 that were killed is 0.609%. Many statisticians recognize that when looking at numbers that are only a fraction of one it helps to use a common multiplier to make the numbers more easily understood by the reader. So, in order to understand these percentages which reflect the number of people killed per one-hundred possible victims, I am going to consider the percentages as ratios. Just to be clear, for all I know, some of those 822 US casualties

In Philadelphia, 0.028 out of every 100 citizens was murdered.
In Iraq, 0.609 out of every 100 troops died.

This means that for every 1000 possible murder victims, Philadelphia 0.28 people were killed.
In Iraq, for every 1000 troops, 6.09 were killed.

Taking it one step further, to get everything into whole numbers, we can see that for every ten thousand Philadelphians, 2.8 were killed. For every ten thousand US troops in Iraq in 2006, 60.9 were killed.

Despite the shock value of ConservativePost’s initial discussion point, I think it is evident that his numbers have no real meaning as a basis for comparing murder victims in a large American city and troops who sacrificed their lives in service to their country. Their use in this context was pointless and rather mean spirited.

If he has really displayed any level of intellectual honesty in his premise that voting Liberal can get you killed, he would have compared Philadelphia to someplace like Garden Grove, California that was ranked ranked the 17th most conservative city in the US (source: newsminute.com/Stories/studyranksmostconservativeandliberaluscities.htm August 11, 2005) In the results of that same study, Philadelphia ranks 17th most liberal US city.   That makes it the best apples to apples comparison I can find.

Garden Grove had 4 murders within its population of 165,196 in 206.  That makes the percentage of the population murdered as %0.002, or .002 murders per 100 citizens, or 0.02 per thousand, or 0.2 per ten thousand that year. That kind of comparison may have made sense and would have actually had more meaning than the numbers created by abusing the memory of dead US soldiers and marines.  It would have also done a nice job of highlighting his point about Conservative cities havng a lower murder rate.

It doesn’t matter if you are liberal or conservative or if in favor of troop quick withdraws or in favor of an extended US military presence in Iraq, when we talk about US military causalities in Iraq we are talking about the sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers who made the ultimate sacrifice in performing the duties they took on for themselves. They deserve far better than to be used as a talking point or a tool in "gotcha politics".

I may despise Bush and the direction he has taken this nation. I may wish we had never invaded Iraq. I may be one of the most liberal people you could ever meet, but I would not be caught dead abusing the memory of our fallen troops the way that ConservativePost has these last ten days.  If you believe talk radio and most of the Fox News folks, its supposed to be the liberals who do not support and respect the citizens in our military.  Getting bashed as being anti-military or not supportive of our troops because of both my liberal political views and my dislike and distrust of G.W.B Bush is especially painful knowing that people like ConservativePost can display those traits and get a pass from other conservatives.