O'hanlon on Why Car Bombings Shouldn't Count Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

I had meant to write on this earlier, but on Wednesday Michael O’Hanlon wrote this piece in the Washington Times.  O’Hanlon writes:

However, it is the distinction of total fatalities versus EJKs [Extra Judicial Killings] that will likely get the most discussion this month. The reason is that car and truck bombings, like the terrible Aug. 14 bursts in northern Iraq that killed some 500 Iraqi innocents, are to some extent not indicative of the overall situation in Iraq. Of course, the more dependable Iraqi security forces at checkpoints, the more vehicle bombs will be stopped before detonating, and the more crack Iraqi special forces we can help train, the more successful raids we can conduct against car and truck bomb factories.

In addition, the intelligence information needed to counter vehicle bomb networks often comes from Iraqi citizens, and the more of them who want to help combined U.S.-Iraqi security forces, the better this information will be. Finally, as some 80 percent of suicide bombers in Iraq are believed to be foreigners, better border security will also at least somewhat dampen car and truck bombings. So broad security trends do of course influence the statistics.

Indeed, for all these reasons the rate of major vehicle bombings in Iraq is down perhaps a third over the course of 2007. But there is still a capriciousness that means single events can radically alter trajectories about the frequency and lethality of attacks. One day of bad luck like Aug. 14, one day when bombers find a prime target not protected enough, and trendlines can change overnight.

By contrast, EJKs are to some extent a reflection of the broader state of sectarian violence, less prone to aberration from single events.

This is a serious stretch.  O’Hanlon is basically arguing that people being killed on the street is a more steady and predictable measure than car bombings.  Aside from ignoring the fact that other factors are also being used to massage the number (i.e. no Sunni on Sunni violence, no Shi’a on Shi’a violence, no one shot in the head from in front) he also forgets the fact that mass car bombings have a great impact on the psychology of a population.  The entire point of a counterinsurgency strategy is to convince the people that the government, not the insurgents, is best able to keep them secure.  This in turn leads to greater confidence in the government which causes support for the insurgency to dwindle.

By this measure car bombings are extremely important because mass attacks traumatize the population.  The whole point of spectacular terrorist attacks is to spread a disproportiante and irrational level of fear into the population.  As a total percentage of population, the 500 people killed in Iraq on “one day of bad luck” was actually greater than the percentage of Americans killed by the 9/11 attacks.  That “one day of bad luck” changed this country’s entire political landscape and foreign policy.  “One day of bad luck” matters and it needs to be counted when measuring the violence.

Comments

[Zathras]

If Ilan Goldenberg is going to quibble about measures of tactical progress he might as well address the most serious issue raised by counting EJKs and not the victims of mass-casualty attacks by VBIEDs. This is the disproportionate reliance by Sunni Arab terrorists on the latter tactic to attack their enemies.

Gen. Petraeus appears set to highlight tactical success in Anbar, and a few other places, where Sunni Arab tribes that formerly supported the insurgency have begun cooperating with coalition forces and attacks on American soldiers have declined in number. This is a good thing (so too is a reduction in kidnappings and assassinations, the preferred tactic of Shiite militias, assuming this has actually occurred). But the success with the Sunni Arab tribes is localized, and doesn't appear to reflect a significant reduction in the ability or willingness of Sunni Arab insurgents to kill Shiite and other non-Sunni Arab civilians -- which is what produced the Shiite milita death squads in the first place.

Basically, O'Hanlon appears to be for not counting the kind of mass casualty attacks that guarantee retaliatory death squad activity in the future, while claiming credit for reduced death squad activity in the present that will only stay reduced as long as the Americans are around to deter it. I suppose methodology of this kind has some utility in American domestic politics, if the proliferation of confusion can be said to be useful. It doesn't help us in Iraq at all.

[SteveB]

I'm worried that this whole how-many-carbombed-Iraqis-can-fit-on-the head-of-a-pin "debate" is exactly what the Bush administration wants, since it distracts us from the fact that there isn't really any mission for US troops in Iraq that is both achievable and worthwhile.

Troops in Iraq search houses, man checkpoints, and run convoys to supply themselves. Take out the "missions" which are simply about maintiaing a US presence in Iraq (like those convoys) and none of what's left makes any sense.

That's what we should be taking about. The whole thing is just crazy, regardless of whether the number of deaths, however counted, rises or falls this month.

[Dan Kervick]

I have to agree with Steve B. O'Hanlon's arguments are so thoroughly ridiculous that it is a victory for his position that others would even stoop to engage them. He's just a dishonest hack, desperately pulling cracked and inane arguments out of his ass to defend the indefensible.

[Pat Barry]

To me, what is most troubling about O'Hanlon's argument is its consistency with the Bush administration's larger strategy of presenting altered information first, and then explaining those alterations only when they are pressed. O'Hanlon sees nothing wrong with presenting the sunny interpretation, and leaving the car-bombing fatalities for later. This is so wrongheaded it makes me sick, and it evokes the administration's fundamental disdain for the American people.

Let me reiterate what is going on. Rather than present the grim number of casualties in Iraq, and scale back based on their own blithely optimistic assessments (Claiming that car-bombings are irrelevant seems pretty reasonable, right?), they essentially begin with the good stuff, and leave the grim overall picture of violence for when someone has the presence of mind to ask about it. This presentation is inherently evasive. It shifts the burden of justification for the 'Surge' from Bush, Petraeus, and Crocker to the American and Iraqi people. Because O'Hanlon begins with his conclusions and not with the facts, it is left for us to figure things out.

In a criminal trial, the prosecution lays out the details of an event, and then builds a case by interpreting those details before a group of jurors, who decide whether that interpretation has merit. It is not up to the jury to figure out a case's facts based on the prosecution's assessment. Similarly, it should not be up to Americans to fill in the gaps in Petraeus' presentation. Since when did we become advocates for the surge?

In a court, these tactics might be construed as poor lawyering, but in Iraq , when lazy statistical interpretation determines the significance of hundreds of deaths, it is tantamount to moral bankruptcy.

[Zathras]

Pat Barry makes a very good point.

As I said on another thread here, gathering accurate data on various kinds of violence in Iraq is an exceptionally difficult task. I'm not prepared to equate error with malice or duplicity as far as that goes. However, supporters of administration policy in the United States have commonly sought to impart violent spin to their public interpretation of available data, on this subject and many others as well. Qualifications, often very substantial qualificatons, are always added later if pressure is applied.

This procedure is so obviously guaranteed to produce distrust that one must wonder why it is followed so often. Many of the people following it, after all, will be around long after President Bush has retired. A reputation for being untrustworthy can be a heavy burden to bear, even in Washington, but in the last few years a lot of people either too old to care or too young to know any better have been busy forging such reputations anyway.

[SteveB]

A reputation for being untrustworthy can be a heavy burden to bear, even in Washington...

If that's the case, why are Thomas Friedman and Bill Kristol still on my TV every time I turn it on?

Perhaps your rule applies within the inner circle of Washington policy advisers (I wouldn't know about that) but it certainly doesn't seem to apply to the D.C. pundit corps.

[Jim]

I find it most disgusting that O'Hanlon would be so dismissive of car bombings as JUST ONE DAY OF BAD LUCK. By his standards, 9-11 with the WTC and the Pentagon were just one day of bad luck. How silly for Americans to take the events of one day too seriously.
WHAT AN ABSOLUTE ASS!!!

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