Another sober assessment of the Lancet report

This report on the Lancet report concludes: Overall, the study demonstrates that the conflict in Iraq touches broad sectors of the population, that violence is a problem in large parts of the country, and that the level of violence is increasing. The study’s methodological problems may not be trivial. The fact that the study does not better analyze and define the agents behind the increased violence raises concerns about its credibility, as do several tendentious and nearly polemical statements in the body of the article. For example, to argue that Iraq is “the deadliest international conflict of the 21st century” is not saying much—the century is only six years old, and if one looks back 100 years, Iraq does not look like a major conflict.

In war, people die—often in large numbers. And in twentieth-century warfare, the percentage of civilians dying increased. War is no longer fought away from population centers, if it ever was. In Iraq the war is being fought within population centers, and civilians are routinely involved in the fighting. There is no easy way to separate the combatants from the population. Both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia emerge from the cover of the populace, conduct their actions, and fade back among civilians. Militias use the Iraqi police as a cover for death-squad actions. In many cases the Iraqi populace supports, willingly or unwillingly, the armed elements operating from within it. The death of Iraqis is not a byproduct of an international conflict in which they are only tangentially involved. Iraqis are intimately and intrinsically participating in the conflict. Not all of them, of course, but a great many Iraqis are the gunmen, the bombers, the expediters, the militia leaders, and the support base for these active agents in the war. The notion that the coalition is the primary driver of violence is no longer correct. The war in Iraq is an increasingly Iraqi war, and one that the various Iraqi constituencies can halt should they choose to.