Belmont Club

So What About the Numbers?

The Belmont Club looks at the New York Times' recent article on the insurgency, which asserts that attacks are growing in frequency and are not confined to the Sunni Triangle and Baghdad.

Their numbers do say that's true, says Wretchard... but then compiles a table from the Times' own numbers that show that 88% of the attacks cited were confined in just that way. Of Iraq's 18 provinces, six (the Sunni Triangle area) comprise that 88%. Rounding the numbers for clarity, that is to say that nearly 90% of attacks are happening in just one third of Iraq.

Another six provinces -- a third of Iraq -- have attack frequencies below one attack per one hundred thousand people. Two more have attack frequencies under two per one hundred thousand people; the remainder, under ten per one hundred thousand people. One-third of Iraq is quite hot; two-thirds of Iraq are basically secure, although terrorists do manage to set off the occasional grenade or stage the occasional kidnapping.

Wretchard concludes:

So everything checks out just as the New York Times article reported it. All the facts are individually true, but Prime Minister Allawie's assertion that most provinces are "completely safe" and that security prospects are bright are also supported by those same facts. Such is the fog of war.

Let me add this: the Times is participating in mythologizing of the guerrillas. Creating a mythology of strength and prowess is always a central aim in any insurgency:

The guerrilla relies in very large part on the fog of war to present an illusion of power. Orwell wrote that, "Power-worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue." The guerrilla desperately needs people to believe in his power, and that his strength will grow forever, that his success is inevitable.

In three of the provinces -- a sixth of Iraq -- the guerrillas only managed either one or two attacks of any kind in the last month, despite the advantages that go with being a guerrilla: the ability to choose the place and time of any attack, and the ability to target unarmed civilians and still call it a "victory." That means you can pick a time and a place when neither soldiers or policemen are around, and resistance to you will be nonexistent. Even so, there are provinces where these guerrillas the Times paints as all-powerful managed only one attack in a month.

By saying that this means that 'not a single province was unaffected,' the Times is not saying something untrue; technically a single attack is an effect. But by painting those provinces with the same brush as it does al Anbar province, it gives the guerrillas the illusion of a far greater power than they possess.

The Times, in other words, is playing the enemy's game. One can only assume that this is out of ignorance, the kind of ignorance that has permeated the journalistic community's reporting on this war. I don't believe it is disloyalty, as some have suggested. Regardless, it is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

What was wanted were facts for fighters. What we have gotten is an ode to the guerrillas: "sweeping" "surging" warriors overwhelming security efforts. Out of its apparent lack of understanding, the Times is -- to borrow another of Orwell's phrases -- objectively supporting the enemy. It is doing their information operations for them, far more effectively than they could do it themselves.

That is not to say that the Times is in any way disloyal. It is only to say that they have been fooled. The guerrillas focus on weaving a mystique through violence and terror; and the Times has bought it, hook and sinker.