Civilian Casualties Create New Enemies, Study Confirms

[unhappycamper]

Civilian Casualties Create New Enemies, Study Confirms
By Spencer Ackerman Email Author
July 6, 2010

Yes, we needed economists to tell us this. A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds “strong evidence for a revenge effect” when examining the relationship between civilian casualties caused by the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan and radicalization after such incidents occur. The paper even estimates of how many insurgent attacks to expect after each civilian death. Those findings, however intuitive, might resolve an internal military debate about the counter-productivity of civilian casualties — and possibly fuel calls for withdrawal.

“When ISAF units kill civilians,” the research team finds, referring to the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, “this increases the number of willing combatants, leading to an increase in insurgent attacks.” According to their model, every innocent civilian killed by ISAF predicts an “additional 0.03 attacks per 1,000 population in the next 6-week period.” In a district of 83,000 people, then, the average of two civilian casualties killed in ISAF-initiated military action leads to six additional insurgent attacks in the following six weeks.

The team doesn’t examine the effect of CIA drone strikes in neighboring Pakistan, the subject of fierce debate concerning both the level of civilian deaths the strikes generate and their radicalizing effect.

A team of four economists — Stanford’s Luke N. Condra and Joseph H. Felter, the London School of Economics’ Radha K. Iyengar, and Princeton’s Jacob N. Shapiro — used the International Security Assistance Force’s own civilian-casualty data to reach their conclusions, breaking it down by district to examine further violence in the area in which civilians died. They examined the effect of over 4000 civilian deaths from January 2009 to March 2010 by looking at the sometimes-lagging indications of reprisal attacks in the same areas. To be clear, the team’s research is inferential, creating a statistical model to examine spikes in violence following civilian-casualty incidents, rather than interviewing insurgents as to their specific motivations.

But in their study, the researchers found that there’s a greater spike in violence after ISAF-caused civilian deaths than after insurgent-caused ones. “An incident which results in 10 civilian casualties will generate about 1 additional IED attack in the following 2 months,” the researchers write. “The effect for insurgents is much weaker and not jointly significant.”

[Chulanowa]

1. Well thank god the economists are saying it

Now maybe someone will hear it!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. The increase in insurgent activity is probably just a coincidence,

then again,


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3894356
MATT GERSON: A question once asked by Don Rumsfeld in a memo, a confidential memo was, "Are we creating more terrorists than we're killing?" That's still a good one in Iraq. How do you assess the fact that the insurgents keep growing and Shiite and Sunni groups both seem to be on the march and on the move and the insurgency is so hard to stop, and it seems to be metastasizing or whatever. Could you talk about that?

[AnArmyVeteran]

3. Has anyone in leadership wondered what if Americans were being killed every day?

Has anyone in leadership ever wondered what the consequences would be if Americans in the United States were being killed every day by an occupying force? Has anyone wondered if they would be angry and resentful?

OF COURSE killing civilians causes resentment and hatred, and once Afghans lost their loved ones because of attacks by US occupiers they would attack and try to kill the occupying forces. When Bush invaded two countries he played right into the hands of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Bush was a dream come true for them. He did everything they could ever want. Bush was the greatest terrorist recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.

Imagine living in your neighborhood in the US and an occupying force sent a drone missile to blow up an entire neighborhood killing dozens or hundreds of people, including many your friends and family. Would any normal American just sit there and say "Oh, it's okay because the occupying force is here to 'help us'". HELL NO you wouldn't be thinking that! You would want revenge. Any normal person would. And because you would have no recourse in court, you would resort to the only thing left, physical violence and shooting at the occupying force, which is exactly what the Afghans are doing right now.

Both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars were 'terrorist'-producing disasters caused by dimwitted war mongers. President Obama needs to pull our forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq. We could be out of both disastrous countries within a few months. President Obama could also close Gitmo OVERNIGHT if he WANTED to. Gitmo is a huge recruiting tool for terrorists. If we are going to have a REAL 'war on terrorism' we should NOT be creating terrorists, we should be eliminating them. But the current way we are fighting terrorism is completely irrational and insane. You can't use a conventional army to defeat an unconventional enemy. We couldn't in Vietnam and we won't be able to in Afghanistan. Hell, our own country was started by using 'insurgents' to beat the British. Colonialists didn't play by regular 'war rules'. As columns of British soldiers marched they were picked off by colonial 'insurgents' hiding in the trees or attacked using covert maneuvers. Yes, there were a few conventional battles, but without colonialists acting like insurgents we would have never won the war against England.

It's obvious those in leadership positions in the government don't get there because they are intelligent, creative or have any common sense. They get in office ONLY because they are able to sell out to enough wealthy people and corporations to get enough money to run for office. And creative, problem solving and intelligent people who refuse to prostitute themselves have no chance of ever winning. So we end up with the status quo of of corrupt & inept government. And people keep voting the same way and expecting different results, which is a definition of insanity.

[tekisui]

7. THe tragic irony is that Americans are being killed everyday.

We have nearly 200,000 Americans in warzones with targets on their backs. When we kill a civilian, we create another family that hates Americans. That isn't a far step from wanting to kill Americans.

When they look for an American to kill, there are thousands right in their backyard. Over 6,000 Americans have been killed in our stupid wars. Yet, they don't seem to actually count as real, regular Americans.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Duh!

[tekisui]

5. From the Institute of No Shit!

End the war.

[unhappycamper]

6. Nevermind. n/t