This article is a direct response to Tim Hiller’s Feb. 7, 2 article titled, “Vote with your gut.” I must admit, Hiller’s article would make quite a compelling argument – if there were any semblance of truth in it. But, as I will prove below, Hiller’s article turns out to be a classic case of manipulated statistics, which are referenced repeatedly in support of other unsubstantiated claims, which I will also address in turn.
He starts off by citing the number 6,256. According to “a CBS News report,” says Hiller, 6,256 U.S. military personnel took their own lives in 2005. Wow, that’s a pretty big number. Let me get this straight … on average, every day, 17 of our own boys come home from Iraq and kill themselves? Interesting, except it’s absolute hogwash. What Hiller fails to explain in his article is that the population base this statistic draws from is not just the current U.S. military but the 2005 population of all living U.S. military veterans who have ever served. If Hiller were familiar with logic he would understand that this simple fact renders the number “6,256” absolutely worthless. What can you compare it against? You can’t even attempt to compute a percentage and get a suicide rate. To do this, the population you reference against would have to be the total population of currently employed U.S. military (around two million active and reserve), plus the total number of former U.S. military service personnel still living as of 2005. As I suspected, neither you nor CBS bothered to look into this.
In fact, according to a 2007 Congressional Research Service report (which I will reference several times in this article), the total number of active-duty U.S. military suicides in 2005 was 150. It’s also interesting to note that this report reveals U.S. military active-duty suicides were well above 200 every year from 1980 to 1995, during peacetime.
Hiller goes on to speculate over the viability of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He charges McCain with “living in an alternate universe” and cites McCain’s position that it would be just fine with him if America had a military presence in Iraq for another 100 years, as if this is something absolutely insane. Stop the presses! Newsflash: The U.S. military has bases all over the world (as do several other major military powers) and has for many decades in some areas, including Japan and Germany since World War II. It might have been just a bit useful to mention that.
Rather than argue the legitimacy of the war, which is a whole other issue, it is worthwhile to note Hiller’s support for Obama and Obama’s solution for Iraq. It is obvious Hiller is a supporter of Obama as the next U.S. president. Obama’s solution for Iraq is a complete redeployment of troops away from Iraq. What’s the problem with this? Well, if we leave now, we’re setting up post-Saddam Iraq for the same fate as 1980s Afghanistan, which was taken over by the Taliban after we left before they were stable enough to govern themselves. We would be creating an environment in Iraq poised for the takeover by yet another radical Islamo-fascist regime such as the Taliban.
The U.S. media constantly downplays the hard-fought efforts and positive steps taken in Iraq, choosing to highlight only the number of lives lost. All war comes with a price, and if you take a look to read up on the report by the CRS, you’ll find that even peacetime comes at a price of lives lost. The report only shows data up until the end of 2006, so to be fair, let’s compare the number of U.S. military casualties from the first seven Clinton years to the number from the first seven Bush years; that’s comparing statistics from 1990 to 1996 (Clinton years) to statistics from 2000 to 2006 (Bush years). According to the CRS report to Congress, during the Clinton years, U.S. military deaths totaled 8,889. During the Bush years, U.S. military deaths totaled 9,550. U.S. military casualties saw a net seven percent increase from the Clinton years to the Bush years, from peacetime to wartime.
Simply put, death is a part of the military. Soldiers understand the risk of death, which exists during peacetime and wartime. We who serve or will serve in the future understand the risks of war. No one twists our arm to join the U.S. armed forces. We do so willingly, to protect our way of life. We live by a code, and ironically enough, that code guarantees the very freedom of media sources such as Hiller’s article and CBS News to say whatever they want, regardless of whether or not it’s true.
Daniel Bianco is a senior economics major. He can be reached at dbianco@umd.edu.
