What price the American dream?

Its looking like the US death toll in Iraq, after Bush declared the "hostilities" (invasion) over, will soon far exceed that from enemy fire during "hostilities". In fact it may have already done so but no one is really advertising the respective counts. It would presumably be deemed unpatrioitic to question why we are still having to forcibly opress the population from revolt. The population that was supposedly going to throw down its weapons, and then hug the American troops like long lost Western brothers they never knew they had.

However I'm not at all suprised. Imagine if the US Army magically, overnight, managed to install a perfect government, restore all utilities, deploy a full police force and Iraq was once again "at peace" (like it was before America Inc. invaded). Imagine we then managed to bring Iraq to the giddy heights of American "civilisation" and law and order. What would kind of peace would they have?

Well in the year 2000 the USA murder rate was 5.5 per 100,000 people per year. So with an average lifespan of 80 you have approximately a 1 in 200 chance of being murdered. And if you don't think thats too bad remember the aggravated assault figure is about 100 times higher so you'll have a 1 in 2 chance of experiencing that. And if you think that America is surely better than the rest of the world, for comparison in the United Kingdom the murder rate is around 1.5 per 100,000 people per year, or Spain where its 1.0 and Japan where its 0.6 (1995 figures). So yes, our murder rate sucks big time.

What does this mean for Iraq?

The population of Iraq is 24 million. Therefore if Iraq were to become as "peaceful" as America its murder rate would then be 1300 people per year, or 25 people per week; and its aggravated assault rate would be 130,000 per year or 2500 a week. Remember that's under the best of situations and never mind the rape, simple assault and robbery. And I think I've already blogged about the likely impact of the American dream on Iraq's prison population. The world prison population report shows that once again America leads the world with 686 per 100,000 people locked up in prison (roughly four times higher than the United Kingdom). Something to aspire too?

Now get real. Since we blew apart Iraqs civil infrastructure it now has a very large number of firearms on the streets. It has extreme water, food and power distribution problems. It also has two major religous factions that really don't get on with each other, and a good number of Baath party members roaming the streets with an axe to grind aginst pretty much everyone, and visa versa. Most people are without work, income or hope. So is it any wonder most are focusing their displeasure on the American forces? So one can imagine, even with the supposedly "American Dream" ideal level of crime, a large number of those 25 murders per week might invole the occupying forces.

However even in America, within the last ten years the murder rate has been double what it is now. In a time of civil unrest it could easily be five to ten times higher. Therefore I'm really quite suprised we're not seeing hundreds of US deaths per week. I suspect the only reason this has not been the case is that US forces are keeping well out of site if possible and spending all their time trying to avoid exposing themselves to risk. When they do come face to face with trouble they are enforcing peace with extreme prejudice as post "hostilities" civilian death statistics for Iraq are showing. If the Iraqi people ever do get it into their heads to gorganize, and start a revolt against the occupiers, one can only expect a blood bath of massive proportions to ensue.