Two simple graphs tell quite a bit!

And the powerful video seals the deal.

Thanks for this, Derrick. It really drives home the insanity of thinking that putting McChrystal in charge and giving him more troops is going to do anything positive for the situation.

OT..but related considering the number of people who suffered rendition from Afghanistan. The trial in Italy concerning the illegal rendition of a cleric from Italy, by the CIA in Feb 2003, is in the closing arguments stage. There are 26 Americans and 7 Italians on trial in absentia and are considered fugitives. The verdict is not expected until the end of the year. (AP)

http://www.google.com/hostedne…..AD9B1M4983

They really do, don’t they?

Glad you liked it. Troop increases are raising the temperature and certainly aren’t part of a plan that’s going to get us out of this mess.

Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out.

Stay tuned: After noticing some odd things about the data released in the last few days from the UN, I pressed their press spokesperson (who’s very professional and responsive, by the way) to release updated and more specific data. I’ve pressed the UN mission in Afghanistan for more specific data, and they’ve responded with updated numbers. I’ll post the new information shortly. Allow me to convey my annoyance that no mainstream reporter noted these problems and bothered to ask the question.

We’re killing them over there so we don’t develop green energy over here.

Flesh and treasure is burning for pipeline dreams.

Send McChrystal to the Hague!

McChrystal, doing for Afghanistan what he did for Pat Tillman. Lying and being getting everything wrong.

This was one of many contradictions in McChrystal’s report. He said he wanted to protect Afghan civilians but he also wanted to increase the American presence in Taliban held areas and change the momentum, indicating an increase in US operations. Taken together it is hard not to see how increased civilian casualties were a natural outcome. And of course he wants even more troops.

I had also been trying to find a relevant thread to post this:

John Burns one of the Times stable of neocon correspondents reports on a speech McChrystal gave in London. When asked if he would support a scaled back strategy focusing on al Qaeda rather than the Taliban, McChrystal replied:

“The short answer is: no,” he said. “You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish to be. A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10…..lobal-home

Afghanistan hasn’t been stable for the last 2,000 years and yet has survived. Who is being short-sighted? McChrystal looks to be hanging tough. He should be fired.

I listened to Rory Stewart being interviewed on Bill Moyers. Rory delivered a very persuasive & logical argument as to why we should be decreasing forces & not increasing in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, he thinks Obama is going to abide by McChrystal’s request. I hope he is wrong. Fyi, the link is below.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/jour…..ofile.html

Good piece and clip. Thank you for this work. @11 – I guess McChrystal is thinking in broad terms, like, how do you secure things enough to get the Unocal pipeline.

Some related links

Story in The Nation about how, among other things, the “business” of “protection” is being milked in Afghanistan.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091012/roston

Scott “Max” Anthony Walker was a “security coordinator” for the $1.4 billion infrastructure program commissioned by US Agency for International Development and funded by US taxpayers. The program, which builds power plants and roads, is run by a joint venture of American construction conglomerates Louis Berger Group and Black & Veach. The 36-year-old Australian named in the arrest warrant worked for Black & Veach, and he allegedly tried to obtain a kickback–apparently of a quarter-of-a-million dollars–from private military companies looking for a piece of business of protecting the reconstruction effort.

So you take all the aid money, give it to American construction conglomerates and then use lots of it to keep “private military companies” aka mercenaries flush, while they pay kickbacks so that they can “go rogue” without fear of losing their contracts.

Peter Galbraith is being kicked out for making waves over the Afghan election, when Obama just wants to “look forward”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..04441.html

And after 8 years, Petraeus is saying that we won’t be making the same mistakes as the Soviets in Afghanistan

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..06745.html

No exploding toys to kids – instead drones we use like toys to explode the kids directly. No “oppressive” regime, just a big theme park called Bagram.

*sigh*

Maybe that’s not what he’s thinking or perhaps you know of some connection between McChrystal and pipelines. Can you provide anything like that?

Derrick, have you ever heard of cum hoc ergo propter hoc? Unless you do more to show that the increases in troops are directly responsible for the civilian casualties (a difficult task given the increases in Taliban-caused civilian casualties over the same period) you haven’t made your case except when preaching to the choir. The two graphs do not do it, your video doesn’t have enough factual (as in when, where, who, how, what, why) data in it to do so, either.

Sorry, but that’s cold logic. You haven’t examined confounding variables, you haven’t ruled out coincident causes, you haven’t presented competing models, you haven’t done any of that. Your ability to convince may come from the war-weariness of the viewer, it may come from the innumeracy of those looking at your graphs, but it doesn’t proceed logically yet from what you’ve presented. And when you throw in more recent history and facts from across the border in Pakistan, your argument gets even weaker, predicated as it is on an indigenous Taliban resistance force and an American occupation. Did you see the graph in the NYT this morning, and the accompanying annotations and graphs? Do they support your version of events?

Does the figure just published in the NYT on the number of members of LeT jibe with your picture of the lack of Pakistani complicity? They fight over a different border, but they also claim to be indigenous and without any Pakistani support. They, and groups like them, have been fighting since 1980 or so, totally independent of what any Americans think, do, say, or where they are. Does the burgeoning drug trade come into your model as a consequence of the American troop build-up as well? How? How does heroin grow like that on theories of northern warlords, when the traffickers and major refineries and distribution are to the south and east?

Too much is read into two graphs that share only the sign of their first derivative. It just isn’t that simple.

two graphs that share only the sign of their first derivative

There’s a little more than that. I see a rough doubling of troops leading to a rough doubling of civilian casualties, which is a bit better than just observing that increased troops lead to increased casualties.

But there are tons of other variables, like an election in which the Taliban were anticipated to try to prevent by civilian threats and casualties (which they did), and the Americans deployed more troops to try to prevent. So in that equation, which is cause and which is effect? Is the election itself, then, caused by the increase in troops? During the time period in question there was a large (as in very statistically significant) change in the proportions of casualties caused by the Taliban and caused by the Americans. Is that also the fault of the Americans? And there was redeployment of Taliban bombings to attempt to drive a wedge between coalition members, which resulted in Taliban bombings in the North. That was a function of the German elections. Are the German elections also an effect of the U.S. troop increase? The doubling of American troops is not a doubling of NATO troops. Are casualties only dependent on American troop numbers, even though others call in raids, present targets, etc.? And the policy of “shielding Afghans” was announced just recently, with McChrystal’s report. Does it back-date itself as a cause back in July? There was a war in Pakistan between the Army and the Pakistani Taliban which started in May, which moved both human and money/material resources around with respect to both al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Is that also reflected in the graph?

What I was saying is that this is not even close to showing a cause-effect relationship. You can pretend that it does, and it certainly makes good propaganda to show at a rally or something, but it is very, very far from conclusiveness, and the difference between it and conclusiveness isn’t one of big picture versus details. It’s the fallacy of cum hoc ergo propter hoc, if there’s no model that takes care of known confounders.

You’re welcome. Many attempts were made by the US to derail this trial. I’d forgotten to check the status for while, so was pleased to read that it had occurred.

He says a lot of things, he does. One has to wonder how many troops it takes to overwhelm a small number of al Qaeda. Insurgents..such an easy label to use to justify endless war. It is quite likely that many ‘insurgents’ are Afganis who want NATO forces out of their country. Now that the US has declared the acceptance of a fraudulent election, it should be apparent to all that there will always be insurgents by definition. The Afghanis know their government is corrupt and that they are living in an occupied country that is suffering the slaughter of civilians..a war crime. Just who is the US at war with? What are NATO forces dying for? The MIC and the heroin profiteers are doing great; nobody else is.
*******
“The invasion quickly toppled the Taliban regime that had sheltered al-Qaida leaders who plotted the 9/11 attacks, but has since bogged down amid a deadly insurgency.

“I do not see indications of a large al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan now,” McChrystal told reporters at the Dutch Defense Ministry, where he met military officials. “

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..83634.html

Apropos.
This is the kind of thinking that breaks out of the Manichaean mold.

I really wonder how the conversation between Obama and McChrystal went today. I certainly hope McChrystal was warned to stop undercutting Obama.

Whoa there, slow down cougar. I did not assert a “cause-effect” relationship. What is asserted above is correlation, not causation. The argument being made is that troop increases do not reduce civilian casualties. Slow down and read, and assume less.

You’ll note I’m pretty careful in the clip to use negative language (”fail to reduce” vs. “cause”). Of course there are many variables. Do you see me arguing otherwise?

This is one piece of information to be considered among many.

For that matter, where in the world do you get the idea that I think the Pakistanis’ “lack complicity”? Have I argued that in any post you can find? Let me save you some work: no, I haven’t.

I’ve written quite a bit about the role of drugs/corruption, the botched election, the Pakistani problem, etc. etc. etc.

You’ve written a very nice disputation of an argument that is not yet made in the piece above. And while I do think that raising the temperature of the conflict through troop increases does cause increased civilian casualties, the above is not intended to make the total case, and it’s a waste of time to attack me for not reporting other variables when the above is clearly the discussion of one variable.

The argument made above is that troop increase have not translated to a situation remotely approaching McChrystal’s definition for success. Feel free to dispute that point.

And, in addition, when evaluating whether or not to send more troops, the question is not “are our troop increases responsible for rising civilian casualties?” The question is, “given that reducing civilian casualties is a stated goal, and given past performance, is a troop increase likely to help achieve our goal?” Now, you can argue, as folks like macaquerman have, that what we do with those troops is more important than the troop numbers, which is a fine argument to make and is open to debate. However, using a flood of other variables to obscure the rough correlation is not a valid way to consider this one variable among the others. It’s a way to ignore it.

Nope. You’re asserting tons of cause and effect, not correlation, in your video, and additionally asserting that the purpose of the troop increases since 2007 were to reduce civilian casualties, which was not an enunciated policy until very, very recently. You’re essentially not being honest if you think you can fall back to a “correlation” position and pretend you haven’t made those links. Use all the “careful”, “negative language” you want, you are conveying to the person watching a notion of cause-effect, and it is very deliberate. You’re doing propaganda, not laying out a factual argument. That’s fine, you are making a case for withdrawal. But don’t present it as objective, it’s not.

For that matter, where in the world do you get the idea that I think the Pakistanis’ “lack complicity”? Have I argued that in any post you can find? Let me save you some work: no, I haven’t.

I am saying that your graph, repeated in post after post with little changes but essentially your core argument for a while now, lacks attention to confounding factors. The negative that you haven’t asserted that the Pakistanis lacked complicity is worthless. You have implied that your graphs show an effect which requires the complicity to be negligible, which it most certainly isn’t.

I’ve written quite a bit about the role of drugs/corruption, the botched election, the Pakistani problem, etc. etc. etc.

Really? In the context of why the civilian casualties have gone up recently? No, you haven’t. You’ve asserted multiple times that the troop increases are acting paradoxically. In places you’ve even asserted mechanisms for causality including the desire to be free of oppression, as if the Taliban are some kind of liberation army. None of that is provable from your data.

You’ve written a very nice disputation of an argument that is not yet made in the piece above. And while I do think that raising the temperature of the conflict through troop increases does cause increased civilian casualties, the above is not intended to make the total case, and it’s a waste of time to attack me for not reporting other variables when the above is clearly the discussion of one variable.

You see? I was not wrong as to what you mean to convey at all. You believe you’ve carefully skirted actually stating it and given yourself deniability. I am calling bullshit.

The argument made above is that troop increase have not translated to a situation remotely approaching McChrystal’s definition for success. Feel free to dispute that point.

I am free to dispute your overall point, and will do so.

However, using a flood of other variables to obscure the rough correlation is not a valid way to consider this one variable among the others. It’s a way to ignore it.

No. This is not coherent scientific argument or proper interpretation of correlations at all.

Nope. You’re asserting tons of cause and effect, not correlation, in your video, and additionally asserting that the purpose of the troop increases since 2007 were to reduce civilian casualties, which was not an enunciated policy until very, very recently. You’re essentially not being honest if you think you can fall back to a “correlation” position and pretend you haven’t made those links.

Bull. As stated above, this post is not about proving a total case. It’s about a correlation, which is part of a larger case that I’m laying out.

I am saying that your graph, repeated in post after post with little changes but essentially your core argument for a while now, lacks attention to confounding factors. The negative that you haven’t asserted that the Pakistanis lacked complicity is worthless. You have implied that your graphs show an effect which requires the complicity to be negligible, which it most certainly isn’t.

Again, total bull. For that matter, (and thanks for the opportunity to preview my upcoming post), the next post featuring a graph will include a correlation between IED attacks and rising troop levels as part of a case to be made that the troop levels are raising the temperature (to paraphrase Graham Fuller) and creating a toxic environment for civilians. Which would seem to be a problem for your general attack, since it clearly accounts for Taliban culpability while raising questions about the troop increases in relationship to the overall goal.

You are out of your mind if you think that the total case against troop increases can be made in one post, and it’s silly of you to attack a particular post without considering the various other lines of attack being made.

And again, more bull:

…in your video, and additionally asserting that the purpose of the troop increases since 2007 were to reduce civilian casualties, which was not an enunciated policy until very, very recently.

What a nice out: we don’t have to consider the history of the policy with relation to a given outcome until we say it’s time to start counting. 2007 was the year the UN started systematic civilian casualty collection, hence its a perfectly fine starting point to look at whether troop increases were accompanied by a decrease in casualties.

And finally, again (a point you’ve neatly dodged):

[W]hen evaluating whether or not to send more troops, the question is not “are our troop increases responsible for rising civilian casualties?” The question is, “given that reducing civilian casualties is a stated goal, and given past performance, is a troop increase likely to help achieve our goal?”

It is totally appropriate to take a look at the history of the troop levels and compare them with the factor you’re singling out as a measure of success. Of course there are other factors. But if you think the correlation should be discounted when making that decision, you’re discounting an important piece of the puzzle.

Point of clarification, please: What graph are you talking about when you say I’ve repeated it in post after post? I created this graph within the last few days. Is it the graphic in the post or the video to which you refer?

You know damned well what I was saying. You’re whole argument is that all casualties regardless of source and regardless of any regional influences are all the fault of the Americans, and the Americans only. Given such a “to blame for all parties” hypothesis, there seems little way it can fail. If the U.S. pulls out, and the casualties go up, I trust you will advocate putting the troops back in, just on consistency grounds, but I know you will not. I also know that if you effect your goal of total U.S. withdrawal, you won’t be on the forefront lobbying for NGO/USAID measures, or spending any American taxpayer dollars, to insure the transition to a peaceful society in Afghanistan, either. You’ll wash your hands of it, and consider it a job well done. That in itself is reason to oppose your arguments.

There has been no “bull” in my comments. If you consider the effects of a policy during the time period before the policy was implemented, you are either in a wormhole, or just wrong. And your previous comment let slip that you do, in fact, believe you are portraying causality, not correlation. The argument that I have no business arguing the totality of your position, only the specifics of the current snippet is facetious. It implies that there is never a good time to rebut your underlying model. Once again, very unscientific.

You know damned well what I was saying. You’re whole argument is that all casualties regardless of source and regardless of any regional influences are all the fault of the Americans, and the Americans only.

No, I know what you said, and it was wrong. Again, you’re disputing the arguments that you wish I was making, not the ones I am making.

The argument that I have no business arguing the totality of your position, only the specifics of the current snippet is facetious. It implies that there is never a good time to rebut your underlying model. Once again, very unscientific.

You are confused. I said you should consider the full set of arguments I’m making, rather than taking one piece and attempting to blow it up into my total argument.

There has been no “bull” in my comments.

Mmkay.

If you consider the effects of a policy during the time period before the policy was implemented, you are either in a wormhole, or just wrong. And your previous comment let slip that you do, in fact, believe you are portraying causality, not correlation.

Again, you’re disputing arguments you wish I were making. I said:

- that you should consider troop levels over time compared with casualty levels as a factor when considering whether to raise troop levels to reduce civilian casualties.

- that I believed that there was causation, but that this graph is not sufficient to show it.

So pardon me if I don’t allow you to lecture me about scientific method when you continue to distort my arguments.

Speaking of letting things slip, I see you’ve let it slip that you can read minds:

If the U.S. pulls out, and the casualties go up, I trust you will advocate putting the troops back in, just on consistency grounds, but I know you will not. I also know that if you effect your goal of total U.S. withdrawal, you won’t be on the forefront lobbying for NGO/USAID measures, or spending any American taxpayer dollars, to insure the transition to a peaceful society in Afghanistan, either. You’ll wash your hands of it, and consider it a job well done. That in itself is reason to oppose your arguments.

Talk about letting things slip: you’ve just let it slip that you oppose my arguments because of where you think they’re going, rather than on the merits. Nicely done. But yes, I will be lobbying hard for NGO/USAID measures and any other support we can muster that pertain to non-military functions, thank you very much. And you’d know these things if you would, you know, ask, instead of assuming.

For the record, from my personal blog:

Congress must slash a significant slice of federal budget resources out of the Defense Department to free up funds for State-Department-led activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This is just one of many examples.