Bullshit by the numbers: the “drug war” again (sorry)

This is getting old.

Some 10,560 people have been killed since 2006, the year Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office and launched his campaign against the organized crime gangs that move cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin to a vast U.S. market. Consider that fewer than 4,300 American service members have died in the six-year war in Iraq.

While there are a few similiarities between the U.S. War in (or on) Iraq — in that many feel it was started to legitimize a dubiously elected president, and serves as a distraction from more pressing social issues — the constant repetition of that “More Mexicans killed than U.S. soldiers” just doesn’t stand up.

Even if we accept the idea that an action against gangsters is a “war”, there are a few glaringly obvious problems with the numbers.  First, if we consider the police and soldiers and the gangsters as “combatants” the number of civilian deaths is about zezo.  The number of civilian deaths in Iraq is estimated at between 90 and 100 thousand people.  That’s out of a population of 30 million, compared to a handful in a country of 120 million.

Those 10,000 Mexican deaths are gangsters, soldiers and policemen… “legitimate targets” if one is willing to swallow the “war” jargon.

Secondly, the number of U.S. casualties is just that… those from one force.  That number ignores British, Spanish, Police, Salvadorian, Fijian and other “coalition casualties, let alone the Iraqi Defense Force, which is doing most of the dying on one side of the conflict.  Coalition Force casualties alone are over 10,000.

And I didn’t even look at the numbers for Afghanistan, nor at the number of “terrorists” and “insurgents” killed.

(Figures:  Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, Iraq Body Count)