Civil War or No Civil War?

28 March, 2006. 459 words.

With everyone trying to define exactly whether Iraq is in a “civil war” or not, as if the label should somehow affect our opinion of what goes on there, I thought it would be a fun project to see how many Americans are murdered every day in our country. I think we can all agree that there is currently no civil war in America, but most people recently have been citing “dozens of Iraqis” dying every day as an irrefutable measure of a civil war. So let’s see how the numbers stack up.

Based on the FBI’s violent crime statistics, 16,137 people were murdered in the United States in 2004. That works out to about 44 people dying every day nationwide, or almost 4 dozen. Therefore, we know that a country is not in civil war if up to 44 people die every day.

So how much more than that would it take for America to be in civil war? Let’s check the statistics for… the American Civil War.

According to civilwarhome.com, the number most often cited for Civil War deaths is 620,000. However, as the site shows, clearly the vast majority of soldiers died from disease, not battle wounds. So let’s take those out. That leaves us with, say, 204,000 deaths. For simplicity we’ll say the Civil War lasted exactly 4 years. That means, on average, about 140 soldiers died every day from the war.

So to summarize: 44 people dying every day is not civil war, but 140 people dying every day is civil war. Clearly, with only “dozens” of Iraqis dying every day, it is not even close to a civil war yet. Whew!

But wait! An argument could be made that since America contains 300 million people and Iraq only contains 26 million people, the numbers need to be adjusted. Okay, that makes sense. If we divide it down, we get about 3.8 deaths/day from peace and 12.1 deaths/day from civil war. So by that measure, if “dozens” of Iraqis are dying every day, they are definitely in a civil war.

But wait! An argument could also be made that since the population of the U.S. in the 1860 Census was only about 31 million, the civil war numbers don’t need to be adjusted nearly that much. 26 million is 83.9% of 31 million, so adjusting our civil war deaths of 140 by 83.9% gives us about 117 deaths/day.

So there you have it. Iraq will be peaceful when an average of 3.8 Iraqis or less die every day, but it will not be in civil war until an average of 117 Iraqis or more die every day. The matter is settled. Bloggers and media, you may now divert your considerable energies into another topic.

Related