Murder as Democratic-Republican Measure?

There is a city where murders and shootings have become notorious. Next door to this history of mayhem sits a government debating the future of its democracy as key appointments are argued about in pitched voices. I am thinking of Washington, D.C. Are you?

Throughout the 1990's the stories of murder and death was ever upward. During this time, did we ever dispare of the future of American democracy?

Murder is not a sign of health in any society. Yet, death and non-military killing is not the same as a coupe d'etat.

Has the American left learned nothing from Secretary of Defense McNamara's fallacy of the bodycount? Robert McNamara came to the Department of Defense from the Detroit auto industry, where life is about measurements. McNamara tried to measure success in Vietnam by the number of Viet Cong killed: the bodycount. Cf. Wikipedia.

The left hated the Vietnam war for its unseemly killing. The My Lai massacre came to represent this unseemly killing. Then Lt. John Kerry comes along and makes it sound like this is the US Army's method of fighting. Not a lot of truth, but McNamara's bodycount didn't help.

I always say that you have to be careful whom you choose to be your enemy because that comes to define you. The American Left is a perfect example. It chose Nixon, bodycounts, and enemy lists. Now its perception of life is based on people that the movement hates, the statistics of dead, and politics of destruction and hatred. From the Clinton era to today, the Left has become what it perceived to be wrong with the other side. Iraq is a failure because of the body count. The Bush administration or Republican de la semaine is evil, e.g., Bush, Cheney, Rice, DeLay, Bolton, etc.

Once you remove the body count, what do we know about Iraq?

The questions to the A.P. about this are a start.

Let's look at a proper measure. Could it be persons jailed for speech against the government? Could it be persons summarily killed in captivity by the government for "crimes"? Could it be persons jailed for belonging to a political party other than the ruling party? Could it be the number of stores opened? The number of cars sold? The number of gallons of gas sold? The number of groceries/green grocers/open-air bazaars open? The number of cafes, restaurants, or food stands open? The number of cells phones in use on the key street corners of a city or town?

Why do we measure success on the number of barrels of oil pumped or schools opened by the government or the number of persons claiming not to have a job? The media, when it does look at numbers, tends to focus on these government and macroeconomic measures. Life is not macroeconomics. Life is the microscopic. Where do I eat? Where do I live? How do I get to work? How do I make money?

We know from American success compared to European and Japanese experiences that the microbusinesses drive economic growth on a macro-level. Big organizations have higher capital investment requirements and, consequently, are more risk-averse. They need bigger government to adjudicate disputes.

Smaller businesses don't. We need to know the number of cell phones or the number of gallons of gas pumped at particular store from month to month. That is life. That is where success is measured by the Iraqi family.