ORIGINAL INTENT: Mark Kleiman has contacted Michael Moore (no, not that Michael Moore), the cartoonist behind a cartoon that I didn’t like, and has posted his views on what the cartoon means. Kleiman seems to think the cartoon isn’t about moral equivalence, but (and this is where differences in perception perhaps reflect differences in starting points) the response doesn’t seem to me to support Kleiman’s position as much as he suggests. Then there’s this:

At any rate, I saw a lot of equivalency: as civillians, as victims of war, as fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, as workers, as human beings. Events soon proved me, sadly, prophetic: roughly the same number of Afghani civillians were killed by U.S. bombing as civillians killed on 9/11.

No, actually not. The “roughly the same” estimate appears to be from the multiply-debunked Marc Herold “study” finding 3,800 civilian deaths in Afghanistan, which I last mentioned in this post. (Follow the links for some of the many Marc Herold debunkings). Interestingly, Eric Schmitt, the New York Times reporter I criticize there, emailed me later to say that he thinks Afghan civilian deaths were more likely in the hundreds than the thousands.

UPDATE: The cartoonist is Kevin Moore, not Michael Moore — the (Freudian?) slip is Kleiman’s not mine. Looking at the post again, I think that what Kleiman thought was significant about the cartoon was its recognition that innocent civilian deaths go with military action. This strikes me — and will no doubt strike many so-called “warbloggers” — as rather obvious, and certainly not profound. I support war in full recognition that innocents will die; I simply believe that more are likely to die if we do nothing.