Carnage is Untidy

No one in Philly or Baghdad can stop the violence

by David Faris and Wendy Ginsberg

Maybe America's leaders just don't know how to keep order and don't know where to place the blame. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's infamous quip that "freedom is untidy" belittled the chaos in Iraq, and attitudes haven't changed much in the meantime. Mayor Street's disastrous quote about violence being the cost of life in an urban environment is another glaring example of leadership unwilling to confront the stark reality of ongoing violence. Our unwillingness to confront the bloodshed taking place at home and abroad is nauseating. And no one seems to even care.

America's history is full of decades of investigations and blue ribbon panels seeking to curb violent-crime rates. Most recently, there was Steven Levitt's Freakonomics theory that the legalization of abortion led to the births of fewer young criminals, and the Giuliani theory about how the enforcement of minor violations in New York City led to a drop in overall crime.

Now that murder rates are back on the rise in a handful of cities, though, the theoreticians and opportunists are back at work. But our leaders stare bleary-eyed at the violence at home and abroad, waiting for a nonexistent panacea to save them from years of neglect.

The reason most of us are able to block out that maelstrom on a daily basis is that the burden falls on the least empowered and most vulnerable members of our society at home. Most of the homicide victims in Philadelphia this year were minorities, and the overwhelming majority of the murders have taken place in neighborhoods without trendy eateries, art galleries and overpriced condominiums. And, outside of the American and "coalition" troops killed in Iraq, most of the victims of Iraqi violence have been young Arabs, who rank just below toy poodles in the American ethical conscience.

One possible solution locally and globally is investment in preventive social programs for youth. Even cursory investigations into juvenile justice show that after-school programs and mentoring organizations do more to stem violence than slamming iron bars. Philadelphia, for example, is headquarters to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, but lacks strong summer-job programs for teenagers. It should be no surprise, then, that youth violence escalates in the doldrums of the July and August heat.

In Iraq, the best course of action — aside from removing the forces of American disorder as quickly as possible — is revitalizing the Iraqi economy, but economic opportunities will be useless unless they are accompanied by efforts at reconciliation that focus on Iraq's predominantly young population.

The violence in Iraq is far worse and has different causes than the violence in Philadelphia. If such violence were taking place on American streets, society would come to a standstill — as it has in Iraq.

But one also has to wonder if Philadelphians would be able to persevere if the body count was several hundred white people from Center City. Our guess is that the mayor wouldn't be talking casually about the price of living in this city.

Today the price to be paid for living in Iraq is tremendously high. The mystery is that in most other states of the Middle East, homicide is an almost unheard-of crime. Walking the streets of nearly any Middle Eastern city outside of American-occupied Iraq is safer than strolling the avenues of any city in America. Maybe Mayor Street and other American leaders should ask why that is.