More on Iraqi Civilian Deaths
The AP has published the results of a preliminary accounting of the number of non-combatant fatalities in Iraq: AP tallies 3,240 civilian deaths in Iraq.
The approach they used makes this very much a lower boundary, rather than a complete count. What they did was to go to about half the hospitals in the country, including most of the largest ones, and do interviews and examine death certificates. People whose bodies never made it to a hospital didn’t get counted. People who died in hospitals that didn’t distinguish between combatant and non-combatant casualties didn’t get counted. People who died before March 20 or after April 20 didn’t get counted. Overall, this sounds to me like it matches up pretty well with the earlier estimates of between 5,000 and 10,000 civilian dead.
That’s a lot of innocent dead people. I remember driving my daughter to school on September 11, 2001, and having her ask me on the way why it was such a big deal that those buildings had collapsed. I told her, “Because when they collapsed they were full of thousands of people.” Seeing the realization dawn on her 10-year-old face of what that meant isn’t the worst of my memories from that day, but it’s one that has stayed with me.
So hey, congratulations, America. In our fear and anger over those events, we’ve managed to inflict a comparable toll on the innocents of one country (Afghanistan) whose leadership arguably had some measure of responsibility for the events of that day, and a toll two to three times higher on the innocents of another country (Iraq) whose leadership arguably had nothing whatsoever to do with the events of that day.
So can our national scared/angry-toddler routine be over already? Have enough 5-year-olds had their bodies turned into bloody hamburger to appease our collective reptilian hindbrain?
Sigh. Thanks to janus/onan for the link. I guess.
June 10th, 2003 at 7:59 pm
It may be that the Iraq regime had little, if anything, to do directly with 9/11. But while people are busy splashing the blood of innocents on Bush and America, let’s leave a few buckets for the hands of Saddam. A ruler who dared the world to react to his continual willful violations of UN sanctions. And when the Coalition did use force, he and his henchmen used their own people as strategic pieces on a chessboard (moving military targets into neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, mosques; forced civilians to fortify his troops; dressed soldiers as civilians which further endangered real non-combatants; used civilians as human shields to protect themselves in the line of fire; forced women and children to drive through checkpoints; shot at soldiers within a crowd of protesters to shield themselves and incite anger at US troops, etc.).
Whether this war ends up being fully justified or not, there is still no scenario that will ever be able to justify or excuse Saddam’s utter devaluation of innocent lives to just another bullet or gun.
In war, there is always plenty of blood and blame to go around.
June 11th, 2003 at 12:06 am
There’s a lot of truth in what you say. Saddam Hussein was an evil man, and his regime represented a horrifying example of how bad things get when such a man’s lust for power goes unchecked. And wars are indeed as awful as you say. That’s why they should never be undertaken except in the utmost need, when other courses of action have been exhausted and an honest assessment shows that their horrible cost is justified.