600,000
I can no longer see how people can vote according to the "moral issues" of abortion and gay marriage while ignoring issues concerning our foreign policy. The new estimate is that over 600,000 Iraqis have died since our invasion of the country. Over 600,000.
I must agree with Jim Wallis that this # needs weigh heavily upon us as we vote in a couple of weeks.
6 comments:
6 hundred thousands.
frick.
indeed
How many were combatants? How many were civilians? How many were former Ba'athist soldiers and thugs? Civilian death is terrible, as is death of any sort. Yet every statistic has a context and I wondering what is breakdown of this number.
Speaking of context, how many Iraqis died in the same span of time before the American invasion? Does this number include Iraqi on Iraqi infighting? Does it include sickness and starvation? How does it compare the the amount of civilian deaths at the hands of Saddam? What would be an acceptable, or if not acceptable, then at least a "normal" amount of deaths in a comparable part of the world at a time of peace. And what number is an acceptable amount of civilian casualties, so-called "collateral damage", during a just war? (not to argue that this war qualifies)
What I am getting at is that it would be a much more devestating critique of the war if a number such as this came with this type of context. That way, whatever number is the direct result of civilian casualty at the hands of American troops, it could not be dismissed as mere propaganda from the "no war is ever just, America is just a big bully" crowd.
I obviously don't take quite as harsh a stance against the war as others. But I am tired of context-less numbers and simple slogans thrown about by both hawks and doves. I ask these question in hope of advancing the discussion beyond the headlines. At the very least, both opinions about the war ought to be informed by accurate and specific information, both of which are not served up by media of any sort in this country. It seems that the free market of bloggers may be the best hope we have.
My first response to you, T, was - Who freakin cares which people and for what reason?? It's 600,000 people!!
But as I continued to read, your dogged persistence chipped away at my heart's hardened position. You make good points, and ultimatley a contextless number doesn't help us in the least in attempting to solve the problem.
However, the more I thought about it, these types of numbers do have some use. My use of it was simply as a reminder. I was attempting to make the war a moral issue. Friends have said to me in the past that they are not so fond of the war, but they felt like they should cast their vote according to their feelings on abortion, because more innocent children die every day in America due to abortion than will die in the war that day.
Well - they voted for Bush. And abortion is still legal. And now we have the moral issue of 600,000 Iraqi deaths, plus the deaths of our own soldiers and those of soldiers of other countries that are invovled.
I was not trying, necessarily, to argue against the war simply by throwing down the huge # (though I'm sure my bias showed through). My purpose was instead to say - hey, this should qualify as an issue now. It needs to "weigh heavily upon us as we vote in a couple of weeks." By which I meant that we would be morally remiss if we did not check into the # and ask the types of questions that you brought up.
Thanks for helping to clarify my position and purpose.
BTW - here is a link where you can look at the facts for yourself.
http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf
This was not a random survey with a strong political agenda. It was a very sceintific and quite exhaustive survey (though none could be fully exhaustive, of course). I didn't just get this # of 600,000 off of some anti-war website somewhere. This is a legitimate, scientific survey that got substantial press coverage - though not enough, in my opinion.
To answer one of your questions - The # of 600,000 is the number of deaths that are directly due to the violence of the war - it excludes the percentage of people that were dying before the war began.
The survey's estimate is that 655,000 civilians have died in Iraq. Civilians. Non-combatants.
That's 655,000 more than would have died in the same amount of years before the conflict began.
I'm glad you spurred me on to actually read the report. I know, I can't believe I made the first post without having read the report. However, I had at least understood it was coming from a reliable source - and, as I've noted, my intent was not to argue aspects of the report, but to do what I said above.
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