Iraqi Civilian Deaths

Have you ever noticed that most articles about the war in Iraq never fail to mention the number of American deaths due to the war, but they never report the number of Iraqi deaths?

The most sickening part is that the number of Iraqi civilian deaths is wildly disproportionate (on the high side) to the number of military/security forces deaths.

For example (just the three most recent CNN articles):

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/09/07/iraq.main/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/09/05/iraq.main/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/22/iraq.main/index.html


I did find a website that is tracking the number of reported civilian deaths, which is at least something: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/.

The numbers are staggering. Below is an embedded Javascript counter that has the current totals.



Note we're just talking about Iraqi civilians here. Regular people in their cars, at their desks, in their houses, on the sidewalk. These are the people that are taken out by suicide bombers, snipers, insurgent gangs, and, of course, by collateral damage due to war. According to this article, that last cause may be more significant that you would think.

Note also that the current upper number (81,556) is about 27 times the number of people we lost in 9-11. Twenty Seven. As if what happened on 9-11 happened 27 times.

Before the age of mass communications, mass media, and relatively cheap and abundant international air fares, it may have been easier to dismiss some distant country's civilian population as "the enemy". However, to think that way today would take some kind of horrific, evil arrogance, and to boot some kind of effort in blinding oneself from the incontrovertible evidence that all humans on this Earth are in fact people.

Every modern country has their working class, their bourgeois, and their upper-class. Some countries may be run by a psychotic villain, and others by seemingly incompetent nincompoops, but regardless of the "leadership" that somehow found power, the people that live in other countries around the world are workaday folks, just like you and me. I don't see how anyone could turn their backs on such a flagrant atrocity as what's going on in Iraq today.

President Bush and his minions should be tried in an international court for crimes against humanity. I'm sickened that so many innocents are dying, and my country's image is being dragged through the shit because of these despicable, greedy, self-righteous warmongers.

That's right, the whole premise for going to Iraq is bullshit. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Whatever. It was about Oil. It was about using Iraq as a rallying point for terrorist activity to keep it off of our own soil. It was about killing Saddam Hussein. It was about showing off American military power (kind of fucked that one up). What else?