Poll: Civilian death toll in Iraq may top 1 million
How should we respond to news like that? This is what our government does with the money it gets from our taxes.
Thoreau had one answer. Speaking of the Mexican-American War, he said, when “…a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.”
Martin Luther King said, speaking of US racism and imperialism, “We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system.”
For the last few years, Emma and I have lived very simply so that we’re only legally responsible for paying Social Security taxes, which are not supposed to be used by the US government for any other purpose.
But the government borrows against those moneys to wage war.
And even if it did not, even if none of my tax money was being used in any way to support those who profit from war, my refusal to support an evil system is, at best, a half-step toward opposing it: If you do not oppose evil, you allow it to thrive.
I have some hard choices ahead of me now. I would like to think we all do.
One million human beings dead.
Because the leaders of the Republican Party said war is the simple solution.
And the leaders of the Democratic Party agreed.
later: The link above leads you to the LA Times, which does require you to sign in to read.
later still: British polling agency: More than one million Iraqi deaths since US invasion has more information and doesn’t require you to sign in. Whether you disagree with their politics, their facts tend to be reliable.
Can’t see the link.
Works for me. Are you referring to the LA Time’s stupid free registration, or isn’t the link taking you anywhere?
Stupid free registration. I went walkabout with google and found a plethora of other articles though.
I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.”
However much we abhor the situation, there’s not going to be a revolution. There’s going to be an election and the present incumbents are going to lose their positions of public trust. I wish I could say that they will lose all power to influence public events, but I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, either.
war sucks.
Yes it does.
The Lancet “study” was disproven, I think this one is even more exaggerated. My question to all who oppose the US in Iraq is what was the alternative? Let Saddam stay in power? Y’all now have 20/20 hindsight so have at it.
Evil system my a** Will, go look at the horrors the former East Block lived through, what Zimbabwe is now going through or for that matter Myanmar. The US ain’t perfect, we both know that but your saying the moral and ethical level of the US administration and Congress is the same as ol Uncle Joe, Pol Pot or Mugabe. That is a level of real world blindness nigh inconceivable.
Don’t need hindsight to see that. A *lot* of people were saying this would be a disaster. George’s daddy said this would be a disaster, and he was right.
Yes, they should’ve let Saddam stay in power and kept the political pressure on him. George is now responsible for far more deaths than Saddam was. Saddam was responsible for over 100,000 deaths in war. Even if this poll is wildly inaccurate–and it’s by a respectable polling company, so I wouldn’t be quick to dismiss it–George is conservatively 5 to 1 ahead of Saddam in being responsible for deaths in the Middle East.
And, yes, George has a way to go to catch up to Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mugabe. Doesn’t mean we should let him continue in that direction.
but your saying the moral and ethical level of the US administration and Congress is the same as ol Uncle Joe, Pol Pot or Mugabe.
You think that they are not? The only difference is that the power structure that they inhabit requires at least the semblance of public support and approval. Look at the numerous laws that the current administration has violated, both here and abroad. The only thing lacking is the direct, bloodthirsty ruthlessness possessed by the “leaders” you mention.
And Will, Saddam was responsible for far more than 100,000 deaths, some reports estimate he was up to 10,000 a month. But a great deal of that blood is on our hands, look what we did to the Kurds during the first gulf war.
I only did a quick scan for Saddam’s death count. Obviously, during the Iran-Iraq War, his numbers shot up. But I hadn’t heard he was killing anything like those numbers after the first Gulf War.
Just did a little more googling. Still haven’t found anything definitive, but it looks like the high estimates are around 300,000 deaths. Which puts George ahead, even if only 500,000 have died because of his invasion.
Not trying to defend Saddam here. Just trying to be accurate.
I have some hard choices ahead of me now. I would like to think we all do.
I’m curious what direction your thoughts are taking. Are you deciding what to do as an individual, or how to summon up enough public outrage to be heard in DC or something else altogether?
The quick answer is both. If the US is still in Iraq next year at tax time, I don’t see how I can respect myself and give the government a dollar. But maybe I’ll just pay and not respect myself.
As for the second, how you create a meaningful political opposition to our two war parties is a challenge, but I think it must be done. Of the available candidates, I think Kucinich is sincere, but unable to win–not because of the US people, but because of the wrongheaded leaders of his party. I think Edwards is sincere, but he may be too willing to compromise himself. Obama and Clinton are both too wedded to corporate interests and to making shows of strength to give me any hope at all.
And I’m old enough to remember that Johnson was the peace candidate in 1964, so Democrat promises do not inspire me.
Oh, something I failed to address: the Lancet study was denied, not disproven. As for this accuracy of this poll, I’ll quote a bit from here: “Opinion Research Business is not a left-wing or antiwar group, but an established polling organization, founded in 1994 by Gordon Heald, who headed Gallup Britain from 1980 to 1994. Its customers include the huge mining concern Anglo American, the Bank of Scotland, and the Conservative Party. Its non-executive director is Geoffrey Martin OBE, currently special adviser to the secretary general on strategic relationships of the British Commonwealth.”
Maybe waiting for a good candidate isn’t the way to go. It is still possible to get the public riled up enough to force action (ex. Gonzales), and since polls have shown that 52% of the US public get most of their news from TV (newspapers and internet together were only 35%), perhaps you could lend your skill as a writer to a news commentator of whom you approve, or even take a stab at getting a new show on the air, locally for now, nationally later?
Fortunately, Emma rarely reads the comments to my posts (because she pretty much agrees with my wacky notions and is more upset by people who stridently disagree than I am), so she can’t see this: There is a great deal that could be done using the internet and public access TV. Doing more than that is a huge challenge, but it’s not a challenge that would have to be faced now. However, the part that would scare Emma is that doing anything at all on some sort of news show would be an enormous commitment of time. So I’ll have to ponder this.
The real problem continues to be that the capitalists have the money, so they control the media, so the most radical message that most people hear is a Democrat saying “Darn, we wish we could do something to stop Bush, but we can’t, so we’ll give him more money now.”
Oops, that makes me feel guilty. I was already worried that making any sort of practical suggestion may have been out of line, but I am totally oriented towards action when really riles up and sometimes I get carried away. But I can resist that urge, so I’ll just wish you best of luck in choosing the best course of action. That’s always the tricky part, isn’t it?
Oh, don’t feel guilty! When I get committed, Emma backs me, no matter how much it disrupts our life.* And I do have to do something that’s peaceful and purposeful. Your suggestion is appreciated.
*I do my best to do the same. It’s why we’ve lasted lo these many.
The civilian death toll tops a horrific one million, and I hope we never forget that the total numbers of lost humans are far higher…but you’ll have to do some legwork to find out which additional Department of Defense report of non-civilians are most accurate if you could ever use the word “accurate” to describe one of their reports (those reports would be of our US, UK stationed military, civilian contractors, reporters and the “self-inflicted” military deaths that go largely unreported).
We are arriving at Miramar Marine base this afternoon to retrieve our nephew, a Sgt. in HMM-151, tailgunner and casevac specialist (casualty evacuation). It was his fourth tour there and it’s only this morning that I can acutally say “was” because once they hit the transport and point for home you tend to not believe they’re actually coming home until you hear their voice from the tarmac. There will be stories, there HAVE been stories, but through channels that prevent these men and women from emailing and blogging we all have to talk in code. I’m a military spouse, I blog, and even I have to talk in a certain family code or the bureacracy that has become this large machine has the power to shut me down as well. I hate this, but like my fellow spouses we struggle to maintain our rights to speak while watching some of those rights disappear before our eyes and this will most likely be one of our fights saved for another day. Right now we’re just fighting for everyday space with our mates.
I came from the Seventh Fleet (Japan) and even the “self-inflicted” rate of suicide for sailors there was at an all time high. Low morale, no sleep, the ever-present surge deployments all lead to an almost schizophrenic mindset. At the time we left almost every ship at least temporarily had a “black anchor” (what a ship receives when re-enlistment hits an all time low). There is nothing more horrific than watching someone, in abject despair, simply walk off the edge of a carrier, hundreds of feet to his death.
You and Emma are always in our thoughts. As long as there are voices that try so hard to express the beauty human emotion and the potential we have to change our worlds we’ll never be lost, not really. Doing something peaceful and purposeful is a wonderful start.
The peaceful part…well that’s harder for a civilian like me and it has little to do with our current state of middle eastern affairs which could have been avoided. It has everything to do with almost breaking the nose of a boyfriend, many moons ago, one who tried to beat and shoot me. So there are times that I have little peace inside of me, but fortunately it doesn’t extend to the command of other countries. My husband feels that every world leader should run a battery of psych tests before getting the keys the the kingdom. The funny thing is that most of the guys in his division feel the same way, whether they’re Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or any other “ian” or “ism” that’s managed to surface for the time being.
As a current and now temporary military family we’ve also tried to have purpose and to some degree we did that, both in the field that my husband is in (military, ship and rate not necessary here) and mine (civilian medical). It’s harder for non-military folks to see us in the multitude of roles that fill these slots. I also won’t sugarcoat the simple fact that recruiters do lie. They try to fill the fodder slots. They catch a lot of kids at a hard time in their lives and someday I’ll have more to say about that.
A human tool is still human. I’m just not sure how much more the human tools I see on base every day can take.
The problem with setting posts aside thinking “This one deserves more time than I have now” is that the time just doesn’t seem to come. So instead of getting the quick hasty reply, here’s the late hasty one:
I am very glad to hear that your nephew is back. Everyone who comes back alive is a victory.
And I so would like the psych tests for our leaders. Even if they weren’t binding in any way, just having them public before election time would be very, very useful. Among the many things that amaze me about our politicians is how little we actually know about them before we elect them. Or after. We’ve had W for two terms, and I still don’t know what’s the man and what’s the show put on by his handlers.