Public overlooks Iraqi blood on U.S. hands
Andrew Greeley
First published: Friday, July 28, 2006

What is the worth of a single Iraqi life?


The New York Times reports that 100 of them die violently every day,
3,000 every month. In terms of size of population, that is the
equivalent of 300,000 Americans a month, 10,000 every day. Yet the
typical television clip on the evening news -- an explosion,
automatic weapon fire, bleeding bodies carried away, dead bodies on
the streets, adults and children screaming in agony, wounded bodies
in inadequate hospitals -- has become as routine and as much of a
cliche as the weather report.

The dead Iraqis are of no more value to us than artificial humans in
video games. The Iraqis seem less than human, with dark skin, hate in
their eyes, and a weird religion, screaming in pain over their
losses. Weep with them, weep for them?

Why bother?

Rarely do Americans tell themselves that their country, the land of
the free and the home of the brave, is responsible for this
slaughter. In a spasm of arrogance and power, we destroyed their
political and social structure and are now unable to protect them
from one another. Their blood is on the hands of our leaders who
launched a war on false premises, without adequate forces, without
plans for the time after the war and then sent in inept
administrators who could not provide even a hint of adequate public
services. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who knows
something about war, unlike President Bush and his top thinkers, had
warned about Iraq, "if you break it, you own it." If you shatter a
society, you're responsible for it. The United States shattered Iraq
and we are responsible for the ensuing chaos that we are unable to
control. So 100 human beings are killed every day, and the most
powerful military in the world is unable to stop the killing.

On most of the standards for a just war, the invasion of Iraq was
criminally unjust. The Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq the
day after the Sept. 11 attacks. It tried to persuade the people that
Iraq was somehow involved. It insisted that the Iraqis possessed
weapons of mass destruction. Its arguments for the war, as we all
know now, were not true.

There was, therefore, no just cause, no attempt to exhaust all
possible alternatives short of war, no real hope for victory, no
postwar plans, and no ability to prevent the postwar butchery that
was easily predictable to those who understood Iraq. The war leaped
from slogan to slogan -- weapons of mass destruction, the critical
front in the global war on terror, stay the course, freedom and
democracy in Iraq. All these slogans are false.

Were America's leaders deliberately lying? Did they really believe
that the Shiites and the Sunnis would not murder one another or did
they know better?

One must leave the state of their consciences to God. However, they
should have known and in the objective order they are criminally
responsible for the hundred deaths every day. They should be tried
for their crimes, not that such trials are possible in our country.
The dead are not merely numbers, they are real human beings. Their
deaths are personal disasters, for them and for all those who love
them -- parents, children, wives, husbands. Yet most Americans are
not outraged. Iraqis, apparently, are a little less than human. If
100 people were dying every day in our neighborhoods, we would scream
in outrage and horror. Not many of us are lamenting these daily
tragedies. To the contrary, we wish the newscast would go on to the
weather for the next weekend. Is there blood on the hands of those
Americans who support the war?

Again, one must leave them to heaven. But in the objective order it
is difficult to see why they are not responsible for the mass
murders. They permitted their leaders to deceive them about the war,
often enthusiastically. How can they watch the continuing murders in
Iraq and not feel guilty?

How would you feel if your wife was screaming over your dead body? If
the street was drenched with the blood of your son and daughter, if
your father was in the hospital with his legs blown off?

We cannot permit ourselves to grieve for Iraqi pain because then we
would weep bitter and guilty tears every day.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=503407&category
=OPINION&newsdate=7/28/2006