It’s trickier in a country where there’s an AK-47 in every home.
There are other differences, of course. Rwanda is only about 10,000 sq. mi. in area; Iraq is 170,000 sq. mi. And even post-massacre, Rwanda had 8 million people in 2002.
Also, the Sunnis used to run the Iraqi army. To the extent that military tactics are useful, they’ll have an easier time employing them after we’re gone than they do now.
I really do not wish to keep derailing the thread with this line of argument – even if I acknowledge that I was the one who first brought it up in passing. Having said, I’ll try to respond to your post as concisely as I can and leave it at that.
1-As you yourself point-out, we all know that innocents die in wars,
2-Surely the architects of this war knew that going in.
3-I think we can all agree at this point that the war was based on lies. IOW, it was a premeditated war of choice.
4-Based both on the UN Charter of which the US is a signatory and by virtue of your Constitution, any treaty signed by your Government becomes part of the law of the land (this video presentation gives a very detailed definition of what I am saying: Was The U.S. Invasion Of Iraq Legal or Illegal Under International Law) the invasion itself was illegal.
5-The number of innocent lives lost since the beginning of hostilities can, and should be, placed directly under the US’s responsibility. Why? Because absent said invasion it can easily be argued, based on the preceding decade at the very least, that the number of violent deaths in Iraq was quite a few orders of magnitude smaller.
6-Whether or not it is the intent of the attackers to kill innocent people, we, again, know that bombs do NOT discriminate upon their landing. Thus "intentional targeting " and “collateral damage” euphemisms aside, I think we can safely conclude that all and sundry involved in these attacks knows that, inevitably, civilians will die.
7-If we combine the numbers provided by Tagos and Banquet Bear (incidentally, thank you for the kind words, BB, but I am just one of many including yourself, that is troubled to no end by the whole Iraq debacle) you’ll find that we’re talking about, roughly, 50% of Iraq’s original 25 million citizens that have been affected negatively by this campaign. And that means anything from being killed/wounded to having to flee to lacking food, etc.
8-If we focus solely on the number of deaths, we have estimates that range from the IBC’s 75,000 to The Lancet’s 600,000+ (and that’s over a year old). So, using a number in between for the sake of fairness, 300,000, we have a 12% mortality rate nation-wide. Translated into a US per-capita figure, that would equal 36 million American deaths out of a population of 300 million.
Not much else I can say. I know what those numbers mean to me, everyone else can come to their own conclusion.
And with that, I’ll leave that particular topic aside – at least in this thread.
Wait, is your math off here? Using your numbers (25 million and 300,000), isn’t that a 1.2% mortality rate? Still a lot of people. And that would translate to 3.6 million Americans, not 36 million. Correct?
You are absolutely correct, sir. I did not use decimal points in my calculations thus the gross mistake. My apologies.
But as you said, that is still a hell of a lot of dead people. For no good reason.
Getting back to the OP, according to sources linked here,(warning, The Carpetbagger Report is a lefty site. Shields up!) the two authors, O’Hanlon and Pollack are now backpedaling furiously from the Op-ed.
To quote from the site…"I talked to Pollack yesterday. In answer to some of the questions I raised: he spoke with very few Iraqis and could independently confirm very little of what he heard from American officials…. The improvements in security, he said, are “relative,” which is a heavy qualification, given the extreme violence of 2006 and early 2007. And it’s far from clear that progress anywhere is sustainable. Everywhere he went, the line Pollack heard was that the central government in Baghdad is broken and the only solutions that can work are local ones.
It was a step back from the almost definitive tone of “A War We Just Might Win” (a bad headline, and not the authors’)."
I love the internets. it’s geting harder and harder to write something based on wishes and hunches. It’s almost as if the entire on-line community yelled CITE!
We just might win, if they all die of thirst:
Water taps run dry in Baghdad
It’s GOOD that we no longer get reports on power availability in Baghdad.
A follow-up to Squink’s post:
Why Is Half Of Iraq In Absolute Poverty ?
– more at source
Any takers would like to answer this Lady? Sam? Anyone?
Let’s face facts. We’ve controlled Iraq for over four years now. If we wanted a genocide, they’d all be dead by now. The Germans killed ten million people in five years. The Soviets killed twelve million in five years during Stalin’s purges. The Hutus in Rwanda were killing over 300,000 Tutsis a month in 1994. You think we couldn’t have killed Iraqis that fast if we wanted to?
Sure. Because it does not fit the definition of the word. Let’s say Red Fury’s average number is correct: 300,000. Now if those 300,000 were all intentionally killed by the U.S. forces, then we have a genocide. But that is not the case. Many of the 300,000 were killed—intentionally and unintentionally—at the hands of fellow Iraqis. What percent were killed by U.S. forces. I do not know. Anyone else know? Red? And what number of those killed by the U.S. forces were killed intentionally? And what percent of them were killed because they were terrorists? For it to be genocide, not only do a lot of people have to be killed, but they have to be of the same group, and be killed for being part of that group. It is often brough up that we are in the middle of a civil war. To the extent that that is true, a civil war does not equal genocide.
Why should Sam come back? People are throwing these facts in his face, and everyone knows that facts are just stuffed with that damned “liberal bias”.
-Joe
Isn’t 12% of 28 million something like 3.3 million? Or am I doing the math wrong here?
-XT
RedFury has already said he screwed up the percentage. I was quoting his post for the estimate of the total amount of people killed.
Oh, I missed that part…pardon.
-XT
…I hope that you did not see my post as an attack. I do hope you get a chance to read through the Brookings Institute statistics.
That just doesn’t make any sense. If the American troops are going to stay indefinitely, then (by your own analysis) the Malaki government will simply bide its time indefinitely, causing the political problems to fester because (as I said) the Iraqis can just keep kicking the can down the road for as long as Uncle Sam is willing to provide them with a safety hammock, er, safety net.
There is no Maliki government. he is our man . When he says something we don’t like ,he changes it within 2 days. That is our government. They meet and live in the green zone for safety.
I didn’t see your post as an attack along the same lines. I haven’t had time to read through your link but I’ll try and make some time to skim through it tonight.
-XT
Do you have an example for this claim? al Maliki has made a number of very loud complaints against U.S. actions (as he seeks to out-Sadr al Sadr in hoping to keep his Shiite support) and I can recall no occasion when he has really backpedalled. In the meantime, he constantly thwarts (or refuses to support) U.S. initiatives. He appears to be hoping that he can make enough anti-U.S./anti Sunni claims until the U.S. pulls out so that he can stay in power once the U.S. pulls out, co-opting the electorate that would normally choose to put al Sadr in power once the U.S. is gone and al Sadr is no longer boycotting the system.
How about his recent call to take Patraeus back. He came out loudly saying he had disagreements and wanted him gone. two days later ,suddenly muffled.
http://digg.com/world_news/Maliki_tells_Bush_Get_Gen_Petraeus_out
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20013807/page/2
He quickly backpedalled after asking the general out.