Many on this board and elsewhere have said that Saddam Hussein was evil. People who take this position commonly say or imply that he was evil because he killed so many people. If Saddam is evil for this reason, then George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans are even more evil.
The highest estimate I’ve seen for the death toll under Saddam is 330,000 people, the sum of 100,000 during the first extermination campaign against the Kurds and 230,000 during the brutal crackdowns after the First Iraq War. Both these numbers are at the high end of the ranges, so the real death toll was probably lower. So during his 24-year reign, he was responsible for at most an average of 13,750 people per year.
The death toll due to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq was 650,000 people during the first three and a quarter years, according to the Lancet Study. Several other thorough, non-partisan studies have confirmed that the figure lies in the same order of magnitude. This means that Bush and friends are killing Iraqis more than 14 times faster than Saddam did, so they must be more than fourteen times as evil as Saddam was.
I anticipate several objections to this line of reasoning.
First, some will object that the figures for the death toll from Bush’s war are not accurate, despite the fact that multiple independent sources have arrived at the same conclusion. However, even if we take the lowest figures that anyone offers, we still find that Bush is killing Iraqis faster than Saddam. There’s no escaping the conclusion that way.
Second, some will object that deaths not committed by people directly under Bush’s command aren’t Bush’s responsibility. But people are responsible for the consequences of their decisions. Bush made the decision to invade Iraq and destroy the Iraqi government. When a government is destroyed, anarchy results (by definition). In anarchy, large numbers of people die. Since the 650,000 deaths would have been avoided if Bush hadn’t invaded Iraq, they are all Bush’s responsibility.
Thirdly, some will allege that Bush is less evil because he launched the invasion with good intentions. But—laying aside the question of whether he actually had the good intentions which he claimed to have—we can all surely agree that if you’re getting beaten to death in Abu Ghraib, blown up by a roadside bomb, shot by Blackwater mercenaries, or caught in the crossfire of sectarian violence, it doesn’t matter if it’s all the fault of someone with good intentions. What matters is results, not intentions.
Fourthly, some will say that other good things came out of Bush’s invasion which balance out the huge number of deaths. As Bush’s decisions have lead to enormous numbers of innocent civilians being imprisoned and tortured, the Iraqi economy being ruined, basic services like electricity and water being cut off, and millions being forced to flee as refugees, it’s difficult to see what those good things might be. A democratic government? Most of Iraq is ruled by sectarian militias, the opposite of democracy. More freedom? A country where any person can be imprisoned, tortured, or killed on any day has no freedom whatever.
Yet even so, most of those who railed against the evil of Saddam continue to ignore the greater evil of Bush and the Republicans. I wish to understand why this is. The only logical explanation I see is that these people believe Saddam was evil because he killed too few Iraqis, and that Bush is therefore better since he killed more. But this is a rather uncharitable explanation, so before I accept that conclusion I’ll turn the floor over to anyone who can explain the apparent contradiction in some other way.