Iraq Body Count

13,000 > 100,000 ?

This is a small collection of emails I sent to the author of http://www.peterhansen.com/.

My original email:

-quote-
Hi,

I have just found your Web site and followed the link to the Iraq Body Count.

And I believe you might want to remove the link.

Some people have interesting ideas about Saddam's regime and are thus impressed by the number of deaths caused by the invasion. (And on the Iraq Body Count I see that they happily count the victims of terrorism as "killed by the military intervention".) The background page explains that the site's purpose is to "establish an independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military action by the USA and its allies in 2003", presumably to show that the invasion caused unbelievable suffering and is thus to be opposed on moral grounds.

The Web site does not compare the current situation to Saddam's regime, presumably because such a comparison would highlight a point the Web site doesn't want to make. Downplaying Saddam's crimes is, I'm afraid, just as wrong as holocaust denial. Kurdish and Arab Shi'ite victims are victims just as much as Jews are.

"The Iraq Body Count project aims to promote public understanding, engagement and support for the human dimension in wars by providing a reliable and up-to-date documentation of civilian casualties in the event of a US-led war in 2003 in the country. The duty of ‘recorder’ falls particularly heavily on the ordinary citizens of those states whose military forces cause the deaths. In the current crisis, this responsibility must be borne predominantly by citizens of the USA and the UK."

The pure sarcasm the Web site displays is a bit too much even for me to take. The "ordinary citizens" of Iraq have suffered for 25 years under Saddam, the suffering did not start with the invasion or the liberation of Kuwait 13 years earlier. The Web site tries to imply it, and I believe its target audience is sufficiently ignorant for the scheme to work.

But as I said, you might want to remove the link. The Iraq Body Count Web site already makes a point you don't seem to want to advocate.

Considering the number of Saddam's victims every year he was in power, the number of deaths caused by the invasion is ridiculously low.

That is not good news. It merely shows that the evil man is capable of is a lot greater than some can envision. And that is, I assume, why so many oppose the invasion for all the suffering it has caused, but do not praise it for the suffering it has ended. That is why the Web site counts victims of terrorism in Iraq as victims of the invasion. It is because many do not want to accept that the greater evil exists.

If 26,000 people have died since the invasion in 2003, that makes the invasion a phenomenal success in terms of lowering the number of deaths in Iraq. Saddam's wars killed hundreds of thousands of people. The war against Iran alone killed more people in a year than the effects of the invasion in the two years since it happened. Saddam's war against the Kurds in the north (40,000) and Shi'ites in the south (60,000), his drying up the marshlands, and his priorities regarding UN-approved imports killed another large number every year (90,000). The numbers in brackets are the lowest estimates for the number of victims. One million children died because of the sanctions that were the preferred means over an invasion in 1990.

If only 13,000 people died every year since the invasion, Iraq has indeed changed.

And that is not the point you wanted to make, I think.

I know that those opposed to the invasion blame those who supported the invasion for the deaths that happened because of it (regardless of who actually did the killing). But do you blame yourself for those who died every year because the invasion did not yet take place?

If you can advocate your anti-war position in the light of hundreds of thousands who died because Saddam remained in power for 25 years, then perhaps you can understand why many advocate a pro-war position in the light of tens of thousands who died because of the invasion and the thought of hundreds of thousands lives saved.

I know that I cannot convince you that George Bush and Tony Blair are not greedy murderers with no regard for human life, but I think I can expect that you do not base your objection to the invasion on the number of deaths caused by it.

The number of deaths was so much greater before.

"In the current crisis, this responsibility must be borne predominantly by citizens of the USA and the UK."

I agree. It is predominantly the citizens of the USA and the UK who are responsible for the fact that instead of 50,000 to 100,000 victims of Saddam every year we now have 13,000 victims of the invasion every year. France and Germany cannot claim any responsibility for that. And I wished Germany could, because I was born there.

And you can go on about how the US did not attack Iraq out of altruism, and how the war costs the American tax payer so much, and how stupid and evil George Bush is. But you cannot undo the fact that Iraqis are now no longer routinely tortured and executed, that Kurds are no longer gassed, and that the marshlands in southern Iraq are being irrigated again; that the new government in Iraq exports oil and does spend the income on medicine instead of palaces, that Kurds are naming their sons Tony and George, and that Iraqis have Internet access now.

You want to undo it, but you can't.

It has happened.

And it happened because of an act you despise and oppose.

The incredible chutzpah of the Iraq Body Count Web site continues to impress me. They list every single terror attack and add it to the number of victims of the invasion. It is as if, to them, Saddam's murderers have never existed and terror is a new phenomenon in Iraq. And obviously, obvious to them, the victims of the same murderers, as some of them are still out there, are now victims of the invasion.

So, that was it, I suppose: a personalised rant in response to your Web site.

You can now make fun of me and call me a war-monger, or call me brain-washed, publish my email as an example for the stupidity that is so common among conservatives these days, or take the entire account as a result of my inherent hatred for Iraqis; it does not matter.

It does not matter because I grew up under American occupation in a country liberated from a dictator who gassed people.

And in a few decades Iraqis can say the same thing.

Up to the moustache.

-/quote-

I didn't expect an answer, or rather I expected that if I did get an answer, it would be a collection of insults. But The replies were all polite and merely lacked an argument for the author's position.

Since I mentioned that I expect he might publish my email on his Web site, I assumed I can publish his replies, when quoted in my replies, in my blog.

Note that the text within ""double quotes"" is his.

-quote-

On 17 Jul 2005, at 05:24, [email protected] wrote:

""Hi, thanks for taking the time to write. The endless cycle of war and violence that both Saddam and Bush represent is what I am opposed to. We now belong
to a dubious club of countries that includes Israel ---an eye for an eye etc...""

The dubious club of countries you refer to has been in the defensive for almost 50 years. Israel has been attacked four times and Palestine was never as close to independence as it is under Israeli rule. I don't believe that an independent Palestine would have existed under Pan-Arabist nationalist rule.

Israel has also treated its attackers much better than any other country in history (except the USA). When Russia won the war against Germany, which Germany started, Germany lost a fourth of its territory to Russia (and then to Poland when Poland was moved west). Germans in these territories were forced to leave. When Israel was attacked and won the West Bank (from Jordan), Sinai and Gaza (from Egypt), and Golan (from Syria), Israel did not act that way. Sinai was given back in exchange for peace, the population of the West Bank and Gaza was not forced to leave, and I understand the Golan heights are also still inhabited by its original population.

The US and UK belong to a dubious club of countries indeed.

Did you notice that the US and UK were the only countries to ever bother with the UN at all before they attacked somebody? Did Egypt and Syria ask the UN whether they are allowed to attack Israel? Did the Soviet Union ask about Afghanistan? Did France ask before they intervened in Ivory Coast (or was that made legal afterwards because the US did not veto it, like France would have America's request)?

A dubious club indeed.

""----I hear your argument all the time justifying the invasion but I will always believe we went in too soon ---- Bush wanted the war plain and simple....Humans need to evolve into creatures with more foresight...or the planet is doomed.""

If a creature with more foresight would have allowed more Iraqis to die, why do we need more foresight?

And what does it mean to say that "Bush wanted the war plain and simple"? We know he wanted the war. But that alone doesn't make the war right or wrong. Bush is the president of the US. It is his job to propose policies and, if congress vote in favour of them, to act accordingly. For Iraq Bush's policies have been a blessing. For Lybia they have been a reason to give up its WMD program. For Lebanon they allowed a peaceful revolution. And the Palestinians had the privilege to actually elect their president more or less democratically for the first time.

That was Clinton's plan and Bush's. It was war, plain and simple. And it made the world a better place.

-/quote-

The first line ("It was war...") is mine, quoted by the Peter.

-quote-

On 17 Jul 2005, at 20:32, [email protected] wrote:

It was war, plain and simple. And it made the world a better place.

""Hi...Thanks again for writing...let's just agree to disagree...With a comment like the one quoted above from you I can see that we come from very different places ...I hardly see the world as a better place since this war...Good luck!""

I already knew that we disagree. What I am eager to know is this:

Why do you not regard a world where fewer people die as a better place? What is so important about people like Saddam that their existence ought to be regarded as a a symptom of a better place?

And if the number of people who died due to the invasion is a symptom of a worse world now, why is the much larger number of victims not a symptom for an even worse world before the invasion?

Why do you prefer a world with Lybia having weapons of mass destruction, Iraq possibly having such weapons, Kurds dying, Shi'ites moving to Baghdad because their marshlands have been dried, and a Syria-occupied Lebanon, over the world we live in now?

-/quote-

What I am still missing now is the actual argument for why the invasion was wrong. When those opposed list the number of deaths since the invasion as a reason to be opposed to the invasion, then surely the much higher numbers of deaths before the invasion must be an equally valid argument for the invasion.

I have yet to see an opponent of the war (outside the American isolationists, who have a case!) mention the fact that fewer people died since the invasion than before, thanks to the invasion, and still make a case against the invasion. If there is such a case, then surely someone can make it. But for now the anti-invasion argument seems to rely on ignorance, denial, and/or hatred.

Ignorance of the evils of Saddam's regime (or even ignorance of the fact that an Iraqi killed by Saddam is as bad as an Iraqi killed by an American), denial that Saddam's regime was to blame for its evils (usually because it was all the Americans' fault), or plain hatred and fear of Americans.

But neither ignorance nor denial nor hatred constitute an argument.

I would really like to hear the argument against the invasion.

What possible good can there be that is worth so many Iraqi lives?

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