Area 77

About two weeks ago, the American media were highlighting the fact that the death toll of US soldiers in Iraq has reached 4,000. The 4,000th body was confirmed on March 23rd, three days after the the 5th anniversary of the invasion. That is a significant number of men and women sacrificed to avenge the death of the 2,646 Americans who died on 9/11. But we can’t say “avenge” anymore because that isn’t the current mission. First it was to find more of Al Qaeda (after the bombing of Afghanistan), then it was to find weapons of mass destruction, then it was to free the helpless people from a ruthless dictator, and now it is to cash in on some sweet oil introduce true democracy to the good people of Iraq and take care of those that object.

Back to the 4,000. That is a lot of dead people. However, they are only peanuts when compared to the number of Iraqi civilian casualties. Almost 83,000 confirmed deaths. This number could be as much as 90,000 but it’s not accurate because sometimes, bodies are so extraordinarily destroyed or unidentifiable that it’s really hard to match them to one or more persons. Note that this number doesn’t include the deaths of Iraqi fighters, insurgents, and opposition forces, which roughly estimate to at least 70,000 as of January 2008. Again, the actual number has a huge possibility of being much higher. In general the total number of Iraqi deaths is between 150,00 and 223,000 according to the World Health Organization.

I don’t know what the news media in the Middle East is like at the moment, but I can tell you that there wasn’t any mention of the Iraqi casualties. They do report the deaths a single attack or event but that’s it. It’s sad that so many people are not informed of both sides of an issue, especially when it comes to number. It’s one of the easiest ways to form an opinion or judgement on something, so it’s only fair to present both sets of numbers.

Nonpartisan reporting is hard enough to find in this country but I can’t expect anything more from it. After all, America is one of the two countries at war.

Death is horrible no doubt. Someone somewhere lost a loved one, whether it’s one or 100, it sucks. But what sucks more is that Iraq’s 89,000 body count includes only children, the elderly, and innocent civilians. The 4,000 Americans were armed soldiers who had a chance, however small, to fight for their lives. Let us all hope that this war ends soon. I don’t think any of us initially thought that it would last this long. Not even the Bush Administration itself, they have been digging themselves into a hole ever since it all began.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 10:54 am and is filed under Politics, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.