The Comfort of Collateral Damage

One of the phrases tossed around with reclkess abandon during the past year or so has been 'collateral damage'.

Now let's look at the term;

collateral damage - (euphemism) inadvertent casualties and destruction inflicted on civilians in the course of military operations .

One step further;

euphemism - an inoffensive expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive.

Ok, so we know going in that the term, like most military euphamisms, is there to take the sting out of realistic depictions of what we'd rather not hear, or they'd rather we didn't hear. 'Anti-personel device' vs. bomb, defoliation vs. Napalm, etc. It's been going on for quite some time, but especially since Viet Nam, when military officials learned of the destructive effect of reality on US support for warfare.


Ok, so let's take a look at this war; Putting aside all the once trumpeted as prime-now relegated to footnote reasons for the invasion, and concentrating on the latest and last; humanitarianism;ie saving Iraqis from Saddam Hussein.

I have argued on many levels about the dangers of such an operation, especially when doen in the face of universal global opposition, but that's another story. Let's put the best face on this, as far as the war argument goes, and leave long term ramifications, conflicts of interest, and our history of looking out for No. 1 while calling ourselves defenders of freedom. Let's assume, for the moment, that the argument, and the invasion, take place in a vacuum. So we invaded because Saddam was a murderous tyrant. Ok, fair enough.

Now Human Rights organizations have disqualified this reason, citing that the bulk of Saddam's atrocities happened over a decade ago, and while he continued to be a tyrant, he hadn't really been an especially murderous one for a while. Remember, this is the real world. On second thought, let's forget that too, for the sake of argument.

Other critics have pointed out that the vast majority of Saddam's crimes against humanity occurred in the 80's, at the time when we were funding his war machine with billions upon billions, and were providing him intel to discover his 'enemies'. Again, let's not take that into account.

Let's simply look at what has happened, under Saddam, and since.

Saddam is, according to human rights organizations, credited with the murders of between 150,000 and 210, 000 Iraqis during the reign of his Ba'athist party, beginning in July of 1963 and operating until March/April of 2003. That works out to almost exactly 36 years. That works out to between 4, 167 and 5, 833 Iraqis killed per year.

That's pretty bad, but let's look at it from a worse angle; extreme accounts, not supported by human rights organizations, but as yet disproved claim that during his 36 year tenure, as many as 340, 000 Iraqi were killed. It might prove to be true, as there are probably more mass graves to be discovered. That works out to 9, 444 deaths per year.


It has been just over a year since the US invasion of Iraq began, and while the US originally was remiss, contrary to the Geneva Convention, to record the numbers of Iraqi civilans killed, for whatever rwason, their British allies were not, and not only persuaded the US to start correcting this oversight, but kept recrods of their own. The conservative number in the year plus has been about 11,000 Iraqi civlians killed. Generl Greenstock, until recently the British envoy to Iraq, admitted the other night that it is likely higher. President Bush today said that the violence is likely to get much worse before it gets better, whenever that might be. One week ago, in six days, in Fallujah alone, aporiximately 900 Iraqi civilians were killed as the US launched a widespread but ill fated assault on a heavily populated urban sector.

As of now, in a war lately based on the cause of humanitarianism, we are exceeding Saddam's death rate, even including his horrific years over a decade ago. It may be of comfort to some of us that those deaths can be called collateral damage, but is it any comfort to them? To their families?


The point that our humanitarian war is killing more than it was intended to save, while sobering, is actually not the point I'm making here. What I do want to look at is the willingness many of us show to desensitize ourselves to the realistic repercussions of our actions, by ignoring them, or using terms like 'collateral damage'. We see it in Israel as well. I don't think the children killed yesterday would be any more dead had the Israeli soldiers taken their own lives while killing them, and yet there are many who will take comfort in the fact that they were killed by an organized government action rather than a religious terrorist.

This also directly addresses one of the most common excuses people use to excuse our actions; Saddam was worse. Relatively unture, as the numbers how, but even if it were true, that wouldn't alter the fact that we activel seek, many of us, to distance ourselves from the reality of our actions, if that reality is either unpleasant or doesn't meet with our preconceptions.

I will say that there is still say that there is a significant difference between the United States and the likes of Saddam Hussein, and it applies to many areas. One of them, thankfully, is that unlike in Saddam's Iraq, the actions of our government come with an accountability to it's people, but only if we look. And that means doing away with the guaze of terms like collateral damage, and taking a good look at the reality. As I daid, there is a difference between us and Saddam, but sadly it isn't as clear as before the war. Whether it becomes more or less clear from here on in depends greatly, IMO, on how many of us continue to take comfort from terms like collateral damage, a comfort denied to those to whom it applies.

 

I'm not getting drawn into an explanation of how the war in Iraq wasn't a war with terrorists; that's for another discussion. The point of this one is clear: A) Iraqi civilians are being killed at a faster rate since our occupation than they were during Saddam's reign. and B) Our military, our government, and many within our nation do what we can to hide our eyes from these points.

 

Yeah, but here I was trying to get away from abstract concepts like empathy, moralism, etc. and looklogically at the pure numbers, and why we don't do just that.

I agree with you that racism plays a much greater role in the assumption that Iraq fit into the war with AQ, despute all evidence to the contray. Well, at least it does now...


But don't the numbers blow you away? Iraqi civilians are being killed at a faster rate under our occupation than under Saddam's tyranny, and Bush himself has said it's gonna get a lot worse than this. Afterwards, whether it's civil war, another Saddam, a situation like the Balkans ( 3 states based on religious majorities, etc.) or what else, I don't know...