Catching Up to Saddam
I wrote earlier about the Lancet U.S. and coalition forces have killed 100,000 Iraqi civiliansInformed Comment : 10/01/2004 - 10/31/2004 since April 2003.
This morning, I happened to come across Juan Cole’s thought on the report. and he said something I wish I’d considered and said when I wrote my post.
The troubling thing about these results is that they suggest that the US may soon catch up with Saddam Hussein in the number of civilians killed. How many deaths to blame on Saddam is controverial. He did after all start both the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. But he also started suing for peace in the Iran-Iraq war after only a couple of years, and it was Khomeini who dragged the war out until 1988. But if we exclude deaths of soldiers, it is often alleged that Saddam killed 300,000 civilians. This allegation seems increasingly suspect. So far only 5000 or so persons have been found in mass graves. But if Roberts and Burnham are right, the US has already killed a third as many Iraqi civilians in 18 months as Saddam killed in 24 years. [emphasis mine]
Catching up with Saddam, huh? It should give some folks pause that we stand to out pace Saddam in killing Iraqi civilians.
The point about the number of bodies found in the mass graves is interesting too. Right wingers love to point to those mass graves as justification for our being in Iraq today. But by the time we launched the current war in Iraq, Saddam’s bloodiest days of mass killing were more than a decade or two behind him. What’s more, at the time Saddam was filling those graves, he was our biggest ally in the region (to the point that we send Donald Rumsfeld over to shake hands with him), because of our beef with Iraq and his war with Iran. So, we looked the other way while he was killing his own people, because he was also killing people we thought needed killing. We were, in a way, complicit in filling those mass graves some folks point to as proof of that the current war in Iraq is grounded in some righteous cause.
Honestly, it’s beginning to look like we’re just finishing the job Saddam started. We might even be doing a better job of it.
October 29th, 2004 at 4:47 pm
T.,
Saddam was a miserable, brutal dictator. There was quite a lot that he did subsequent to gassing citizens in Northern Iraq.
I think the sort of equivalency you are seeking is spurious. Removal of Saddam was necessary one way or another, sooner or later. A further chance for success of inspections and sanctions should have been given; but removal of Saddam & sons would have been a bloodbath how ever things played out.
As you point out quite well, the US had a responsibility to participate in the ouster of Saddam since the US games in the region allowed him to solidify his power decades ago.
“Intention” is an important consideration. Saddam was a monster; the US isn’t.
I am horrified by the calculation that 100,000 have died. Frankly, I don’t believe it. Somehow, the number is inflated, I would wager. Deaths from other causes — earlier deaths only recently being certificated — are part of that number, or birthrate reductions, or serious sampling miscues. Too, there are a great many Iraqi-vs.-Iraqi battles going on as gangs roam and scores are settled. These were inevitable and should not be on the US tally. There are also displaced people — people who left the country, counted as dead. And returnees who died after coming back.