http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=503407&category=OPINION&newsdate=7/28/2006What is the worth of a single Iraqi life?
The New York Times reports that 100 of them die violently every day, 3,000 every month. In terms of size of population, that is the equivalent of 300,000 Americans a month, 10,000 every day. Yet the typical television clip on the evening news -- an explosion, automatic weapon fire, bleeding bodies carried away, dead bodies on the streets, adults and children screaming in agony, wounded bodies in inadequate hospitals -- has become as routine and as much of a cliche as the weather report.
The dead Iraqis are of no more value to us than artificial humans in video games. The Iraqis seem less than human, with dark skin, hate in their eyes, and a weird religion, screaming in pain over their losses. Weep with them, weep for them?
Why bother?
Rarely do Americans tell themselves that their country, the land of the free and the home of the brave, is responsible for this slaughter. In a spasm of arrogance and power, we destroyed their political and social structure and are now unable to protect them from one another. Their blood is on the hands of our leaders who launched a war on false premises, without adequate forces, without plans for the time after the war and then sent in inept administrators who could not provide even a hint of adequate public services. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who knows something about war, unlike President Bush and his top thinkers, had warned about Iraq, "if you break it, you own it." If you shatter a society, you're responsible for it. The United States shattered Iraq and we are responsible for the ensuing chaos that we are unable to control. So 100 human beings are killed every day, and the most powerful military in the world is unable to stop the killing.
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