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Fri Dec 05 2008
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Departments War in Iraq
Iraq's million
by Robert C. Koehler
December 6, 2007
In the Fantasy Middle East, the troop surge is helping plucky Iraq get its act together; and Iran, as serious a threat as ever and still lusting to start World War III, awaits liberation by the superpower known as “Johnny Democracy.”
In the reality version, our legacy is bad water, cancer and social chaos. Iraq has, by one scientific extrapolation, surpassed the million mark in war dead and continues to rack up other numbers (4 million internal and external refugees, for instance, but not to worry, only 133 of them got into the U.S. this year) that . . . I dunno, maybe it’s just me . . . seem antithetical to the idea of democracy. And of course, as the latest National Intelligence Estimate has just embarrassingly informed the world, Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program four years ago.
But so what? The president and his coterie of “High Nooniacs” want to invade Iran anyway and spread our pretend — and, unavoidably, our real — legacy to that country as well, and if they really set their minds to it, make the right calls, rally the media, pound the fear button, pound it again, they’ll do it, reality (and its wide-eyed, stunned adherents) be damned. We won’t stop them. We have nothing but our scattered selves.
War has America.
Like it or not, all the war protest in the many forms in which it is currently flowering — from the impeach-a-dope movement to the public rallies to the political dissent to the courageous independent reporting that gives citizens unprecedented access to war-zone reality — does not a nation make. Only war and war culture do that, which means, it’s infinitely easier to start a war than it is to stop or prevent one, because going to war, however gratuitously, is just a nation being itself, doing what it was built to do.
And, as we witness these days with the behavior of so many Democratic congressmen, even a politician who has no enthusiasm for or in fact “opposes” a given war will nevertheless support it by default in far more ways than he or she will dare commit the patriotic heresy of attempting to outright thwart it.
Barbara Ehrenreich, in “Blood Rites,” her extraordinary 1997 examination of the history of the passions of war, writes of the evolution of the phenomenon: “Meanwhile, war has dug itself into economic systems, where it offers a livelihood to millions, rather than to just a handful of craftsmen and professional soldiers. It has lodged in our souls as a kind of religion, a quick tonic for political malaise and a bracing antidote to the moral torpor of consumerist, market-driven cultures.”
Saying this, I return to the figure of a million war dead in Iraq, pause in horrified awe that, one, it could be possible, and two, it hasn’t made mainstream headlines, where big, round numbers normally scream with significance.
The estimate, by the U.K. organization Just Foreign Policy and corroborated by the market research firm Opinion Research Business, extrapolates from data published just over a year ago in the respected British medical journal Lancet, which indicated a violent-death toll, as of May 2006, of 650,000. The death rate has been accelerating in the past year, making the current estimate of 1.2 million dead at least feasible.
And I mention this number with the caveat that it refers only to deaths directly attributable to the war: by bomb, missile, bullet, IED, etc. The total indirect war dead, from disease caused by the war’s stupendous environmental contamination combined with the destruction of Iraq’s medical infrastructure, may be incalculable.
But again, so what? And the fact that the war, in times that are otherwise so tight we have to cut back on actual security expenditures, is running up a tab of, oh, a buck a nanosecond and will tally maybe $2 trillion when all bills are in, gets a double so what. That won’t stop it.
Media coverage of this debacle has, admittedly, worn a frowny face of late, but it has stopped short of bringing the wasteland Bush’s war on terror is creating into our living rooms. The delicate problem the war-media face is to draw down this disaster with face-saving decorum and dissipate blame to the extent possible so that no high-level people are punished; and, above all, to be protective of future wars so that “Iraq syndrome” doesn’t do some sort of permanent damage to military culture or, God forbid, the defense budget.
The Bush presidency has pushed the paradox of nationalism to a crisis. We owe it to Iraq’s million dead, and to our own wounded future, to stand for the impossible. The building of human societies that have transcended war begins today.
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Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.
© 2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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Don't forget to check out articles from 2007 and 2008War in Iraq
"Pentagon cover up: 15,000 or more US deaths in Iraq war?" December 17, 2007 Mike Whitney
"Iraq's million" December 6, 2007 Robert C. Koehler
"Talking with two who walk the walk" November 29, 2007 David Swanson
"Baghdad in middle America" November 15, 2007 Robert C. Koehler
"Understanding the next war money vote" November 10, 2007 David Swanson
"Jonesborough justice" October 31, 2007 David Swanson
"Ann Wright’s conscience: former colonel and diplomat against Iraq war" October 29, 2007 Seth Sandronsky
"Open letter to the government from an AWOL soldier" October 21, 2007 James Circello, Iraq Veterans Against The War
"Constitution, flag, and leaving Iraq" October 7, 2007 David Swanson
"Whistleblowers on tape" September 30, 2007 David Swanson
"Observing our government through Blackwater" September 26, 2007 David Swanson
""Funding the war is killing the troops": interrupting the empire 30 seconds at a time" September 26, 2007 Mike Ferner
"We have nothing but fear itself" September 24, 2007 David Swanson
"Sanity in tiny nibbles" September 21, 2007 Robert C. Koehler
"Can we talk? Day one of IVAW's "Truth in Recruiting" campaign" September 20, 2007 Mike Ferner
"New day in the anti-war movement?" September 19, 2007 Mike Ferner
"Bush’s fake sheik whacked: the Surge and the Al Qaeda bunny" September 18, 2007 Greg Palast
"Iraq: the people's report" September 11, 2007 Sue Udry
"Questions for General Petraeus" September 10, 2007 David Swanson
"My son, back from Iraq, lives on tower on National Mall" September 1, 2007 Mary Hanna
"Creative destruction" August 16, 2007 Robert C. Koehler
"300 towns, cities, states oppose Iraq occupation" August 1, 2007 David Swanson
"Reparations" July 30, 2007 David Swanson
"Democrats as Leviathan: another step toward war with Iran" July 23, 2007 Joshua Frank
"We will sit in for impeachment" July 5, 2007 David Swanson
"Gorilla suit" July 3, 2007 Robert C. Koehler
"Peace movement comes to US Social Forum" June 29, 2007 David Swanson
"The hearts of all sane men" June 21, 2007 Robert C. Koehler
"Belief and doubt" June 15, 2007 Robert C. Koehler
"Sen. Clinton wants troops in Iraq for at least 10 years" June 13, 2007 David Swanson
"This is not a story about Cindy Sheehan" June 5, 2007 Sunsara Taylor
"The holy occupation of Iraq" May 29, 2007 David Swanson
"Why I voted "no"" May 27, 2007 Sen. Barbara Boxer
"For five years we've called it blood for oil" May 16, 2007 David Swanson
"Collateral genocide" May 12, 2007 Mike Ferner
"Please don’t throw me in that veto patch" May 7, 2007 Mike Ferner
"Anti-U.S. uproar sweeps Italy" May 5, 2007 David Swanson
"Knee-deep blood in the land of make-believe" April 26, 2007 Carla Binion
"Tax day protests and refusing to pay for war" April 16, 2007 Ruth Benn
"You can't hurt a troop by defunding a war" April 12, 2007 David Swanson
"Iraq veterans speak in Columbus, OH 3-17-07" April 11, 2007 Veterans
"Iraq @ 4: It's Not About the Troops - Either Way " March 26, 2007 David Caploe
"Progressives stand strong against funding war" March 23, 2007 David Swanson
"No mo money for war" March 16, 2007 David Swanson
"Sacrificing our children on the altar of corporate greed" March 15, 2007 David E. Washburn
"Only nonviolence will end the war" March 14, 2007 David Swanson
"The war money can be stopped" March 10, 2007 David Swanson
"How will you end this war?" March 10, 2007 Tina Richards
"Congressman Obey says "Idiot Liberals" need to support war money" March 9, 2007 David Swanson
"Former Pentagon staff speaks out on crimes of Doug Feith, Dick Cheney, and planning of Iran War" March 6, 2007 David Swanson
"I'm more pro-troop than you are" March 3, 2007 David Swanson
"Only nonviolence will end the war" February 28, 2007 David Swanson
"Cindy Sheehan, George Will, and loving your enemies" February 26, 2007 David Swanson
"No, seriously, why did we invade Iraq?" February 22, 2007 David E. Washburn
"Lord knows we've suffered enough already: keep them out of Ohio!" February 18, 2007 Mike Ferner
"Murtha only intends to undo the escalation" February 17, 2007 David Swanson
"Shut up and stop the war" February 14, 2007 David Swanson
"100 Senators quietly vote: majority oppose escalation" February 10, 2007 David Swanson
"Dems change the gas and claim it's a new car" February 9, 2007 David Swanson
"A world that works for everybody" February 7, 2007 Robert C. Koehler
"D.C. demonstration" January 30, 2007 John Conyers, Jr.
"How we can end the occupation of Iraq" January 23, 2007 David Swanson
"Dear Mr. President: Send Even MORE Troops (and you go, too!) ...from Michael Moore" January 22, 2007 Michael Moore
"The Kucinich Plan for Iraq" January 17, 2007 Dennis J. Kucinich
"An Iraq jobs program?" January 16, 2007 Seth Sandronsky
"Waist deep in the big muddy" January 12, 2007 Greg Palast
"Out of Iraq and back to the American city" January 11, 2007 Dennis J. Kucinich
"If not now, when?" January 10, 2007 Mike Ferner
"Mr. President, surge this" January 10, 2007 David Swanson
"3,000 lights delivered to Rep. Marcy Kaptur" January 5, 2007 Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition
"3,000 lights for 3,000 killed in Iraq" January 1, 2007 Peggy Daly-Masternak
Read Articles by Year: 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000

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