The Dutch newscaster RTL is suing the Dutch government for not opening the files that contain the minutes of the cabinet meeting surrounding the (surprising) Dutch government's support for the Iraq war. And I think they're right. The whole country is against this war, but still "we" decided to send the Royal Marine Corps there, as well as to Afghanistan. This has led to a crisis, because ever since that decision no one has wanted to join the army, causing a debate on re-introducing the draft.
Now if I look at the presidential debates and I see people like Letterman actually lose it in their show because they're vehemently against the occupation of Iraq, it warms my heart in one way. In another way it saddens me greatly when I see Letterman talk about "Americans getting killed" senselessly. The reason I'm sad and ashamed about that is that every one talks about the military death toll in Iraq.
If you Google "iraq death toll", most news sources on the internet quote numbers of ~4.500 military deaths and some 30.000 wounded, most of which are American casualties. But nobody seems to be talking about the good people of Iraq itself. They low-ball the numbers. Bush claimed 30.000 civilians got killed, some numbers say 150.000, but at the end of the day I don't buy it, because every time you read the newspapers you see two Americans getting killed versus ~10 - ~20 Iraqis in any given operation or clash.
Now in October 2006 The Washington Post published numbers from a study that was conducted by American and Iraqi epidemiologists that said a whopping 655.000 Iraqis have gotten killed. Roughly 610.000 of whom were killed by violence and 45.000 by the outbreak of various diseases. Think about it. This is more than two years ago, so if you see the escalation in sectarian violence, suicide bombings, raids and the socio-economic state of the country by now, it wouldn't surprise me if we were up in the 800.000's.
According to the CIA factbook there are currently an estimated 28,221,180 Iraqis. This number is also quoted in other sources across the net, so by the current numbers this would put the death toll at a whopping 2.8% of the total population. By contrast, the US lost 0.0013% of its population in this war. This is what you get when a 400 pound gorilla decides to pick a fight with a lemur.
These numbers don't strike me as implausible at all. Yet everyone in the States is up in arms about "our boys". So let me get this straight: In 6 years of war, fewer people were killed in the States than one third of the annual domestic death toll of hand held firearms in the United States. I daresay this war has cost them less casualties than the amount of people dying because they slip on the soap in their bathroom in Wisconsin every year.
In the mean time, and nobody knows really, 800.000 Iraqi civilians were killed. Which is twice the amount of deaths the US attributed to Saddam Hussein's regime. Does that make Bush a bigger murderer than Saddam? Does that make me anti militaristic? I think you know the answer, specially when you realize Saddam Hussein was put in power with the help of the US because they didn't like the turn things were taking in Iran during the Islamic Revolution of 1978 and the ousting of the Shah in April 1979.
Iran, coincidentally, is one of the oldest continuous civilizations on the planet. They've been around since 4000 BC. They are reputed to have invented Algebra, Qanats and wind-mills. They preserved most of what we know of Hellenistic culture and philosophy during the Dark Ages in Europe and are a founding member of the UN. From Wikipedia I learned that Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics is a UNESCO chair in biology. In late 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep by somatic cell nuclear transfer, at the Rouyan research center in Isfahan.
This is a country which according to Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, John McCain and their fans needs to be invaded next. Sarah Palin is the woman who thinks research grants for genetic work on Fruit flies was ridiculous and who thinks that dinosaurs roamed the earth together with humans 6.000 years ago.
Go figure.
Posted by Chris at October 26, 2008 01:07 PM