Learning from Iraq |
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| Written by Alroy Fonseca |
| Friday, 28 March 2008 19:00 |
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According to a study in The Lancet medical journal, by the fall of 2004, as many as 100,000 Iraqis had been killed since the March 2003 invasion. A revision of this study in the fall of 2006 raised the figure of excess Iraqi deaths since the invasion to 654,965. In July 2006, the United Nations reported that, on average, more than 100 Iraqi civilians had been killed per day during the previous month. Moreover, a September 2007 report by Opinion Research Business (ORB) – a highly-regarded British polling firm – pegged the figure of dead at 1.2 million. Meanwhile, the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project, which bases its count on at least two credible, corroborating reports for each incident (and supplements these with officials tallies from, amongst others, morgues and hospitals), takes the position that The Lancet and ORB estimates are too high. On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the invasion, its official figures range from 82,240 to 89,751, though IBC readily admits that, as it relies on the abovementioned reporting for its accounting (instead of statistical extrapolation), these figures are low. Nonetheless, whichever number is most accurate, it remains transparently obvious that Iraq is a disaster for which its citizens have paid an awesome price. Remarkably, recent US press reporting has suggested that things in Iraq are actually looking up. But for those of us not living in la-la land, the most reasonable assessment is that provided by the journalist Nir Rosen in the December 2007 edition of Current History : “Iraq has been killed, never to rise again. Only fools talk of ‘solutions’ now. There is no solution. The only hope is that perhaps the damage can be contained.” And, “if indeed violence has gone down in Baghdad, this does not signify success. The violence in Iraq has never been senseless. It is logical. It has a purpose. Like war itself, it is politics by other means. In Baghdad and other cities, Sunnis have been removing Shiites and Shiites have been removing Sunnis…As a result, there are some 1.5 million Iraq refugees now in Syria alone, and 700,000 in Jordan. To the extent that violence among Iraqis has gone down, it is largely because there are fewer people to kill.” And so, five years on, I return to my opening question. Where are the ones who argued for war? The Oxford-educated columnist and CBC commentator Rex Murphy argued in the months leading up to the war that the US did not even need to make a case for action against Iraq. Instead, he asserted in the pages of the Globe and Mail , what was needed was a presentation at the UN by Iraq to show that it was not deserving of an invasion – an invasion to eliminate the existential threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, one assumes. How exactly does one wash one’s conscience from the error of having argued for such a devastating war? There are those, of course, who are now arguing that the decision to go to war was still the right one but say blame for the current mess lies with the executioners – ‘oh, if they had only sent more troops, if they had only had a better plan once Saddam fell from power’ – or with the Iraqis themselves – ‘if only they were not so corrupt, if only those darned Sunnis and Shiites could get along, if only Iraqis would embrace the freedom we gave them’. Yes, these are some of the ridiculous arguments one can still hear. But perhaps the only honourable thing for the war’s original supporters to do is to first admit to a profound error of judgment, and second, and most critically, work to illuminate the systemic reasons that led to the war in order to prevent other such horrendous eventualities in the future. It’s rather hard to find people who will openly admit to their error of five years ago – and understandably so. After all, who’d want to associate themselves with Iraq’s carnage now? Jonathan Kay, the conservative National Post columnist, however, had the decency of openly admitting the error of his hawkish stance in March 2003. I quote from an October 2006 column : “George Orwell once wrote that thinking people should keep a journal of their thoughts so they can track all the discredited views they once held. In the case of a newspaper columnist such as myself, that isn't necessary -- because they're all there on the yellowing page. You can't hide from your mistakes. All you can do is own up to them and apologize. And so, for whatever it's worth to anybody, mea culpa.” Good for Kay. But, ultimately, the mea culpa is an empty one unless accompanied by real action to address the systemic reasons that made the war possible in the first place.
© 2008 Alroy Fonseca; licensee (Cult)ure Magazine.
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So where are they now – those academics, journalists, and other members of the chattering classes who thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq five years ago? Where are they? And what are they doing? This is an important question to ask. The five-year report card for the war they called for is in, and the results are depressingly poor.
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