|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
Also this issue: Miles To Go The Specter of Fear |
|
|
|
|
 |
|||||||||
April 17-23, 2003
loose canon
We know how many civilians died in WW II, in the Korean conflict and even the number of non-combatants who perished in Vietnam. But the U.S. government does not know how many civilians were killed in the most recent war in Iraq, and it should.
Our government has no plans for an official accounting, though fortunately, others are doing a credible job of finding out.
The Pentagon may boast of smart bombs, but apparently is content to let American people and those around the world languish in ignorance. This despite repeated assurances that the U.S. military would take every reasonable precaution to minimize "collateral" or civilian casualties.
In a war already sanitized by the American media, this refusal to back up military claims with facts on the ground is a further insult to the democratic process at home, and another hit to what's left of American credibility worldwide.
The Pentagon's announcement came as a response to a congressional request that called on the Bush administration to give humanitarian assistance to the civilians we went to war to liberate.
But the congressional call falls far short of demanding the U.S. military count the number of civilians killed by American action.
Unless Congress demands an accounting, the U.S. military will continue to be politically unaccountable. They would not have to answer to the majority of Americans who supported the war only on the condition that there would be not a "substantial" number of civilian deaths.
Shame on our congressional leaders for their hypocrisy. Worse than hypocrisy, it is yet another abrogation of Congress' constitutional responsibility to oversee the military.
Colin Powell publicly professes ignorance of the civilians killed, but fortunately there are non-governmental observers willing to piece together the evidence and come up with a credible count.
According to one group called "Iraq Body Count" (www.iraqbodycount.org), the number of civilians killed as a result of U.S. direct action is somewhere between 1,390 and 1,803 (as of April 15, 2003).
And while it is morally treacherous to decide for others how many should die, these numbers might for some offer an unexpected relief, for many pre-war estimates predicted far more deaths.
But it is after the war, during the reconstruction, that the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that up to 1.26 million Iraqi children under the age of 5 could starve.
The American government must not only be accountable for the immediate damage done with its bombs, but must have the courage to be a leader in stanching the impending human tragedy.
-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there
