The Deadliest Month
 

December 1 2004
Counterbias.com
Scott C. Smith

The end of November marked a grim statistic of the war in Iraq: 135 U.S. troops dead in conflict across Fallujah and in the area known as the Sunni Triangle. This brings the death toll to 1,254 Americans since the war started on March 20, 2003. The Iraqi civilian death toll is not known, but estimates by various organizations place the number close to 10,000 dead. Not that we’d know in the United States, as our so-called liberal media has pretty much ignored the civilian deaths in Iraq. As Gen. Tommy Franks said in the weeks following the start of the war, “We don’t do body counts.”

As a contrast, only 280 U.S. forces were killed during the first Gulf war in 1991.

When will conservatives admit to the truth: Iraq is a quagmire, and a small group of insurgents are sending our troops home in body bags. They do not want us there, the insurgents, and our forces face daily attacks.

Elections are scheduled to be held in Iraq on Jan. 30, 2005. I think it’s safe to assume that insurgents and others will do whatever they can to stop the elections.

Assuming the elections proceed without incident, a question looms over this war: what’s next? What is the United State’s plan for Iraq following those elections?

Another question to ask is: who is dictating Iraq policy? President Bush? Secretary Rumsfeld? Do we know? That seems a question we should have an answer to.

Conservatives, for the most part, have no objections to our troops being killed daily. They’re all aboard the war train. No WMDs? No problem! Let’s change the reason for going to war. We went to war to free the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator. Or, we went to war in our ongoing fight against terror. Or both. Let’s just not bring up that whole embarrassing WMD situation.

It’s funny how suddenly conservatives are human rights advocates.

Many conservatives are buying copies of a documentary called Buried In The Sand, which is a sort of Faces of Death look at atrocities committed under the regime of Saddam Hussein. While there’s no denying that Iraqis suffered under Hussein’s rule, I have to wonder why conservatives were so silent during the 1990s when it came to Iraq. After all, the Iraqi people did suffer in that decade, but conservatives here did not seem all that interested in their suffering. Did they passionately speak out in Congress, demanding that President Clinton do something about the suffering of Iraqis? No. In fact, many Republicans were skeptical of U.S. attacks on Iraq, thinking, for instance, that Clinton was “wagging the dog” by taking military action against Iraq the day before his impeachment hearing.

Republicans seem to suffer from short-term memory issues, as most of them have forgotten that the current war in Iraq was launched to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction, not to liberate the Iraqi people. When it was clear that there were no WMDs to be found in Iraq, suddenly the idea of liberation became palatable to conservative war hawks.

If conservatives really were concerned about people in the Middle East living under oppressive regimes, they need look no further than Saudi Arabia, our pal in the Middle East, where the U.S. government has essentially ignored decades of human rights violations. We like all of that Saudi oil, and like most money-related issues, conservatives can look the other way when it comes to an ally’s treatment of its citizens. Groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented Saudi abuses for years. China is now our friend; corporations like Wal-Mart love China for its cheap labor pool and cheap consumer goods. And if the Chinese government is a tad oppressive, well, we will not let that get in the way of U.S. consumers out shopping for a new high-definition television set for Christmas.

The reality of life is millions of people around the world are suffering, living in horrific conditions. In Sudan, 10,000 people are month are dying at the hands of the Sudanese government. If Sudan was oil rich, well, the U.S. might take more of an interest in the welfare of the people of Sudan. We could at least say there was WMDs in Sudan. On the other hand, maybe the Sudanese are better off without our brand of intervention, which tends to be harsh and is usually accompanied by lots of explosives.

Sure, conservatives are compassionate – as long as it is cost effective.