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Monday, November 08, 2004
A TRAGEDY IN THE MAKING.
Even if John Kerry were president, I suspect we would try to root out
the insurgents in Fallujah. Such battles are tragic. Think of the
young American soldiers who are going to lose their lives, or be
permanently disabled, as a result of what happens in
the days and weeks to come. Think of the Iraqi civilians whose lives
are going to be destroyed. Yet if you accept Colin Powell's "Pottery
Barn" rule - we break it, we own it - then surely we have to be
willing to attempt extreme measures in order to bring stability to
Iraq.
But the question remains, Do we
know what we're doing? Danny
Schechter today points to a
story in London's Independent that's quite different from
what's in the American press this morning. According to the
report,
by Kim Sengupta, Sunni leaders such as interim president Ghazi
al-Yawar warn that the fighting could "trigger widespread rebellion
throughout the country." Sengupta also writes:
There was increasing
evidence yesterday that vast numbers of insurgents have slipped
through the US net around Fallujah and regrouped to carry out
attacks elsewhere. The US military, which had been saying until
now that there were more than 5,000 fighters in the city
yesterday, revised its estimate to 1,200.
This is hardly surprising. Everyone
has known for weeks that we were going to invade Fallujah as
soon as the presidential election was over. So why are we moving
ahead if most of the insurgents have left? Even if we succeed, isn't
Yawar warning us that we'll only create more
insurgents?
And why is Donald Rumsfeld still
secretary of defense?
DEFENDING THE 100,000
FIGURE. Christopher Shea has a persuasive analysis in yesterday's
Boston Globe about that Lancet study showing
100,000
Iraqi civilians have died
as a result of the war. The study came under attack as soon as it
came out. But Shea finds that though it's hardly perfect, the
methodology was identical to studies on such hard-to-quantify matters
as vaccination rates in developing countries.
Shea notes that critics
such as Fred Kaplan, of
Slate, have referred to the Lancet study as "so loose
as to be meaningless." But Shea makes a good case that the 100,000
number, though extremely rough, is far from meaningless. In all
likelihood, somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 Iraqi civilians have
died because of the war. That's a far cry from the 15,000 to 30,000
that Kaplan offers as his best guess.
posted at 9:50 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
