False alarm on Americans' conscience
"Poll Suggests Unease on Iraq Casualties," the online Associated Press headline reads.
I got excited: Americans actually care about the fact that, as the Associated Press reported recently, "At least 3,240 civilians died across Iraq during a month of war, including 1,896 in Baghdad, according to a five-week Associated Press investigation.
"The count is still fragmentary, and the complete toll — if it is ever tallied — is sure to be significantly higher."
And I had been glad to see the mainstream media finally report on Iraq Body Count's numbers: more than 5,500 Iraqi civilians killed. (Of course, this mainstream media report came from Reuters, which is British; funny how if you're an American and you want to find out the news you have to rely on foreign sources. This Reuters news story also reported that "According to U.S. military estimates, at least 2,320 Iraqi soldiers died in Baghdad alone.")
But my hope for the redemption of the American soul was short-lived: "The American public is growing increasingly uneasy about the continuing casualties of U.S. troops during the occupation of Iraq, a new poll suggests" [emphasis mine], the story "Poll Suggests Unease on Iraq Casualties" begins.
I'm not happy about the more than 200 American and British soldiers who have died* for war criminal "President" Bush's War for Oil and Pappy. ("Poll Suggests Unease on Iraq Casualties" reports that "Since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat in Iraq was over, more than 50 American soldiers have died either from hostile fire or in accidents.") These soldiers didn't die for a just cause.
But the death of thousands of innocent Iraqis doesn't seem to concern the American masses very much. Americans were outraged on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists slaughtered about 3,000 people, most of them Americans.
That Americans are rather unconcerned about the number of Iraqis the Bush regime killed in Iraq is disturbing. It demonstrates that they consider American lives, especially white American lives, to be worth far more than Iraqi lives.
What else explains the fact that they're bothered about the deaths of a couple of hundred American and British soldiers but care little about the deaths of more than 3,200 Iraqi civilians and care even less about the deaths of more than 2,300 Iraqi soldiers, many of whom probably had little choice but to fight for the dictator Saddam Hussein?
*"The number of coalition troops killed since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has reached 205, a U.S. military spokesman said Tuesday," the AP reported on June 10 [unfortunately, the link to the story is no longer active]. "Of those, 135 were killed in hostile activities and 70 by friendly fire or other accidents, Col. Rick Thomas said. Those killed in action included 56 U.S. Marines, 59 U.S. Army soldiers, a U.S. Navy sailor and 19 British servicemen."
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