Let's talk about what we owe Iraq and Iraqis

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6871

Let's talk about what we owe Iraq and Iraqis
by Weldon Berger | Apr 17 2007


April is shaping up to be among the most lethal months in Iraq since the invasion of the country in March of 2003. More than 60 US soldiers have been killed as of yesterday, and nearly 300 Iraqis were killed last Saturday alone. Horrific as those numbers are, they represent only a fraction of the bad news, and the rest of the iceberg is almost wholly absent from the public discourse in this country.

The UN estimates that 1.9 million Iraqis have fled the country and another 2 million have been forced from their homes but remain in Iraq. That amounts to about 15% of the population. An unknown but unarguably large number of Iraqis have been killed and wounded, presumably at least as many of the latter as the former. If one accepts the Johns Hopkins study placing the dead at around 600,000, then something along the lines of 20% of Iraqis have been killed, wounded or exiled abroad or within their own country.

Iraqi health officials and other sources say that as many as half the country's doctors have left since the invasion, guaranteeing that many sick and injured Iraqis are dying from lack of care. Iraqis fortunate enough to receive care are dying from shortages of medical supplies and medical equipment; many of them are children. Unknown numbers of Iraqis are suffering mental health problems related to the violence, and the country's mental health system has completely broken down.

We know how poorly the Veterans Administration and military health care systems are coping with the strains imposed by injured and traumatized US soldiers and veterans: imagine what conditions in Iraq must be like.

Taken together, these factors add up to a truly massive humanitarian disaster precipitated and aggravated by the US, which is responsible under international law for resolving it. Yet politicians of both parties and much of the US press remain silent on the issue. (As always, the McClatchy News Washington and Baghdad bureaus remain a consistent exception).

The GOP reticence on the subject is understandable; supporting a continuation or escalation of the US role in Iraq means supporting the escalation of the humanitarian crisis — and it is a crisis — and would, if anyone were talking about it, highlight both US responsibility for the disaster and our failure to address it. The failure of the press to offer any coherent and consistent coverage of the situation beyond the daily grind of casualties is less comprehensible; it's probably a combination of editorial indifference and timidity and the inherent difficulty in assimilating and covering such a massive story. The failure of Congressional Democrats to address it is even more baffling, both from a political standpoint and a humanitarian one. Possibly they're afraid to address it because if they acknowledge the problem they'll have to try to do something about it when they win the White House; possibly they're unaware of the problem.

Whatever the reason, the vacuum created by the lack of attention represents not just a failure of leadership on the part of Democrats but an enormous missed opportunity as well. A serious discussion of our humanitarian obligations and how to address them would inevitably shape the discussion of how to end our military involvement in Iraq, because we cannot begin to address those obligations while we're spending seven or eight billion a month blowing the country up. Talking about what the problems are and planning how to fix them, or ameliorate them to whatever extent we can, will involve a lot of specifics about our military, our finances and our foreign policy.

There could not be a better time for that discussion. The recent Pentagon decision to extend the tours of all US soldiers in Iraq means that we'll have almost 200,000 troops there at least for the next few months and possibly, depending on how many reserve and National Guard units can be cobbled together for the next rotation, through the end of this year. Although it represents a 50% increase above the number of troops in the country at the beginning of this year, it's still less than half the number of troops required to conduct an effective counterinsurgency, assuming anyone really wants to do that anymore. Whatever the intent, the reality is that the administration has undertaken a serious escalation that will exacerbate all of the problems facing Iraq and Iraqis — not to mention US troops — and the country ought to be talking about that, and the conversation ought to be driven by Democrats in Congress.
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