After a stalemate in the Korean War and a humiliating defeat in Vietnam the U.S. has been very selective in who it invades concentrating exclusively on very weak countries who have few if any allies. This is clearly evident when you look at our military interventions since Vietnam: Dominican Republic, 1965; Lebanon,1982–84; Grenada, 1983; Libya, 1986; Panama, 1989; Iraq, 1990-91; Somalia, 1992-94; Bosnia, 1995; Kosovo, 1999; Afghanistan, 2001 to present; and Iraq, 2003 to present. All these countries combined could not even pose a formidable threat to the U.S. Although overwhelmingly one-sided we are still careful not to commit massive amounts of ground troops on the battlefront. Instead, we unleash high-tech weaponry from a safe distance far beyond the enemy’s ability to strike back. The opposing side suffers massive casualties, many of which are civilians, while we suffer relatively few. The American public supports these conflicts so long as our casualties are kept to a minimum. There is little or no consideration of the death and destruction inflicted on the other side. We seem to measure human life on different scales. American lives are far more valuable than the ones we kill - even if they are civilians and not our enemies.
Many Americans are still under the naive impression that high-tech weaponry somehow distinguishes good people from bad, innocent civilians from combatants. The number of CIVILIAN casualties in Iraq clearly tells a different story. Estimates through 2005 vary considerably. President Bush’s own number which you have to believe is conservative at best is 30,000. Other estimates are well over 100,000! Settling on a universally accepted number is irrelevant. Even if you take Bush’s estimate, the figure is unacceptable. This is innocent human life we are talking about.
Ironically, this strategy of warfare rarely if ever culminates in complete victory. It stands to reason that we cannot expect to win the hearts and minds of a nation’s people if our actions disproportionately harm innocent civilians. Our methods are seen as barbaric, indiscriminate, and cowardly; and they are.
When you also consider that in the last 50 years we have never affected a major positive outcome in the Middle East from our meddling or incursions, why do we expect anything good to come from Iraq? Why did we ever? It’s already clear that the war is becoming very unpopular here at home and that we inevitably will leave Iraq in turmoil, while also managing to alienate much of the global community.
Our record in the Middle-East illustrates that we do not understand the region very well. Our policy and vision repeatedly fail. We support the Shah of Iran whose repressive regime gives rise to the Islamic Fundamentalist movement. Suddenly, America is held hostage. We tilt our support toward Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War and Iraq later invades Kuwait. We back the Afghan rebels fighting the Soviets and we get the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It’s clear that when we meddle in the affairs of Persian states we are unable to effectively predict the outcome.
To further our current interests in the Middle East, we now ally ourselves with a dictator of an Islamic country, Pakistan, who was instrumental in the Taliban’s rise to power and a country who was testing nuclear weapons as recently as 1998 in the face of international condemnation. Pakistan’s cooperation with us could further polarize their sharply divided country and conceivably put nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamic extremists. It’s just more of the same - deal with the devil for swift, political gratification while ignoring the likelihood of negative, long-term repercussions.
Years from now after leaving Iraq, the people there will still be suffering, yet their adversity won’t even be on our radar. The public’s focus will be on other topics orchestrated by what politicians and the media deem important to their own selfish interests; and few Americans will be any wiser.
