Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Counting Horror



Can't really be done. But there are days when I wish that the Iraq occupation could be ended when a sufficient number of Iraqis have been killed. The impetus for the initial approval of Bush's Iraq war was the fuzzy and incorrect connecting of the deaths of 911 to Saddam Hussein, and the outcome was a revenge raid on some people that resembled the ones who actually committed the crimes. All this was ethically wrong. But I still wish that those who demanded blood as revenge would now be satisfied.

For according to the United Nations:

Nearly 6,000 civilians were slain across
Iraq in May and June, a spike in deaths that coincided with rising sectarian attacks across the country, the
United Nations said Tuesday.

...

The report from the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq describes a wave of lawlessness and crime, including assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, torture and intimidation.

Hundreds of teachers, judges, religious leaders and doctors have been targeted for death, and thousands of people have fled, the report said. Evidence suggests militants also have begun to target homosexuals, it said.

"While welcoming recent positive steps by the government to promote national reconciliation, the report raises alarm at the growing number of casualties among the civilian population killed or wounded during indiscriminate or targeted attacks by terrorists or insurgents," the U.N. said in a note accompanying the report.

Isn't this enough? Of course it would be if we used such crude comparisons of bloodshed. Instead, more blood will be shed in the next few years in Iraq. The country is a pressure-cooker and we took off the lid that was Saddam Hussein. The killings will continue until some section of radical Islamists take over and make the country into a new Taliban. After that the killings will be more institutionalized.

I naturally want to be proven wrong in this prediction. But I doubt that I will be.