Who grieves for dead Iraqis?

ANDREW GREELEY

_W hat is the worth of a sin-
gle Iraqi life?
The New York Times
reported that during
recent months a hundred
Iraqis die violently every day, 3,000
every month. In terms of size of
population, that is the equivalent
of 300,000 Americans a month,
10,000 every day. Yet the typical
television clip on the evening news
-- an explosion, automatic weapon
fire, dead bodies on the streets --
has become as much a cliche as the
weather report or another loss by
the Cubs. The dead Iraqis are of
no more value to us than artificial
humans in video games. The Iraqis
seem less than human, pajama-
wearing people with dark skin, hate
in their eyes, and a weird religion,
screaming in pain over their losses.
Weep with them, weep for them?
Why bother?
Rarely do Americans tell them-
selves that the United States of
America, the land of the free and
the home of the brave, is responsi-
ble for this slaughter. In a spasm of
arrogance and power, we destroyed
their political and social structure
and are now unable to protect them
from one another. Their blood is on
the hands of our leaders who
launched a war on false premises,
without adequate forces, without
plans for the time after the war and
then sent in inept administrators
who could not provide even a hint of
adequate public services.
As Colin Powell, who knows
something about war, unlike the
president and his top thinkers, told
President Bush, "If you break it, you
own it." If you shatter a society, it is
yours, and you're responsible for it.
The United States shattered Iraq
and we are responsible for the ensu-
ing chaos that we are unable to con-
trol. So a hundred human beings are
killed every day, and the most pow-
erful military in the world (as
Messrs. Rumsfeld and Cheney in-
sist) is unable to stop the killing.
On most of the standards for a
just war, the invasion of Iraq was
criminally unjust. Messrs. Wol-
fowitz, Cheney and Rumsfeld
wanted to invade Iraq the day after
the World Trade Center attack.
They tried to persuade the people
___________________ How would youi feel if
the street were drenched
with the blood of your
son of daughter?

that Iraq was somehow involved in
the attack. They insisted that the
Iraqis possessed weapons of mass
destruction. Their arguments for the
war, we all know now, were not true.
There was, therefore, no just
cause, no attempt to exhaust all pos-
sible alternatives short of war, no
real hope for victory, no postwar
plan, and no ability to prevent the
postwar butchery that was easily
predictable to those who understood
Iraq. The war leaped from slogan to
slogan -- weapons of mass destruc-
tion, the critical front in the global
war on terror, stay the course, free-

dom and democracy in Iraq. All
these slogans are false.
Were America's leaders deliber-
ately lying? Did they really believe
that the Shiites and the Sunnis
would not murder one another, or
did they know better? One must
leave the state of their consciences
to God. However, they should have
known, and in the objective order,
they are criminally responsible for
the hundred deaths every day.
They should be tried for their
crimes, not that such trials are pos-
sible in our country.
The hundred who die every day
are not merely numbers, they are
real human beings. Their deaths are
personal disasters for the dead per-
son and also for all those who love
them: parents, children, wives, hus-
bands. Most Americans are not out-
raged. Iraqis are a little less than hu-
man. If a hundred people were dying
every day in our neighborhoods, we
would scream in outrage and horror.
Not many of us are lamenting these
daily tragedies. Quite the contrary,
we wish the newscast would go on to
the weather for the next weekend.
Is blood on the hands of those
Americans who support the war?
Again, one must leave them to
heaven. But in the objective order
it is difficult to see why they are
not responsible for the mass mur-
ders. They permitted their leaders
to deceive them about the war, of-
ten enthusiastically. How can they
watch the continuing murders in
Iraq and not feel guilty?
How would you feel if the street
were drenched with the blood of your
son or daughter, if your father was in
the hospital with his legs blown off?
We cannot permit ourselves to
grieve for Iraqi pain because then
we would weep bitter and guilty
tears every day.