Comments: diaryofasomethingl (at) mikeshecket.com [take that!]
My law school notes and briefs
08/01/2003 - 08/31/2003
09/01/2003 - 09/30/2003
10/01/2003 - 10/31/2003
11/01/2003 - 11/30/2003
12/01/2003 - 12/31/2003
01/01/2004 - 01/31/2004
02/01/2004 - 02/29/2004
03/01/2004 - 03/31/2004
04/01/2004 - 04/30/2004
05/01/2004 - 05/31/2004
06/01/2004 - 06/30/2004
07/01/2004 - 07/31/2004
08/01/2004 - 08/31/2004
09/01/2004 - 09/30/2004
10/01/2004 - 10/31/2004
11/01/2004 - 11/30/2004
12/01/2004 - 12/31/2004
01/01/2005 - 01/31/2005
8:18 AM
Okay, I'll say something political.
I'm very open to being told why I shouldn't be upset by this. If you're aware of this but it doesn't bother you, I think you should have a pretty damn good reason. If you do, then I'm willing to hear you out, but I think that most people just don't think.
So here it is: there have been 783 American military fatalities up to this point in the Iraq War (according to this website). There have been somewhere between 9,148 and 11,005 Iraqi civilian deaths (according to this website). It's very, very hard to quantify, but this source suggests between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi military deaths.
So here's my point. As far as I can tell, most people in this country are more concerned with the American deaths than the Iraqi deaths. There have been, at minimum, 18 times more Iraqi deaths than American deaths (not counting the previous Gulf War and the era of UN sanctions). Doesn't this mean that we think that each American life is worth at least 18 times as much as an Iraqi life? Is it any wonder we treated those prisoners as subhuman? I'd venture to guess we care more about our housepets than human beings who had the nerve to be born outside this country.
I don't doubt that there are many Iraqis, Sunni, Shi'a and Kurd who think that an Iraqi life is worth more than an American life, maybe hundreds or thousands of times more. In fact, a lot of Sunnis probably think that a Sunni life is worth a hundred Shi'a lives and vice versa. But the point is that we're us. We're responsible for our actions, not the actions of other groups who we can't control. And we can't control them: we can try to persuade them to turn to our point of view by treating them like human beings who have just as much worth as we do (oops, too late). We can utterly destroy them (and given our attitude, I am very relieved that somehow this is not considered an option). But we can't control them. We can only control ourselves and try to do what's right. I'm willing to be persuaded that we truly are trying, but I don't see it right now.
There were many that didn't, and they fought us, and many have lost their lives. The fact that more Iraqi's have lost their lives than American's has nothing to do with who values life more than the other. If we could have done this with NO loss of life it would have been grand, but war doesn't afford those luxuries. The fact of the matter is, the Iraqi soldiers certainly are not mourning the loss of American life, nor are they morning the loss of the civilians they have killed along the way either. When you hear the propoganda on the news each day pumping up the numbers for the people to fret about, remember, this is an election year and what you hear on the new, and what you find on most web sites is all about politics, not about doing the right thing.
Love,
Jessica
But I wanted you to know, I tried.
jli
