Darfur has received a lot of attention in recent months–and rightly so. What has taken place in Darfur is genocide, as even the Bush administraton has admitted. Estimates are that 400,000 people have died and another 2.5 million live in refugee camps in Darfur and neighboring Chad. The Bush administration has taken growing criticism for doing nothing to relieve the problem.

But, if Darfur is genocide, how can we not apply the same label to Iraq, where an estimated 650,000 have been killed and 1.8 million have fled the country, with another 100,000 leaving every month?

U.S counterinsurgency offensives against the Sunni rebels, such as the leveling of Fallujah which included the use of the banned white phosphorous have accounted for some of the casualties, but increasingly, Sunni and Shiite death squads are killing off civilians on the other side.  Particularly guresome are the death squad activities undertaken by the Shiite controled security forces–trained by the U.S.

Ethnic rivalries led to genocide in Rwanda and now they have reached the level of genocide in Iraq.

It’s time to put the Iraq war in its proper perspective.  It has become the worst case of genocide presently taking place in the world.

U.S. forces should stop supporting those who commit genocide and try to bring the conflict under control.  We must end the fantasy that the Iraq war is about Islamic militants and face reality.  If we leave, we must leave admitting that we have caused a genocide of major proportions.

We must never use military force in such a cavalier fashion again.