In the next few days much will be made of the 3,000th U.S. casualty in Iraq. It will be treated as a tragic milestone.
But how much will we hear about the estimated 600,000 Iraqis who have died? Or the million Iraqis that have fled the country? Or the 100,000 Iraqis made homeless in the month of December alone?
Riverbend, a woman blogger in Baghdad expresses the desperation of the Iraqis:
That is Iraq right now. The Americans have done a fine job of working to break it apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The ‘mistakes’ were too catastrophic. The people the Bush administration chose to support and promote were openly and publicly terrible- from the conman and embezzler Chalabi, to the terrorist Jaffari, to the militia man Maliki. The decisions, like disbanding the Iraqi army, abolishing the original constitution, and allowing militias to take over Iraqi security were too damaging to be anything but intentional.
The question now is, but why? I really have been asking myself that these last few days. What does America possibly gain by damaging Iraq to this extent? I’m certain only raving idiots still believe this war and occupation were about WMD or an actual fear of Saddam.
Former British Army Sergeant James Blunt has put the soldiers’ view into words:
There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
Tears drying on their face.
He has been here.
Brothers lie in shallow graves.
Fathers lost without a trace.
A nation blind to their disgrace,
Since he’s been here. And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.
End this illegal war!!