Iraqi deaths shouldn’t be casually dismissed

It is inevitable in war that people will die. The idea of using forceful action to fight another country leads to people being killed and injured when guns and bombs are used to settle issues.

As Americans, we reflect rather somberly on the 58,000 U.S. soldiers who were killed in the Vietnam War.

We had more than 400,000 casualties in World War II, almost quadruple the number of American lives lost in World War I.

In the Civil War, nearly 1 million Americans were killed, the most of any war — foreign or domestic.

Yet the concern for those killed is often a one-way street.

Have any of you ever thought of the nearly 2 million Vietnamese killed during the Vietnam War? Oh, sure, we only think of ourselves, and that’s understandable. But just imagine if every person in my hometown of Houston — little more than 2 million — were killed? That’s the extent of the losses in Vietnam.

I got to thinking about war deaths when a report was issued stating that upwards of 650,000 Iraqis have died in the war. That would mean that the city of Fort Worth, Texas, would be completely empty now.

But this wasn’t Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International or any of the other groups often labeled as far-left. Who did the survey? The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Publishing the survey in The Lancet, a medical journal, the report was based on a house-to-house sampling of more than 1,849 Iraqis in 47 various neighborhoods between May and July.

Clearly such a startling figure would cause those who support the war to slam the analysis, and that is exactly what happened. The report was immediately denounced by President George W. Bush and England’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, as being wholly unreliable.

According to one news report, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said the survey wasn’t “plausible,” adding that it “is absolutely precarious, it is an unbelievably large number and it is out of whack with most of the other assessments that have been made.”

Now U.S. and British analysts have used the Iraqi death toll of about 40,000 — as compiled by the Iraqi government — as their benchmark, but exactly what evidence do we have to suggest that their figures are right? Isn’t it “plausible” to conclude that those numbers could be suppressed in order not to inflame people who would be outraged by a higher body count?

My prime position isn’t that the issue has to do with whether 40,000 died or 650,000. The real issue is that we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Iraqi deaths.

Be honest with yourself: When you see the news about 40 Iraqis being found in a mass grave, or someone storming a mosque and killing more than 100, do you really stop in your tracks? I don’t. Why lie?

When the Amish girls were killed in Pennsylvania, the major networks broke into coverage to report the news. But deaths in Iraq? Hey, out of sight, out of mind.

Bush did say he grieved for the loss of life, but for many of us, we go on with our business without a care in the world, never once truly reflecting on the massive loss of life.

Say I’m being a bleeding-heart liberal or a compassionate Christian or just someone who cares about human life. Fine. But truly reflect on the thousands of souls who have lost their lives through this war. So many innocent people have perished because of the sins of a few.

The real casualties in the war in Iraq aren’t Saddam Hussein or the insurgents or the U.S. soldiers who are just following orders and doing their jobs. It’s the folks who had no choice in the matter, other than living in a country that is considered the battleground for democracy in the Middle East.

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