A man-made tsunami
Terry Jones asks: Why are there no fundraisers for the Iraqi dead?
Of course it's wonderful to see the human race rallying to the aid of disaster victims, but it's the inconsistency that has me foxed. Nobody is making this sort of fuss about all the people killed in Iraq, and yet it's a human catastrophe of comparable dimensions.
According to the only scientific estimate attempted, Iraqi deaths since the war began number more than 100,000. The tsunami death toll is in the region of 150,000. Yet in the case of Iraq, the media seems reluctant to impress on the public the scale of the carnage.
I haven't seen many TV reporters standing in the ruins of Falluja, breathlessly describing how, in 30 years of reporting, they've never seen a human tragedy on this scale. The Pope hasn't appealed for everyone to remember the Iraqi dead in their prayers, and MTV hasn't gone silent in their memory.
Nor are Blair and Bush falling over each other to show they recognise the scale of the disaster in Iraq. On the contrary, they have been doing their best to conceal the numbers killed.
[via Triptych Cryptic]
posted by Mark D. @ 8:09 AM |
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9 Comments:
Hm, that's funny. Last time I checked, the Lancet was a peer-reviewed journal.
Crooked Timber and Tim Lambert ought to set you straight: http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002858.html, http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/science/LancetIraq/
I haven't seen any poking around Rwanda either.
Of course the Kofi lovin lefties wouldn't approve of that despite the fact the scale eclipses even discredited Lancet estimates.
The lancet is the holy grail for serious research scientists. You can't get much more methodologically sound. Still, the results of their survey represent their best projection. As such it is not fact. It should be scrutinized carefully, without any ideological agenda whatsoever.
Navigating to the truth about civilian deaths in Iraq is the burden of anyone who cares. The truth probably lies somewhere between IBC estimates and the Lancet. They have two completely different equally relavent methodologies. The IBC estimate doesn't include unreported deaths. They acknowledge that the actual civilian death rate is probably much higher.
That's why the question regarding the Tsunami vs. Iraq is so pertinent. I wrote about this on my personal blog the other day. Death isn't ideological. So what quality makes massive amounts of dead people worthy of 24x7 US news coverage? Why are massive accidental deaths worthy of our attention while massive amounts of purposeful deaths are not? It's a very interesting question.
re. Rawanda. I would happily examine the roots of any genocide and work towards preventing them in the future. If you think the West's failure to intervene their should be laid at the feet of the UN (i.e. Kofi) you better think again. It can be laid at the feet of the governments that control the UN security council, the US being first among them. The left, in the form of Amnesty International put the magnifying glass to Saddam and Rawanda while the US Gov and business was busy making money off of them.
now that the administration has abandon their humble pursuit of dirty bombs in iraq, is it not reasonable to examine the intervention as an attempt to free the oppressed iraqis? I ask only as you brought up rawanda in a not so clever attempt to either obscufate the argument, or a more puerile "until the un (sorry, not going to use the derrogatory) starts investigating aid relief to rawanda, who cares about iraq" argument.
so: if the current administration "really" believed in overthrowing a brutal regime (oft compared to hitler), then is it not legitimate to ask how much aid the U.S. is given to civilian victims and their families? (your headline is inane, BTW. "fundraisers for the dead" as if the millions being poured into south asia is being set on funeral pyres)
Anon #2? Meet Anon #1, just two comments up, who brought up Rwanda to obfuscate and divert attention away from the topic. Thanks for playing.
Chuck et all.
Declaring Rwanda out of bounds? I disagree, you can't discount the tragedy just because it only happened to black skinned people. That is simply racist. It is, in every sense, the larger issue. Nor does the fact it detracts from your rant somehow invalidate its importance.
Chris
If you lay the UN failure in Rwanda at the feet of the US, then you must also lay the Iraqi war at the feet of the UN. Tortured logic works bothways.
When you ask why a relief fund hasn't been given for the fallen of Iraq, you make it sound as if it is the fault of nature or a divine being. We are killing those people. The reason for the 100,000 dead is human kind's fault.
I also want to add a little piece of information about death tolls in war. Having 100,000 dead Iraqis is a sad truth, however it is miniscule compared to the numbers of previous conflicts.
The Civil War took 620,000 lives from conflict deaths, wounds and diseases. The Napoleonic Wars took five million lives. World War I had a death toll of 15 million and it was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Yet, thirty years later we lost 55 million people to the second World War.
Now let's see some numbers of natural disasters. These are occurrances we have no control over and can only help after the destruction. The deadliest landslide of the 20th century took 40,000-50,000 lives. One of the most violent earthquakes of the 20th century killed a little less than 255,000.
These are awesome numbers of men and women who died for no cause. No prevention could have saved them. Yet, a war is different. I am not trying to lessen the sadness of the war in Iraq, but I don't think you can compare a disaster of man made proportions to a disaster we can't prevent. We can only give aid afterwards to the survivors.
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May I interject?
First this, while some of us do what we can by way of supporting aid organizations who might be able to help in Iraq it seems that even those good souls are being targeted in the perhaps(i say perhaps but my heart is full of pain, eee) justified extreme rage against the machine, so help is perhaps even harder to accept in this venue. Killing with one hand and reaching out with the other is like what? Whereas with Tsunami Relief well there is a place where no fault lies in the hands of the US (at least in terms of causality) so the giving can be done with no hippocracy. Anyway, would that one could do more...
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