Those who support indefinitely continuing the military occupation of Iraq must come to grips with the following bloody math: In an attack yesterday, the American military admits that it killed 15 civilians in order to be able to get to 19 suspected insurgents. Children were among the 15 civilians killed. Three more children were wounded.
Politicians who support keeping the US military in Iraq support more incidents with that kind of ratio. They’ll tell you that they’re going after the “bad guys”. What they won’t mention is that in order to get to the “bad guys”, they’ve got to mow down whoever happens to be in the way.
(Source: Reuters, October 12, 2007)
Okay, first of all, one attack can’t be generalized to the whole war. Sometimes a bomb will kill NO civilians, others they will have bad intel or aim and it’ll kill at the 15:18 ratio. I doubt that the US military approves attacks where it has strong reason to believe there will be THAT many civilian casualites. But it happens in war.
People who support leaving the troops in Iraq don’t LIKE the ratio that SOMETIMES occurs of 15 civilians to 18 insurgents dead. They do however, PREFER the ratio of 15 civilians dead:18 insurgents dead to 800,000 civilians dead: 5,000 Insurgents dead.
You may ask, how is that relevent? It’s relevent because if the US removes all troops from Iraq, there will be another war/insurgency that will probably range from local genocide (The Sunnis and Shiites Killing each other off in Iraq) to a regional war (Sunnis and Shiites kill each other with backing from neighboring states. The Kurds try to declare independence, the Turks invade. Iran goes in for stability, Saudi Arabia and others send in troops to stop Iran from annexing Iraq, etc, etc)
Lets face it. You say 15 chilidren dead is bad, you’re right. But pulling out of Iraq will cause a LOT more children to die. That’s like advocating in WW2 that we stop bombing Germany because children are dying.
Joseph, you don’t know that’s true.
Your argument is based on speculation, rather like the speculation that there were big wmd arsenals in iraq.
Hey Joseph, you’ll be happy to know that we’ll be bombing Iran before Bush leaves office (and the price of oil will skyrocket as a result).
Of course I don’t know it’s true, and of course it’s speculation, just like I don’t know if I jump off a 50 story building that I will fall to the ground instead of flying. I admit that we don’t know for sure what would happen, but we need to go with what most likely will happen. The factions in Iraq already hate each other and are trying to kill each other. The Kurds want to declare an indepdendent state. If we leave, what’s stopping them from doing it? Iraq isn’t America, large parts of the population are not defining themselves as part of “one-unified Iraq”. The WMD arsenals in Iraq were based on absence of intelligence (and assumptions). Predicting the future political course of a divided nation is a bit easier to do.
And bombing Iran…probably not the best move. But if you’re right, I better save up some money and learn how to buy some oil stock so the skyrocketing prices will be beneficial to me.
Joseph, your supposition that 800,000 civilians will be killed if the US military pulls out of Iraq in the next year is not at all like the supposition that you will fall to the ground if you jump off a 50 story building. Bad analogy.
I admit it’s as bad of an analogy as the analogy “Your argument is based on speculation, rather like the speculation that there were big wmd arsenals in iraq.”
Clearly, an unstable country suddenly not having any security forces is NOTHING like the “WMD stockpiles” pre-war. People can predict political results of lack of security infrastructure rather well. Trying to find accurate intel on WMDs in Iraq was clearly not easily predicted.
My analogy served it’s purpose to point out that “speculation” exists in everything. The overarching argument is that lots of innocent people will die if we pull out of Iraq prematurely because of the political situation there.