Last Wednesday the Muslim Students Association sponsored a vigil to commemorate the “655,000 unnecessary Iraqi deaths and 3,000 unnecessary American deaths” in the Iraq War by planting nearly 6,580 pink flags on Copley Lawn, according to an e-mail from the MSA. As an Iraq War veteran who knows many people deeply affected by the violence, both American and Iraqi, I feel compelled to respond.
The groups claimed that their activity was not political, but their use of disputed statistics and strong language alienated anyone who does not feel comfortable with such statements.
As of Dec. 4, the maximum number of civilian deaths reported in Iraq resulting from the war was 55,048, according to https://www.iraqbodycount.net, a website which maintains records of all media-reported deaths in Iraq attributed to the U.S. military activities, insurgent attacks and terrorism since the 2003 invasion. While it is likely that many deaths since the invasion have gone unreported, the suggestion that 600,000 people (more than 2 percent of Iraq’s population) died without any government or media organization noticing is shocking.
That figure, used by MSA, comes from a Johns Hopkins University study that relied on verbal testimony from 1,849 homes in Iraq. It claims that, every day, 500 war-caused deaths are recorded in Iraq, many of which are attributed to sectarian violence, and not the Iraqi military or coalition forces. It is misleading to rely on just one tally, which is larger than many others, when making a statement about the war.
The MSA called the deaths “unnecessary” and claimed that “our government does not value an American life and an Iraqi life equally.” The use of the word “unnecessary” suggests that the groups opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, as I did.
But, the United States government cannot return to the early months of that year and do things differently.
The United States invaded Iraq. We must accept that and deal with the consequences, one of which has been persistent insurgent violence. That insurgency has been responsible for an incredible number of civilian deaths. Even one death is tragic, but I would not call the deaths of Americans who have died fighting the insurgency “unnecessary.” They fought and died in the hope that the violence against Iraqi civilians would end, and in doing so saved lives.
The MSA representative also claimed that “our government does not value an American life and an Iraqi life equally,” is troubling. Who is “our government” in this statement? The president? His administration? The military?
If it refers to President Bush, this is an unfair statement to make about his Iraq policy. While I am not a great admirer of this president or his policies in Iraq, I do not believe that he would refuse to put Americans in harm’s way to save the lives of Iraqis, and I think he sent me to combat for that purpose. He is not afraid to sacrifice American lives for liberty and justice throughout the world.
The MSA’s statement might ring truer if it made the claim that the government has shown through its inaction that it does not value a Sudanese life, a Somali life or a Rwandan life. It does not seem true, however, in Iraq.
The military is full of people who want desperately to do well for the sake of the Iraqi people and to create a peaceful Iraq. To claim otherwise demonstrates a terrible lack of understanding of our men and women in uniform.
Within the military there is a conception that the death of “one of our own” is somehow more dreadful than the loss of an Iraqi life. This is an inevitable reality of a tightly-integrated organization like the military. Many families feel the same way. At times, this intense feeling of camaraderie regrettably translates into feelings of “us versus them.”
Especially during counterinsurgency operations these emotions can lead to dehumanizing behavior, as the human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison and the killing of unarmed civilians in Fallujah and Haditha have shown. Fortunately, strong leadership in the armed forces has prevented these atrocities from being even more deadly and common.
I appreciate the desire of those who organized the vigil to commemorate those lives lost in the Iraq War. But I hope that future demonstrations will make a greater effort to focus solely on the dreadful human cost of the war and not on the politics.
It seems fitting and proper that we respect those who have lost their lives by focusing only on them, and not on the policy decisions that preceded their deaths.
William Quinn is a freshman in the School of Foreign Service and a former staff sergeant in the U.S. Army.
