Iraq? What do you say?
We saw that David Hogg was in Canada
and (rightly) complained that the Afghanistan War was 17 years old and
still going. But the Iraq War is 15 years old and still going. And,
yes, US service members are still dying. On that, before
we move on, back when Norman Solomon presented himself as anti-Iraq
War. Yes, younger readers, if you go back to 2006, Norman Solomon spoke
and wrote of the Iraq War – now he did have a book to promote, so maybe
that was why. And back then he would speak
of how it was wrong to cite the US deaths as a reason to be against the
war because the death toll could drop and you would have built your
whole case against war on something that no longer raised attention.
And he may be right – but we still have US troops dying in Iraq.
In addition, the Iraqi people are
still dying in Iraq. The number has to be two million by now but, don’t
worry, no one will count it. Once upon a time THE LANCET published a
study and it was slammed. Why? It followed the usual standards
but that wasn’t good enough and no one wanted to admit that a million
Iraqis had died. Phyllis Bennis even refused to cite the study until
Elaine called her out on it.
JUST FOREIGN POLICY pretended to care about Iraq and came up with a counter to measure the dead . . .
But within a year, they were bored and stopped updating it.
Bored.
The outrage over the illegal war peters out . . . over boredom. So much for a movement.
Some still care and have always cared –
Cindy Sheehan, Justin Raimondo, to name two people. But most didn’t.
Worse, some have insisted the war is over.
It’s not. The US government continues
to keep US troops on the ground in Iraq to occupy the country. It
installs puppet governments – no, Patrick Cockburn can’t tell you about
that, but did he ever really tell you anything about Iraq
that actually mattered? Nope.
The Iraq War continues and people are dying because of it, lives are being destroyed and it’s a country of widows and orphans.
What do you say to that?
If you’re Norman Solomon, Amy Goodman,
Raed Jarrar, Phyllis Bennis, Anthony Arnove, Sharon Smith, Naomi Klein,
etc, you don’t say anything.
