After the July 11 bombing by suspected terrorists in India, President George W. Bush sent condolences to families and friends of the some 200 victims of the devastating train and depot violence.
The President said the attacks "only strengthen the resolve of the international community to stand united against terrorism and to declare unequivocally that there is no justification for the vicious murder of innocent people."
Meanwhile, a June 25 story in the Los Angeles Times found that at least 50,000 Iraqis --- most of them civilians --- have died violent deaths since the United States, Great Britain and other coalition countries invaded Iraq in March 2003.
"The toll, which is mostly of civilians but probably also includes some security forces and insurgents, is daunting," the Times' front-page story reported. "Proportionally, it is equivalent to 570,000 Americans being killed nationwide in the last three years."
'We don't do body counts'
The 50,000 figure is significantly higher than the death toll acknowledged by the Bush administration, which has rarely talked about civilian deaths after the initial "shock-and-awe" air incursion and major combat operation, from March 20 to May 1, 2003. Only last December did the president tell reporters that civilian casualties added up to about 30,000, "more or less."
But both administration officials and critics of the second Iraq War admit that coming up with an accurate count of Iraqi men, women and children killed is no easy task. "We don't do body counts," declared General Tommy Franks, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After Vietnam, the Pentagon stopped counting those killed by U.S. soldiers, which offered emotional fuel for the burgeoning antiwar movement. But Iraq Body Count, a group of academics in Great Britain and the United States, has kept an almost daily account of Iraqi civilians since the war began by tracking and checking reports of deaths by the media. IBC doesn't distinguish between Iraqis killed by coalition forces or insurgents. Arguing that all deaths are caused by the invasion, it holds the U.S.-led coalition responsible for all killings.
According to IBC, between 38,375 and 42,889 Iraqis have been killed during three-plus years of fighting. But these figures don't take into account unreported deaths, where families bury their dead privately without notifying authorities. In addition, since insurgents don't wear uniforms, it's hard to tell the difference between them and civilians.
Another study, by Johns Hopkins University and published in the British medical journal "The Lancet" in 2004, put civilian deaths a lot higher --- nearly 100,000. Researchers surveyed Iraqi households, comparing death rates before and after the invasion. But the end result is just an estimate, extrapolated from the survey.
The L.A. Times' 50,000 figure was compiled from the Baghdad morgue, the Iraqi Health Ministry and other agencies, and represented at least 20,000 more deaths of innocents than acknowledged by the Bush administration.
Just War tradition
Since the time of St. Augustine in the fourth century, the so-called "Just War" tradition has been the classic position of the majority of Catholic and Protestant denominations about war and its civilian casualties, according to Daniel Smith-Christopher, professor of theological studies and director of peace studies at Loyola Marymount University.
Six conditions deal with the criteria necessary for nations to go to war (jus ad bellum), while three focus on how a war should be conducted (jus in bello). And its criterion of proportionality, the principle of discrimination or noncombatant immunity, specifically forbids the direct killing of civilians and persons not engaged in combat.
"So the preservation of noncombatant life goes back to the very beginnings of the origins of the Just War traditions," Smith-Christopher points out. "It says that civilian casualties are to be prevented --- full stop! You are not supposed to kill noncombatants."
The 51-year-old academician, who as a lifelong Quaker believes in Christian nonviolence, stresses that every element of the tradition must apply for any conflict to be sanctioned a just war. But over time, some of the criteria have been weakened ---especially the element of discrimination.
"Since World War II, Just War theorists have tried to water it down to the point where they say, 'minimize civilian damage,'" he reports. "Well, that's like telling students don't cheat unless you have to. The euphemism that began in Vietnam was 'collateral damage.' So it's putting a different spin on it."
Smith-Christopher says the killing of 50,000 noncombatants "absolutely" doesn't meet the Just War's criteria.
Why is there little sustained moral outrage even from religious leaders about 50,000 innocents being killed? The LMU professor says it boils down to the belief that what's good for America is good for the church, a nationalistic mindset rooted in the third century and the time of Constantine. And he laments that the connection has been a "horrendously damaging political and religious viewpoint" that the world is still seeing the consequences of.
But he's also cautiously optimistic that this moral apathy won't continue. He points out that it took years for opposition to the Vietnam War to develop.
"Hopefully, what we're seeing is the last hurrah of warriors, who promise that they could do this in a surgical, clean, moral and ethical way," Smith-Christopher muses. "Because what we're seeing is in every case the opposite of that.
"There's that famous line in the Book of Acts that, you know, there comes a time when you must obey God rather than man," he adds. "And I think there's going to be a slow growth in Christians who recover their moral center and dare to question America. It's our heritage, and we need to recover it."
Enemy empathy rare
But the query lingers: Why isn't there more moral outrage at the catastrophic human costs of this ongoing conflict, that has claimed an increasing number of civilian Iraqi lives each year? (Thirty-six people died every day compared to 31 during year two and 20 during year one, according to Iraq Body Count. From March 20, 2005, to March 1, 2006, 12,617 noncombatants met violent deaths.)
"It requires Americans to think of the war in terms not of the casualties that they experience, but the casualties that they are inflicting or that they are causing to be inflicted by the chaos that they've created," explains Roger Robins, assistant professor of history and political science at Marymount College. "And that's a more challenging kind of exercise morally and intellectually than most Americans really rise to the occasion of."
Robins says that antiwar outrage throughout U.S. history is very rare. Rarer still is any kind of empathy for those on the other side. Vietnam after 1968 was the exception that proved the rule.
"It's really hard for people to take the more self-critical position," he notes. "It's just too easy to rationalize it. Just historically --- and this isn't true for only the United States --- it's very, very difficult to get people to really connect with the humanity of those who are the victims in war."
That's especially true for the current conflict where there's a genuine ambivalence about our adversaries, says the 49-year-old professor. The "Muslim menace" plays to an ancient icon and the stereotype of the terrorist villain.
In addition, many Americans, including progressives, are put off by a culture with harsh limits on women's rights, religious freedoms and personal liberty, he points out. All of this undercuts antiwar outrage, which thrives best when paired with a "distasteful" aggressor and an "attractive" victim.
Robins says that for large-scale moral outrage against a war and its civilian casualties to develop, it needs solid, on-the-ground media coverage. In Vietnam, reporters were allowed to roam around cities and the countryside, gathering human interest stories of the conflict's horrible consequences for individuals and families. In Iraq, embedded journalists rarely get that opportunity.
He also points out that in Vietnam antiwar outrage came mainly from the historical "peace churches" --- liberal Catholics, Protestants and Jews --- along with some members of alternative and eastern religions. All of these groups came from faith traditions encouraging their adherents to question political authority rather than blindly obey it.
But the fastest growing churches today are conservative churches, who are mainly pro-Bush, pro-America and pro-war.
Other factors stifling opposition, according to Robins, include simple outrage fatigue at administration policies in general, complexity of the war and occupation, plus confusion over feasible alternatives to the occupation.
The historian also says that compared to other recent U.S. wars, civilian casualties are actually down. The Hanoi government reported that Vietnam War civilian deaths totaled 2 million in the north and 2 million in the south. Some 6.6 million noncombatants died in World War I; 37 million civilians reportedly were killed in World War II.
"So when you put all that together," Robins observes, "what you get is less outrage than maybe frustration or anger or resentment focused primarily on what this conflict is costing us and our troops, rather than real outrage or righteous indignation that is linked to any sense of wrong for what we are doing to other people in Iraq."
"Almost the only figures that have been considered whenever making a decision about whether or not this war was just or whether continuing it makes sense has been its cost to us in terms of money plus dead and wounded soldiers. There's been almost no consideration to the toll it has taken on innocent civilians." |