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November 25, 2005
The So-Called Insurgency
I heard an astonishing thing on NPR a few days ago while driving home from work. They said that the Bush administration has released death counts for insurgents they have killed in Iraq. The number? About 700 in the last two months. 700! I'm not sure what I would have expected, but I was blown away by this figure.
Here in the US we hear about a few US military casualties each day, and often about some number of civilian deaths due to insurgent attacks (suicide bombers, etc.). But 700 (opposition force) deaths in two months is astonishing.
This is relatively new information because the administration didn't release these figures until recently. They decided that people aren't supportive enough of the war so they ought to give them something to cheer. So they chose death counts.
Then two days later I watched a really interesting talk by Michael Moore on CSPAN. While he didn't talk directly about these death counts, he brought up two great points about the 'insurgency.'
First, he pointed out that while we hear the name of every suicide bomber in Israel, and even knew the names and faces of every 9/11 hijacker within 48 hours, we never hear the name of a single insurgent suicide bomber in Iraq. Why not? Because they aren't some opposition force or outsiders coming to attack the US...but they are instead the Iraqi people. They are the people Bush said would welcome us with flowers and open arms.
Second, he asked the audience of (mostly) democratic party supporters how many of them were willing to die for their beliefs? Nobody was. Yet in Iraq, there seems to be no shortage of candidates. Why?
Third, he said that it was not the US' responsibility to oust Saddam Hussein, but that it was the Iraqi people's responsibility. At first this sounded a bit harsh to me, but his supporting argument made sense. Imagine if, instead of fighting the British for our independence in 1776, we were instead invaded by France. They fight the British themselves, occupy the US, and then tell us it's time for us to vote. Would we be excited? And further, without our own citizens leading the charge, we wouldn't have had the Washingtons and Jeffersons whose visions for a better way were so essential to the democracy we now enjoy.
When you combine these thoughts of Moore's with the insurgent death count in Iraq, you get a picture of an occupied country whose passion for independence is aimed at the oppresive United States, not Saddam. What if the hypothetical French invaders had not only told us to vote, but wrote our constitution. Even if it was well intentioned, would we have accepted it as our own?
Posted on 11:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack