American vs Human Life

Shylock, the despised Jew in The Merchant of Venice, passionately points out to the Christian elite the ridiculous nature of thinking that one group of people is superior or inferior to another: “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?” The culmination of the hatred meted out to the Jews was the holocaust. There are many other examples throughout history where a self-proclaimed superior race has killed thousands and millions of other people whom they deemed to be inferior. We know this has happened; we study it in our history classes. This superiority is a trait which is most often found amongst the empires and super-powers of the world. The British were clearly guilty of it, as were the Mongols, Ottomans, Romans and so on. Surely now, in an age of education, rationality and reason, we have learned from history and are not making the same mistakes all over again… right?

On the 26th May I listened to Start the Week on Radio 4. Robert Kagan, the chief advisor for John McCain, was on the programme discussing his new book. The discussion turned to the war in Iraq and Neil Labute, a fellow American and play-write, asked the following question: “Have things really gone as badly as projected?... Is there some sense that we look at 4000 dead and say ‘those are acceptable losses actually, in a war that has gone on for five years.’? Any other war that you mention, that we have been a part of, the numbers have been astronomical compared to that.” Did he just say 4000 dead? Knowing instantly that the death toll in Iraq was way above that I decided to do some digging… this is what I found.

The initial figure of 4000 was easy to find. At the time the interview was recorded a total of 4385 coalition forces had been killed in the Iraq war and occupation. As far as I remember from my maths classes, if you are going to round this number in any way, especially as it represents lives, the figure should be rounded up to 4500. So, why would the figure be rounded down to 4000? Well, if you subtract from 4385 the number of dead soldiers who were not in the US army the figure becomes 4075. The two Americans on the programme were judging the war according to the amount of American life lost! What about the other soldiers who have given their lives? What about the reporters who have been killed? What about the Iraqi civilians? When assessing the effectiveness of the war, shouldn’t these things be brought into consideration?

Let us consider just one of these; the acceptability of the war as regards civilians. There are, in just war theory, two ways in which a war can be considered just or unjust. The first is jus ad bellum or the justice of war. A war may be deemed to be just in this way if there is good reason for declaring war. This is (or has been until recently) limited to acts of international aggression or internal genocide on the part of a head of state or powerful aggressor. The war in Afghanistan, by this definition, may be considered just, whilst (and I hope we are beyond debating this point) the war in Iraq is clearly in breech of this parameter. The second measure of a just war is jus in bello or justice in war. This is judged by the way in which warring factions act within a war. Justice in this regard is achieved by focussing violence towards the military force of the aggressor and should limit any collateral damage. Even when ignoring the countless atrocities committed by the US and coalition forces against the people of Iraq it is clear to see how the war in Iraq is unjust in terms of jus in bello. The number of civilians violently killed in Iraq since 2003 as a result of the war is contestable. Moderate estimates place the figure between 80 and 150,000. The Lancet study suggests a much higher figure of 601,027 with a further 53,938 dying as result of poor healthcare and infrastructure; a less well published negative impact of war. This report, however, has received huge criticism for placing the figure so much higher than any other agency. Because of this I can’t really use their figures but why would I? After all, the Lancet is only one of the oldest and most historically accurate and reliable medical journals in the world. One thing that the Lancet did report which has not been contested is that at least 31% of the violent deaths are attributed to the coalition forces. Only 24% have been linked to ‘the enemy’ and the rest, reported as ‘unknown,’ would likely be distributed fairly evenly between the two.

Given this information is there any way that we can judge the war in Iraq to be acceptable? Can we say that the war on terror has been a measured response to the terrorist threat? Everything from the decision to declare war on Iraq to the attitude of the Soldiers and the disrespect they have meted out to Iraqi civilians demonstrates the danger of having a powerful nation which believes it is superior to the rest of the world. When researching the exact number of people who died in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre I found the following:

TOTAL COUNT 2,976
minus foreigners - 236
AMERICANS 2,740

I just love how the font size and use of capitals changes to denote significance. While we are doing a bit of maths let me share with you a calculation I have made. If we take 115,000 (as a conservative estimate for the number of Iraqi civilians killed since 2003 because of the war), divide it by 100 and multiply it by 31 to work out the absolute minimum number of civilians killed by the US led coalition (35,650) then divide that by 6841 (the number of Americans killed in the World Trade Centre attacks plus the number of US soldiers killed so far in Iraq) we emerge with the number 5.2. The life of an Iraqi civilian, therefore, is valued at a fifth of an American life… the same value placed upon black slaves in America at the time of Independence.

Just as it is hard to blame the individual Christian for the hatred they felt towards the Jews, it is clear that American pride and superiority is the result of years of propaganda. If you preach and teach and promote and sell and defend and ‘prove’ a point enough, eventually a whole nation can be convinced that a lie is true. This, however, does not remove that nation from the consequences of its attitude and resultant actions. Shylock went on to say, “And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The Villainy you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.” Empires rise when a people erroneously believe that they are superior to the rest of the world and use that belief to claim their dominance. It is this same illusion of superiority which eventually turns the rest of the world against, and leads to the downfall of, an empire. This process, however, as is clear with the collapsing empire of the USA, often claims the lives of many innocent people.