Though the top brass will undoubtedly play down the fact, the death toll among the US military since the invasion of Iraq has reached nearly 1,000 while the number of wounded, more than half of them serious, approaches 7,000. The great majority of these deaths and injuries has come since May 1, 2003, when George W. Bush stood smiling on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared that the fighting was over and that peace was on its way.
Sixteen months from that moment of hubris, Iraq seems less at peace than ever. Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army is once again battling the Americans — this time in his political heartland, Sadr City. Meanwhile, the capital’s governor yesterday escaped assassination though the son of Niniveh’s governor was less fortunate as he was killed in a separate attack. US forces in Fallujah have also taken some of their heaviest casualties in recent months.
Unseen and unreported, however, is the widespread campaign of intimidation and extortion by thugs who prey on decent Iraqis who long for an end to the senseless violence in their country. The relative failure of the now Iraqi-led coalition human intelligence (HumInt) program demonstrates just how the murder of suspected informers has succeeded in cutting down the flow of data on the terrorists. What is missing of course from the official US statistics is the number of Iraqis who have perished, either at the hands of coalition forces or insurgents. Conservative figures suggest that some 13,000 Iraqi soldiers and some 4,000 civilians were killed in the actual invasion. No one, however, appears to have been counting the Iraqi dead since “peace” broke out so violently. What is not in doubt is that a very considerable number of civilians rather than insurgents have died.
The Bush White House still maintains that US troops are in Iraq to complete the elimination of Al-Qaeda and diehard Baathist terrorists and to subdue rebel groups such as Sadr’s Mehdi Army. All this is being done in support of the interim government and the national assembly in advance of elections next year — by which time, it is fervently hoped, the Iraqi police and army will be ready to take over all security duties. This approach seems to suggest two things: First that Washington believes that the hydra-headed insurgency can actually be defeated and, second, that the Bush administration sees no causal link between the continued turmoil and the continued presence of its troops in the country.
Had Washington had a well-informed postinvasion plan, had they immediately placed the interests of Iraqis above their own tactical defense, had they weeded, rather than disbanded the police and armed forces, had they consulted local community leaders, including Baathists, rather than parachute in their own flawed nominees, had they indeed listened to outside advice from the Arab world rather than impose their own inept and unworkable solutions, the Iraqi death toll after “peace” would not have been so high and the thousandth US body bag would not soon be on its way back to the US and an unnecessarily sorrowing family.
