The authorities in Baghdad have announced that on the basis of issued death certificates, in the violence that followed the US-led invasion of their country, 85,000 Iraqis perished. To many observers this seems a highly conservative figure, not least because it takes no account of those slain in the chaotic post-invasion period as the coalition administration fumbled tragically to reintroduce some semblance of order into the anarchy they had created.
None of the other organizations monitoring the disastrous consequences of the invasion has put the death toll so low. The Iraq Body Count, which covers only civilians and started from March 19, 2003, the day when Cruise missiles began to smash into Saddam Hussein’s infrastructure, currently stands at over 102,000. If you add to that Iraqi military and police dead, then the figure has to be substantially higher. By September 2007 one organization, the London-based Opinion Research Bureau actually pitched the total war casualties at 1.2 million, a sum that has since been accepted as exaggerated.
However, even if the Iraqi government calculation is indeed right, 85,000 dead is a horrific enough figure. It conceals a tale of woe for countless families who have lost breadwinners, mothers and most tragically of all beloved children, in the wanton violence that seized the country following Saddam’s ouster. It also ignores the tens of thousands who have suffered permanent maiming as a result of bombs and bullets, unfortunates who can no longer fend properly for themselves and must be supported for the rest of their lives by family and friends. The occasional inspiring news item such as that last year about the football-mad youngster who despite losing a leg, learned to play again with an artificial limb, do nothing to diminish the disgust with which this tragedy should be viewed. For every such story of personal triumph, there are unfortunately many, many more of people who are incapable of overcoming their disabilities.
Each and every one of these tens of thousands of corpses and shattered bodies is an indictment of the criminal stupidity of George W. Bush and his zealous and obedient partner Tony Blair. There simply was no post-invasion plan based on any informed analysis of the complex structure of Iraqi society. The bonedheaded Bush vision was that if he got rid of the bad guys, the good guys would take over. Most heinously, the bad guys included the Iraqi Army and police, whose formations were instantly disbanded, at a time when the coalition forces were incapable of providing any kind of substitute law and order themselves. The insurgency, therefore, got off to a flying and unhindered start, often recruiting former policemen and soldiers and accessing emergency arsenals of which the invaders knew nothing. Inter-communal violence flourished as Al-Qaeda moved into the power vacuum on the streets. Coalition forces, so victorious on the battlefield, rapidly lost the peace.
And it was so often the innocent who by their thousands paid the bloody price of “freedom”. How, one wonders, can Bush and Blair sleep at night?
