Iraqi civilian casualties are equally important

Published in the Fort Collins Coloradoan on December 24, 2011

Most reporting and commentary in the U.S. media on the end of the occupation of Iraq focus on the impact of the violence in that country on the U.S. military. The Pentagon's figure of nearly 4,500 troop deaths is very likely to be cited. In the less likely event that Iraqi civilian deaths are mentioned, the source most often referenced is Iraq Body Count, or IBC, which estimates that between 104,000 and 114,000 Iraqis died as a result of the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation.

However, the IBC figures understate the true number of civilian casualties, due to that organization's requirement that each death be documented as the result of violence. This approach does not account for either unreported violent deaths or deaths resulting from the breakdown of public health and sanitation systems caused by the invasion and occupation. Epidemiological studies published by The Lancet in 2006 and Opinion Research Business in 2007 and 2008 provide much higher estimates of excess Iraqi civilian deaths of anywhere between 393,000 and 1,120,000.

If these estimates bracket the true number, civilian deaths outnumber U.S. military deaths by a factor of between 87 and 249. Thus, Iraq's recent experience has shown once again that civilians are by far the most numerous victims of modern warfare.

The media's focus on documented U.S. troop deaths and relative lack of interest in Iraqi civilian deaths suggest that American lives are somehow more important than Iraqi lives. Acceptance of this notion both reinforces and is reinforced by the idea that Iraq is a less significant country on the world stage than is the United States.

The recorded death of a 19-year-old U.S. soldier struck down by an improvised explosive device and the unrecorded death of a 12-year-old Iraqi girl struck down by dysentery due to the lack of clean water are both equally undeserved and tragic. Both deaths would have been miserable: his marked by blood and shattered internal organs, hers by vomiting, diarrhea and delirium. The families and friends of both would have been equally saddened by their losses.

Both the U.S. soldier and the Iraqi girl represent societies that have made many contributions of arguably equal significance to human development. His gave humanity the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Hers gave humanity many of the crops that sustain us to this day, as well as the first written legal code. The peoples of both the United States and Iraq have numerous reasons to be proud of their heritage.

The deaths of both the U.S. soldier and the Iraqi girl represent equally significant losses to their countries. He might have become a rancher, an artist, a teacher, a father. She might have become a farmer, a poet, a physician, a mother. In death, neither will be able to make these or any other contributions, and the futures of both the United States and Iraq will be diminished as a result.

Deaths are the most immediate and visible costs imposed by warfare. Physical injuries, psychological injuries and ruined infrastructure impose additional costs. Until both U.S. leaders and the U.S. public understand and internalize the extremely high human and economic costs to both sides that result from military action, we run the risk of repeating travesties similar to the invasion of Iraq.