30,000 Iraqis

Manifesto

I've often wondered in this space about the number of Iraqis that have been killed during the Iraq war. Well, apparently the number is about 30,000. There has been a lot written about this lately, including much about how the President cracked a joke almost immediately after, but I think the important thing is the context in which this number was revealed.

The President is in the midst of a tour of the country, making seven speeches about the merits and benefits of the Iraq war. In these speeches the President has offered much of the same rationales we've heard over the last two years. My favorite has always been the "flypaper theory." The "flypaper theory" is the "we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." That's great and all, but how in the hell did the Iraqis get so lucky as to be the chosen victims of our little preemptive war. There are now 30,000 dead Iraqis. As the President admitted, he is "responsible" for taking us to war on "faulty intelligence." As such, the President impliedly admitted that Iraq presented no imminent threat. There was no danger. There was nothing.

30,000 Iraqis are dead. And yet we have no investigation into how all of these decisions were made. Somewhere, the powers that be in the commentariat have determined that Americans are more interested in solving current problems and not "reliving past decisions." I wonder if the families 30,000 dead Iraqis might want to know why their loved ones had to die.

And maybe we, as Americans, might want to know what we could have done differently to prevent this slaughter.

I know nothing in this post is groundbreaking. I write this more because I can't believe this isn't being written in every paper, every day.