July 11, 2007

In the manner of a soulless ghoul without conscience, the United States government dispatches its lethal military to wreak death and destruction across the world. So convinced are we that we embody the Good, we believe we may invade anywhere and everywhere, whenever we declare our "national interests" are imperiled. Our "national interests" are intentionally and infinitely elastic: they enable us to "justify" any military incursion anywhere, at any time. Because we represent the Good, it is inconceivable that we would act in ways that are monstrous and criminal on a scale that defies comprehension.

In the winter and spring of 2002-2003, it was obvious to any basically well-informed lay person that Iraq constituted no serious threat to the United States, or to anyone else. An "ordinary" citizen had no need of "secret information" or government "intelligence" to reach the conclusion that was entirely accurate, a conclusion that over four years of futile, unforgivable havoc and death have proven over and over again to be true. Such "intelligence" is almost always wrong in any case; it is almost never relevant to foreign policy decisions at all.

Our unfounded and indefensible belief in our unquestionable moral purity thus renders us incapable of recognizing the most fundamental fact of the Iraq catastrophe: it is immoral and criminal in each and every respect. Because Iraq was no threat, the crime was committed when the first innocent Iraqi died as the result of the United States' invasion and occupation.

But we refuse to acknowledge the initial crime, the death of that single innocent Iraqi. So we are absolute in our refusal to acknowledge the inconceivable magnitude of what our government has done:

A key question is missing from this debate. How many Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion? The New York Times editorial is silent on this matter.

In a scientific study published last fall in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, researchers from Johns Hopkins estimated that 650,000 Iraqis had died because of our government's invasion of their country. The survey that produced that estimate was completed in July, 2006. That was a year ago.

Unfortunately, despite the calls of the Lancet authors for other studies, there has been no systematic effort to update these results.

Just Foreign Policy has attempted to update the Lancet estimate in the best way we know. We have extrapolated from the Lancet estimate, using the trend provided by the tally of Iraqi deaths reported in Western media compiled by Iraq Body Count. Our current estimate is that 974,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion. The web counter and fuller explanation are here.

The Iraqi death toll resulting from the U.S. invasion is a key fact. We cannot make intelligent and moral choices about U.S. foreign policy while ignoring such a key fact. It has implications for our choices in Iraq, for our choices in dealing with Iran, for our choices about the size of the U.S. military (for why do our leaders want to expand the U.S. military, except to have the capacity to invade other countries?)

The exact toll will never be known. But this is no reason not to attempt to know what the best estimate is. We also don't know many other key facts with certainty. We don't know how many people live in the U.S. The census department creates an estimate, and this estimate is the basis of policy.

The Johns Hopkins researchers used the methods accepted all over the world to estimate deaths in the wake of war and natural disasters. The United Nations, for example, uses them to plan famine relief. Even the Bush administration relies on them when it accuses Sudan of genocide in Darfur. At present, this represents the best information we have.