IS THE UNITED STATES KILLING 10,000 IRAQIS EVERY MONTH?

I'm not going to deny that I throw a lot of junk up under my "Link of the Day" feature. But the last article I linked to has really been sticking with me the past couple days, and I've been trying to sort out the significance of this in my mind. (And if you missed it the first time, it probably goes without saying I highly recommend you at least take a quick look at this article here). I opposed this war from the beginning, but I never imagined the human cost could be this high. Think about it for a moment. 10,000 lives snuffed out every month. It's hard to even comprehend.

During the Vietnam War there was a school of thought which alleged that because of the massive carpet bombings of civilian populations, forced relocations , and massacres at Mi Lai and similar massacres, that the Vietnam War had become equivalent to genocide. And my own reading of history makes me sympathetic to this argument.

If the allegation that 10,000 Iraqis are being killed every month by US forces is true then I think we have to question if the Iraq War is approaching genocidal proportions.

And then I think the thought most of us must feel is: "however much I've been doing to try and stop the war, it hasn't been enough."

Of course its hard to actively protest the war from Japan, but the past couple days I've been nagged by the feeling that if I really believed in my own convictions, and if I felt that human life had any value at all, then I would quit my job, go back to the US, and protest the war full time. To the extent I've protested this war at all over the past few years, it's been mostly just by writing posts like this on my blog. And that is too easy an out.

But then I remember when I was back in the US last year and attended several anti-war protests, and I'm not really sure of the good it did anyone except for relieving my own consciensce.

A few years ago during the lead up to the Iraq war back in 2002 I organized a letter writing campaign in the Japanese town I was living with (I started just with my adult English students, and the thing just took off on its own after that). I also printed off petitions and pledges from ANSWER's web-page and was going around at parties trying to get all my friends to sign them.

At the time a Republican friend gleefully told me that I could overflow the White House mailroom with letters and petitions, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. And the frustrating thing was I knew he was right.

Back in the US last year I was a faithful attender at the weekly Peace Presence, where we held anti-war signs on the street corners every week. And I attended a couple of Media Mouse's anti-recruiting protests. And at times I doubt any of it did anything.

A generation ago the frustration over the war in Vietnam and the failure of conventional protest tactics drove groups like the Weathermen, the Japanese Red Army, and the Baader-Meinhof gang to acts of (mostly symbolic) violence. But even if I did have the guts to do something like that (and let's face it, I don't) I'm convinced that these isolated acts of violence are not helpful (as I wrote in this article for Media Mouse).

All of which just brings me back to square one.

Although I like the look of this "Iraq Summer" campaign, mentioned on Media Mouse's website, seems like a good start. (I won't be able to participate much from Japan, but it is good to see the organizing is becoming more focused).

I'll likely still be struggling with these questions for a while, but in the meantime I'm going to at least try and shout out the news from the roof tops. Everyone should think about the death toll in Iraq now.

Link of the Day
Iraq violence: Monitoring the surge