The Death Toll that Does Not Appear on the Nightly News

We have heard the daily counts of the nameless and faceless Iraqis who die each day in the conflict that consumes their homeland. Every evening we hear about 20 Iraqis who died in a car bomb explosion, 40 Iraqis in an attack on a mosque or of the hundreds of bodies that are turning up regularly handcuffed and executed and left somewhere in or around Baghdad. However, there has been no official tally, no running count as with our own American soldiers. Perhaps that is because there have been no officials to keep count amid the chaos. Despite several elections only recently has a complete government been seated and it is still remains to be seen how soon of if ever they will gain control of their own country.

Today the LA Times published an estimate of the number of civilian casualties of the Iraq war. That number is 50,000. As a percentage of the population that is the same as 15000 New Yorkers dieing violent deaths over the course of 3 years.

There are four conditions that need to be satisfied in order for a war to be considered "Just" according to the Catechism which stems from a philosophy that was first established by St. Augustine. They are just cause, proper authority, right intention, probability of success and proportionality. I never did think this war was Just but certainly from the point of proportionality, that we will be doing more good than we do harm, I am not sure how anyone can continue to argue that this war is just.

In the three years since the attacks on September 11th over 2900 people have died around the world, excluding Iraq, as a result of terrorist attacks. That number itself should be far outweighed by the civilian casulaties in Iraq. In addition if you look at these numbers and see that terrorism throughout the world is on the rise, that too should dispell any arguments in favor of proportionality. If we draw a correlation between these attacks and Iraq or not. Our invasion of Iraq has done nothing for the overall stability of the world.

Yes, America has not had another terrorist attack since September 11th, but whether that has something to do with Iraq or not, as citizens of the world and compasionate human beings we should empathize with those outside our borders. We need to understand and accept the consequences of our actions. These consequences do not just include the 2500 dead American soldiers they also include the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis and Afghanis whose names and faces we do not remember nightly on the evening news.