Iraq's civilian war dead are not leaving any impact in the US

[dArKeR]

Evidence is mounting that America's war in Iraq has killed tens of thousands of civilian Iraqis, and perhaps well over 100 thousand. Yet this carnage is systematically ignored in the US, where the media and government portray a war in which there are no civilian deaths, because there are no Iraqi civilians, only insurgents.?

American behavior and self-perceptions reveal the ease with which a civilized country can engage in large-scale killing of civilians without public discussion. In late October, the British medical journal Lancet published a study of civilian deaths in Iraq since the US-led invasion began. The sample survey documented an extra 100,000 civilian deaths compared to the death rate in the preceding year, when former president Saddam Hussein was still in power -- and this estimate did not even count excess deaths in Falluja, which was deemed too dangerous to include.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/12/03/2003213590

[ScrewyRabbit]

1. Our great shame

What else to say?

[dArKeR]

2. Do you think Americans will aquire empathy in future? Sorry

to say I don't think so. How could educated people not have empathy?

[ixion]

4. there are millions of us with empathy

our voices are simply squelched out by the beating of the war drums and the infotainment theme music. :grr:

Sadly, in America it has become fashionable to be a barbarian. They call it patriotism, although I would beg to differ.

I call it what it is: barbarism, or savagery, if you prefer.

In either case, it's not pretty. :-(

[Mari333]

8. How sad and true..to be a barbaric monster is considered the norm

in the US...meanness, arrogance, cruelty, racism, me-firstism, loudness, and extreme adolescent machismo and childish temper tantrums are now de rigeur for the nation...
We are truly an uncivilised society. Murderous thugs. Sadly, karma has a way of coming back.

[I Love Alaska]

3. See no evil, hear no evil....

Our media doesn't talk about the Iraqi dead. Either they don't care or people just don't want to know or think about it. If we knew, it might be much more difficult to support the war.

[rodeodance]

5. most are afraid of being demeaned by BushCo/Fox and this includes

other countries that should be shouting loudly about this!!!

[depakid]

6. And of course the world won't EVER care about Americans again

and rightly so.

We didn't deserve the world's sympathy after 9-11- we've amply proven that- and we sure don't deserve it now....

Pity, we had to squander all that good will.

[Catfight]

7. We have been desensitized to violence, horror, and inhumanity by

movies, media, video games, fear factor, humiliation on TV for entertainment. I often wonder, what would outrage Americans anymore? Holding up a baby on TV and cutting its head off? Probably only if it was an American baby, if it was an Iraqi child, I doubt Americans would be too concerned. They'd say their obligatory "oh, that's just awful, terrible, savage," but it would be forgotten like the torture of people in Iraqi has been placed on the back burner. Americans do not know pain and suffering, even the poorest Americans are better off than 3rd world countries.
Trapping Iraqi males from ages 14 to whatever to slaughter them broke my heart, yet Americans cannot imagine being in someone else's shoes these days unless it's the rich powerful shoes of a white male. Talk about moral decline, this is the moral America that has been manipulated by the media and Bush. There is no outrage that's outrageous enough for Americans to stand up and say "enough." To provoke outrage these days one must go to unimaginable extremes of horror and that seems to be the trend of the New Immoral Majority.

[Stuckinthebush]

9. Of course not...here are some reasons:

They are "The Other"
They don't look like us
They are not Christians
They don't speak English
They attacked us on 9/11
They had WMDs and were ready to use them
They are killing our troops who just want to help them
Where is Iraq?


Remind me again why I'm supposed to admire my fellow Americans?

[rodeodance]

16. but the US troop dead do not seem to matter to many either!! Maybe

this is changing somewhat now--they are seen as "neceassary" casalities to protect the US and its people.

[HamdenRice]

10. The irony of the article is it was written by Jeffrey Sachs

In the 1980s and 1990s, Sachs was an advisor to developing countries like Bolivia, Russia and Poland and advocated "shock therapy" to their economies -- the neo-liberal lifting of almost all regulations, and slashing of social spending. This led to massive unemployment, suffering and economic depression, and Sachs was accused of having no empathy for the populations of those countries.

Now he is on some kind of guilt trip about Americans' lack of empathy. I agree with the thrust of his article, but... Pot. Kettle. Black.



<edited>

[indigobusiness]

11. We are a soulless nation.

Is there any doubt?

[eauclaireliberal]

12. Because they are brown people

"...especially brown people. Oh yeah, we love that shit, don't we? That's our hobby! That's our new job in the world: bombing brown people. Iraq, Panama, Grenada-if you have some brown people in your country, tell them to WATCH THE FUCK OUT! Or we'll goddamned bomb them!

"What was the last white people we bombed? Can you think of ANY white people...that we have bombed? The Germans! That's it. They were trying to cut-in our action. They wanted to dominate the world. Bullshit! That's our job! That's our fuckin' job!

"So now we only bomb brown people. And not because they are trying to cut-in on our action...just because they're brown."

-George Carlin

[frustrated_lefty]

13. We are NOT a souless nation (I hope).

The pictures have not been shown. Nor will they be if Bushco has any say. The dead and wounded would affect people were they to see the truth.

[teryang]

14. Arabs are the scapegoats for American fascism

Well described in this brilliant depiction of current day American fascism:


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7398.ht...

Inside the Clouds of 9/11

Catalyst for Perpetual War

Manuel Valenzuela

<The psychological effects of 9/11 and its myriad collection of images, from multiple cameras and angles, cannot be underestimated or ignored when seeking to understand the transformation of America into what it is today: imperial warmonger and terrorist nation abroad and autocratic usurper of rights, freedoms and democracy at home...>

<There exists in America today a hatred for Arabs and Muslims, wisely planned by those whose hands toy with our marionette strings, that has released into the air the winds of allowed carnage upon a population of innocent human beings...>

<This is a blatant racism, guided and exponentially increased by the atrocities of 9/11, that fails to separate monsters from normal people like you and me, wanting nothing more than to live in peace and happiness...>

<Just as America roams the thick cloud cover of 9/11, unable to find its missing self, so too has our psychology been lost among the ruins and the dust. Missing it remains, making us unaware of what we have become, similar to the millions of Germans who in the 1930’s allowed the Nazis to rampage across the world, their minds hypnotized and oblivious to the crimes against humanity being perpetrated in their name, pretending as if nothing was happening, pretending their leaders were pure and altruistic. <snip>

[90-percent]

15. 100,000 deaths

I know how some right wingers deal with it. They deny that 100,000 have been killed. they insist its a much smaller number, like 10,000.

Any irrefutable proof out there? Not that they would accept it.

Does it have to be on Rush for them to believe it?

-85%

[max sg]

17. the horror

We just don't have any relationship to the violence there, nor, does it seem we have any compassion for our soliders, except to say that we "support" them in going over to be slaughtered. I can't imagine what it must be like to serve right now, to wake up on any given morning and wonder what might happen. I do pray for our troops.

[Skittles]

18. they don't care about the US soldier casualties either

nt

[Judi Lynn]

19. Not really. As they are volunteers, it doesn't affect them.

Many of them are also minorities, moving them ever farther from their circles of concern.

Damned pathetic.

Speaking of barbaric images earlier in the thread, what about the sudden appearance of that large globule, Arnold Schwarzenneger, in his largest acting assignment as the Governor of California, after a long hate campaign against Gray Davis? "Conan the Barbarian?" Driving Hummers? Violent? Pre-verbal? Anti-intellectual? Republicans pushing next to change the Constitution simply to run this clown as President?

Considering the Republicans have made so much noise about the Democrats in Hollywood, it's odd they've never explained their own desperate attachment to "image" people like athletes and actors, tons of them, actually, to get them name recognition among the slow-witted who don't care about issues.

Keep them all fired up, scared to death, filled with hatred toward imaginary, and ever changing "enemy" cultures, and the military-industrial segments will run the country all by themselves, chosing the the whores who will advance their agenda as their finest Republican scuzball politicians.