[Vision2020] The Iraq War was not worth the Sacrifice

[Donovan Arnold]

I don't think it takes a PhD to figure that one out. 

--- On Sat, 3/14/09, nickgier at roadrunner.com <nickgier at roadrunner.com> wrote:
From: nickgier at roadrunner.com <nickgier at roadrunner.com>
Subject: [Vision2020] The Iraq War was not worth the Sacrifice
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Date: Saturday, March 14, 2009, 11:30 AM

Good Morning Visionaries:

This is my radio commentary/column for this week. The full version is attached
as a PDF file. I've gathered all my columns on Iraq at
<www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/IraqColumns.htm>.

Nick Gier

THE IRAQ WAR WAS NOT WORTH THE SACRIFICE
Great Loss of Coalition and Iraqi Lives; Destruction of Iraqi Culture

As we approach the sixth anniversary of the Iraq War, there are a few positive
signs. At the end of January, provincial elections were held with comparatively
little violence and fraud.  The best news is that Iraqis voters, contrary to
some predictions, supported secular parties much more than religiously
affiliated ones.

The negatives, however, far outweigh the positives. Oil production has still
not returned to pre-war levels.  While under Saddam the people of Baghdad could
count on power 20 hours a day, they now have only an average of 15 hours a day. 


Only 40 percent of Iraqis have clean water to drink, and most sanitation
systems are still not functioning. Six million Iraqis live on UN food rations,
and Oxfam estimates that 28 percent of the children are malnourished.

One of the greatest tragedies is the 740,000 war widows, only 120,000 of whom
receive meager state aid.  Rejected by their families and mostly ignored by the
government, the widows have been reduced to begging, scavenging, and
prostitution.

Iraq is now divided along sectarian lines much more than before the war. Before
the war Baghdad's population was split evenly between Sunnis and Shiias,
but, after the Surge, Middle East expert Juan Cole estimates that it is now a 75
Shiite city. Even more significant is that prior to 2003 Shiias and Sunnis were
not killing one another.

The most accurate figures for Iraqi civilian casualties come from The Lancet,
the highly respected British medical journal. Claiming to have death
certificates from 92 percent of the households surveyed, the authors estimate
that over one million Iraqis have died because of the war.

There are currently an estimated 2.8 million internally displaced Iraqis, and 
there are 2.2-2.4 million who have fled the country. The Iraqis who have left
tend to be more prosperous and better educated.  The figure that stands out
dramatically in the Brooking Institute's Iraq Index (www.brookings.com),
from which I've drawn most of my data, is the number of doctors.  Before the
war there were 34,000 doctors in Iraq, but now there are only 12,000.

Iraq's National Museum in Baghdad reopened last month with 9,000 of
priceless Mesopotamian artifacts still missing.  Despite a direct appeal to the
Pentagon from archeologists three weeks before the war, the commanding general
made sure there were troops at the oil ministry but none were sent to the
museum. Looters broke into the museum on April 10, 2003 and it was not secured
by U.S. forces until April 22.  

In addition to artifacts, there are living cultural legacies in Iraq, who are
now threatened with extinction.  The Sabaean Mandeans, a 2,000 year-old
religious sect, lived peacefully in Iraq until the U. S. invasion unleashed
Muslim fanaticism.  Most of the Mandeans not killed have now fled the country
and it will be difficult for the religion to survive in exile.

It is estimated that at least half of Iraq's 800,000 Assyrian Christians
have fled the country.  Churches have been burned and both parishioners and
priests, including the Archbishop of Mosul, have been killed. 

On August 7, 2007, the Catholic News Service declared that Iraqi Christians
were much safer under Hussein's rule, and an editorial from the Assyrian
Christian International News Agency accuses the U.S. of destroying Christianity
in Iraq.

Depending on what is included, veterans' costs and interest on the national
debt, the total cost of the war will be $1-3 trillion. The greatest cost,
however, has been the sacrifice of 4,256 American lives and 31,089 seriously
wounded soldiers.    

The other huge cost is the loss of our moral standing in the world.  It will
take decades for the U.S. to recover from Bush's reckless invasion of a
Muslim country and his prosecution of a war on terror that alienated hundreds of
moderate Muslims around the world.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.  
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