<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;">I don't think it takes a PhD to figure that one out. <br><br>--- On <b>Sat, 3/14/09, nickgier@roadrunner.com <i><nickgier@roadrunner.com></i></b> wrote:<br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;">From: nickgier@roadrunner.com <nickgier@roadrunner.com><br>Subject: [Vision2020] The Iraq War was not worth the Sacrifice<br>To: vision2020@moscow.com<br>Date: Saturday, March 14, 2009, 11:30 AM<br><br><pre>Good Morning Visionaries:<br><br>This is my radio commentary/column for this week. The full version is attached<br>as a PDF file. I've gathered all my columns on Iraq at<br><www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/IraqColumns.htm>.<br><br>Nick Gier<br><br>THE IRAQ WAR WAS NOT WORTH THE SACRIFICE<br>Great Loss of Coalition and Iraqi Lives; Destruction of Iraqi Culture<br><br>As we approach the
sixth anniversary of the Iraq War, there are a few positive<br>signs. At the end of January, provincial elections were held with comparatively<br>little violence and fraud. The best news is that Iraqis voters, contrary to<br>some predictions, supported secular parties much more than religiously<br>affiliated ones.<br><br>The negatives, however, far outweigh the positives. Oil production has still<br>not returned to pre-war levels. While under Saddam the people of Baghdad could<br>count on power 20 hours a day, they now have only an average of 15 hours a day. <br><br><br>Only 40 percent of Iraqis have clean water to drink, and most sanitation<br>systems are still not functioning. Six million Iraqis live on UN food rations,<br>and Oxfam estimates that 28 percent of the children are malnourished.<br><br>One of the greatest tragedies is the 740,000 war widows, only 120,000 of whom<br>receive meager state aid. Rejected by their families and mostly ignored
by the<br>government, the widows have been reduced to begging, scavenging, and<br>prostitution.<br><br>Iraq is now divided along sectarian lines much more than before the war. Before<br>the war Baghdad's population was split evenly between Sunnis and Shiias,<br>but, after the Surge, Middle East expert Juan Cole estimates that it is now a 75<br>Shiite city. Even more significant is that prior to 2003 Shiias and Sunnis were<br>not killing one another.<br><br>The most accurate figures for Iraqi civilian casualties come from The Lancet,<br>the highly respected British medical journal. Claiming to have death<br>certificates from 92 percent of the households surveyed, the authors estimate<br>that over one million Iraqis have died because of the war.<br><br>There are currently an estimated 2.8 million internally displaced Iraqis, and <br>there are 2.2-2.4 million who have fled the country. The Iraqis who have left<br>tend to be more prosperous and better
educated. The figure that stands out<br>dramatically in the Brooking Institute's Iraq Index (www.brookings.com),<br>from which I've drawn most of my data, is the number of doctors. Before the<br>war there were 34,000 doctors in Iraq, but now there are only 12,000.<br><br>Iraq's National Museum in Baghdad reopened last month with 9,000 of<br>priceless Mesopotamian artifacts still missing. Despite a direct appeal to the<br>Pentagon from archeologists three weeks before the war, the commanding general<br>made sure there were troops at the oil ministry but none were sent to the<br>museum. Looters broke into the museum on April 10, 2003 and it was not secured<br>by U.S. forces until April 22. <br><br>In addition to artifacts, there are living cultural legacies in Iraq, who are<br>now threatened with extinction. The Sabaean Mandeans, a 2,000 year-old<br>religious sect, lived peacefully in Iraq until the U. S. invasion unleashed<br>Muslim fanaticism.
Most of the Mandeans not killed have now fled the country<br>and it will be difficult for the religion to survive in exile.<br><br>It is estimated that at least half of Iraq's 800,000 Assyrian Christians<br>have fled the country. Churches have been burned and both parishioners and<br>priests, including the Archbishop of Mosul, have been killed. <br><br>On August 7, 2007, the Catholic News Service declared that Iraqi Christians<br>were much safer under Hussein's rule, and an editorial from the Assyrian<br>Christian International News Agency accuses the U.S. of destroying Christianity<br>in Iraq.<br><br>Depending on what is included, veterans' costs and interest on the national<br>debt, the total cost of the war will be $1-3 trillion. The greatest cost,<br>however, has been the sacrifice of 4,256 American lives and 31,089 seriously<br>wounded soldiers. <br><br>The other huge cost is the loss of our moral standing in the world. It will<br>take decades
for the U.S. to recover from Bush's reckless invasion of a<br>Muslim country and his prosecution of a war on terror that alienated hundreds of<br>moderate Muslims around the world.<br><br>Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. <br></pre><pre>=======================================================<br> List services made available by First Step Internet, <br> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994. <br> http://www.fsr.net <br> mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com<br>=======================================================</pre></blockquote></td></tr></table><br>