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11 October 2006
Iraqi deaths: 650,000 - Darfur deaths: 200,000. Now tell me again, "Who is committing genocide?" ;-P
13: Well, even ignoring the use of WP in Fallujah, we unleashed a bunch of people who do systematically target civilians. Like the guys who stop cars in traffic and kill everyone named "Omar".
Yes, I'm sure. Iraq is not the same as Darfur. And ortho, those guys exist, but they are aberrations. The Iraq war is a lot of things, but it is not an attempt to annihilate an entire ethnic/national group.
I just think suggestions like the OP's do a disservice to a rational anti-war movement.
13: yeah, the object of the war wasn't genocide. But that's the consequence of going in there ill-prepared and under-equipped to handle occupation following the military victory. It's the consequence of hiring 24-year-old ideologues to try out, for the first time, conservative theories during the reconstruction. It's the consequence of a terrible and pervasive arrogance by the administration.
So, no, it's not first degree murder, it's more like negligent homicide. But the victims are just as dead. And their survivors aren't going to be forgiving of an America acting like a drunken trust-fund socialite running down poor kids with his SUV.
Yes, the victims are dead. Yes, the survivors are unhappy. Yes, this war was a horrible idea from the start and was poorly managed and the people who thought it up are probably evil. We've destabilized the country and now they're having a civil war.
I just don't think genocide is an appropriate term here. I suppose Iraqi factions that kill each other because of religious affiliation are genocidal, if the scale is big enough.
mischief: Killing isn't the same as genocide. Even widescale killing isn't the same as genocide.
13: In that case, Darfur is not genocide because civilians are being killed by the secular rebel groups, the Sharia rebel groups, unaligned bandits, the out-of-control janjawid, and the Sudanese military.
The only distinguishing characteristic between the refugees and the many different groups killing them is the rufugees are not armed despite the fact that weapons are there free for the taking; just walk up to the corpse of a rebel or a soldier.
i agree with 13 here. that 600,000 people have been needlessly killed is shocking enough without throwing words around like genocide. as this discussion shows, it just distracts from the real issues.
mischief, "genocide" means more than "a whole lot of people got murdered". "Genocide" specifically refers to a deliberate attempt to exterminate an entire racial group. Are you seriously suggesting that the US is trying to exterminate all Iraqis?
Genocide is a real issue. It's just not the issue we're dealing with in Iraq.
Mischief, every time conflict breaks out, there is a disproportionate portion of causulties borne by a particular group or groups. In every conflict, the dead and maimed are not an even representation of the overall demographics of a region. This is because in every society and every region there are disparities of power and access to resources.
Those with the least power and resources/allies typically pay the highest cost in blood. This is NOT the same as intentional genocide, and by conflating the two, you weaken the impact of accusing a party of calculated ethnic or religious based mass murder.
I find it cute that Bush said he does not consider the report credible, and that the methodology used is "pretty well discredited." I, er, think it was the reason for war that was discredited. It'd be funny to see someone ask him what does cluster sampling mean, and how do you know how many people have died, as US doesn't keep official count anyway... In fact seeing Bush trying to explain anything scientific might be fun to watch.
er, and "Iraqi" is not a distinct phenotype. 650,000 Iraqi dead = colossal fuck up where leaders should be run out on a rail and tried for war crimes, but does not necessarily = genocide.
If Marines were pulling people out of their beds in the middle of the night, marching them into the town square and shooting them in the head simply for being Iraqis the term genocide would be appropriate here.
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