Freedom is on the march

According to a new study of the Iraq war, since the Iraq war began, more than 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the fighting.

For comparison sake, here are some numbers I found on American casualties in wars we have fought.

Conflict               Combat deaths          

Revolutionary War      4,435

War of 1812            2,260

Mexican War            1,733

Civil War: Union       110,070

        Confederate    74,524

           Combined    184,594

Spanish-American War   385

World War I            53,513

World War II           292,131

Korean War             33,651

Vietnam War            47,369

Gulf War               148 

If you do the math, the grand total of American combat deaths in every war we have ever fought is less than the recent estimate of dead Iraqis since the fall of Saddam.

I am trying so hard to be reasonable here, and not fall into a stream of obscenities, but in what way is Iraq better off now than with Saddam?

There is widespread torture (by us and militias on all sides of this civil war), death of combatants and non-combatants alike are through the roof, Iran is poised to have a big ally, there is now a large al-Qaida presence (this one I am taking the president’s word for, but it seems pretty obvious), the infrastructure is shot, unemployment is out of control and there is no end in sight to the foreign occupation or the fighting.

I am no fan of Saddam, but if this estimate is even overstating the death and destruction by a factor of 2, then we have gone way beyond fiasco and tragedy to catastrophe.

Those who still think the war was worth it and those who think we should keep our troops there really need to explain their position in a way that acknowledges the near apocalyptic scale of how badly things have gone wrong and how we are going to do things in a completely different way.

We CAN NOT shoot our way out of how badly this has gone.