I just read the article in the Lancet that reports an estimated 655,000 excess deaths as a result of the invasion of Iraq. The article is only 8 pages and most of it should be understandable to an educated layperson.
http://www.thelancet.com/...
Of the 655,000 excess deaths, 601,000 are the direct result of violence with the rest being caused indirectly as a result of things like disruptions in delivery of nutrition and healthcare.
An important question is "how many of these deaths were he responsibility of coalition forces?"
Of course, in so far as all the deaths are the consequence of an unprovoked war of agression by the U.S.-led forces one might reasonably say "All of them."
But as for which forces inflicted which deaths, 31% are attributed to coalition forces, 24% are attributed to "other" forces and 45% are "unknown." That makes for at least 186,310 violent deaths at the hands of coalition forces and probably a lot more since presumably coalition forces are responsible for at least a fraction of the violent deaths caused by "unknown" forces.
It is interesting to compare these figures with the figures in Darfur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
While the Lancet article reports 200,000 to have died in Darfur, other estimates go as high as twice that. But most of the deaths in Darfur have not been violent, but rather a result of starvation.
Comparing atrocities is always a risky business, but in this case I think it is important because Darfur is so frequently described as THE great humanitarian tragedy of our time with calls for some sort of U.S.-led military intervention. What these figures indicate is that the U.S.-led war on Iraq has killed considerably more civilians than the Janjaweed in Darfur. Whats more, the U.S.-led war against Iraq is one that we, as Americans actually have much more power to directly stop.
The point here is not to minimize or detract from the horrible crimes committed in Darfur, but rather to suggest that there is something perverse about how we talk about Darfur as if we weren't ourselves in the same moral category as the Janjaweed.
