Guest Room | Alexander Immerman ’09
Here in the United States of America, we have seen the fruition of heartbreaking milestones. The fifth year of the Iraq War has passed. 4,000 American soldiers have been killed there and 30,000 wounded. These numbers are upsetting and tragic, but often overlooked in this paper and in the media nationwide is the catastrophic toll on the Iraqi population.
Estimates of Iraqi deaths due to the American invasion differ greatly between sources. IraqBodyCount.org has thus far confirmed nearly 90,000 documented civilian deaths from violence. The Lancet study, published in 2006, estimated 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths related to the war. The Opinion Research Business (ORB), an independent U.K. polling firm, estimated in 2008 a death toll of 1,033,000. With regard to causality, ORB claimed that 89 percent of these deaths were a direct result of violence, 48 percent as a result of gunshot wounds. The United States Government has repeatedly denounced such studies as “inflated,” though it does not keep track of Iraqi civilian casualties itself. The true number of Iraqi civilian deaths attributable to the American attack and occupation may never be known, but it is, indisputably, staggering.
Moreover, Iraq has become the epicenter of an enormous and ever-growing refugee crisis. The Brookings Institution’s latest publication puts the total number of displaced persons at 4,775,000. These statistics imply that 20 percent of Iraq’s total population has been killed or displaced because of American national policies of aggression and occupation. The attention given to American losses is obviously disproportionate to those of the Iraqis. This discussion was initiated with a biased prompt: how the war affects people here, as opposed to people there—as if the former were significantly more demanding of our attention. An open conversation nevertheless serves the interest of Americans, Iraqis, soldiers, students, veterans, and all people.
I would like to make clear that it is American national policy, not American soldiers, that groups like Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) and Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) protest. On the contrary, CAN has been outreaching to and working with veterans, active-duty soldiers, and ROTC cadets and midshipmen here at Cornell and at Fort Drum in upstate New York. IVAW recently held the historic Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan investigation in the spirit of the 1969 Winter Soldier Investigation, conducted by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and the Citizens Commission of Inquiry. These investigations include testimony of veterans regarding war crimes and atrocities, which they have personally committed or witnessed.
The objective of the Winter Soldier investigations was to demonstrate that war crimes, such as the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam (the killing of 347-500 unarmed civilians, primarily women and children, by American soldiers) or those at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, were neither caused by a few figurative “bad apples,” nor were dismissible instances of the tragedy inherent in all war, but these atrocities were, in fact, precipitated by national policy. In the case of Vietnam, policies such as “tally all dead as Viet Cong,” were tailored to produce favorable public perceptions of the war, rather than tangible positive results. Such policies are a travesty, not only for the victims of atrocities, but also for the soldiers ordered to commit them. Today such national policies include the denial of human rights at Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo Bay, the slaughter of civilians by mercenary contractors not subject to judicial review, and the routine torture of prisoners.
It is not activists and protestors, but the United States Government, which is failing miserably to provide sufficiently for wounded and traumatized American soldiers and the resulting statistics illustrate an astoundingly higher price for war than the already astronomical figures often cited regarding the cost of war. According to a 2005 CBS News Investigation, in that year alone there were more than 6,250 suicides among those who had served in the armed forces. That means 120 veterans each and every week die from suicide (this figure is not limited to veterans of Iraq). That is also more than have died in combat in Iraq since the invasion and occupation began five years ago. And again, that is in just one year. The Federal Times reported that as of 2006 the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs had a backlog of 400,000 pending claims. Furthermore the Government barred press access to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to conceal atrocious conditions and has banned the filming of fallen American’s caskets in an effort to thwart negative perception of the war.
CAN opposes all American wars of aggression, including the occupation of Iraq. The United States’ invasion and prolonged occupation of Iraq is in direct opposition to any reasonable construal of self-governance or economic self-determination. American employment of “divide and conquer” strategies has promoted sectarian conflict where previously none existed and the presence of a foreign occupation force has posed a total hindrance to the Iraqis’ capacity for self-determination.
The Iraqi people, themselves, have overwhelmingly (78 percent) expressed the opinion that the United States military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing. According to the same poll, conducted by the University of Maryland in 2006, 71 percent of Iraqis responded that they would like to see American troops withdrawn within the year. It is frequently objected that the power vacuum that would ensue after an American withdrawal would produce an increase in militia fighting and sectarian violence. Dahr Jamail, an unembedded journalist who has reported from occupied Iraq, spoke at Cornell on March 25 and directly addressed this issue. The Iraqi people, he said in his lecture, understand this risk, but they also understand that such militias do not have F-16s, will not use white phosphorus, and do not have cluster bombs — the risks posed by an American withdrawal pale in comparison to the daily destruction that is guaranteed by continued American occupation. It is with such data and analyses taken into careful consideration that CAN demands the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq and payment of reparations to the Iraqi people.
If we value our economy, we, the American people, must not condone the reprehensible squandering of tax dollars on wars of aggression and occupation. If we value our civil liberties, we, the American people, must oppose the rapidly growing domestic spying and mercenary contracting industries and stop the racist scapegoating that seeps through our media. If we support our troops and veterans, we, the American people, must bring them home now and provide them with the benefits and medical care they require. If we value our security, we, the American people, must stop forging foes and creating enemies abroad. Until the United States attacked it, there was no “Al-Qaeda in Iraq.” There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There is no democracy or self-determination in Iraq. We, as the American people, as Cornell students, as veterans, as educators, as service members, and as frustrated human beings must act. We must stop sending our troops to die for lies, we must stop killing people for lies, and we must say “no” to the continued occupation of Iraq.
Alexander Immerman is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of CAN, the Campus Anti-war Network, and can be contacted at afi2@cornell.edu. Guest Room appears periodically.