Peace activist and gold star mother Cindy
Sheehan and spokesperson for a war-based oligarchy George
Will both published columns this weekend arguing that non-Americans
are human beings. Sheehan's column was written in response to an Associated
Press article that provided evidence that Americans disagree with this
claim. Will's column, meanwhile, adds to this evidence by demonstrating
a failure to understand the very point he's arguing for.
I had a conversation this weekend with someone who believes that Bush
and Cheney lied us into an aggressive war and will never end it, but
who opposes impeachment
because it's antagonistic, "violent," and "will leave
blood on the floor." I submit this as further evidence that Americans
do not believe non-Americans are human beings. If congressional hearings
and potential hurt feelings are too violent, what would the ongoing
slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis be… if they were
humans?
The Associated Press article
that elicited Sheehan's indignation reported that Americans, when surveyed,
tend to know almost exactly how many American soldiers have officially
died in Iraq – an educational accomplishment that Sheehan may
deserve some of the credit for. But when asked how many Iraqis have
been killed in the current war, Americans tended to miss the mark dramatically,
according to the AP.
The only scientific survey that has been done estimated 655,000 excess
deaths resulting from this war, "excess" meaning deaths above
the already extremely high death rate during the period of sanctions
that preceded the war. That estimate was made some months back, and
the violence has continued to increase, not diminish.
The Associated Press, exhibiting its own Americanism, places the deaths
at "54,000" but says the total "could be much higher."
However, Americans in the AP's poll
gave a median estimate of 9,890 Iraqi deaths. And why wouldn't they?
The U.S. media has given them nothing to go on, and its polls reflect
its failure. Some Americans have sought out information on the internet
and educated themselves. Many, no doubt, responded with a estimate close
to 655,000. (AP says 5% of respondents answered with a number over 250,000.)
But many others probably guessed a number close to that of the U.S.
death figure that they knew, or even something lower than 3,000. After
all, we hear so much more about American deaths, and our media has been
made so honest by the invisible hand of competition, that there simply
must BE more American deaths. (AP says 8% of respondents said there'd
been 1,000 or fewer Iraqi deaths.)
It's safe to bet that those who believe the death total is very low
also tend to support the war, whereas those who know what it really
is or even overestimate it tend to oppose the war. In part, this result
would be driven by the fact that some of those already opposed to the
war seek out information about it from a greater variety of sources,
whereas some of those who support the war will insist that few Iraqis
have been killed even if you pile the corpses in their living room.
But, in large part, I suspect that many Americans would move toward
opposing the war if they were informed of what the war has done to people,
if they got the numbers right and heard a few of the stories behind
the numbers.
However, the AP dug up a professor who disagrees with this theory, and
it seems clear that the US media will not put it to a test any time
soon. According to the AP:
"Christopher Gelpi, a Duke University political scientist who tracks
public opinion on war casualties, said a better understanding of the
Iraqi death toll probably wouldn't change already negative public attitudes
toward the war much. People in democracies generally don't shy away
from inflicting civilian casualties, he said, and they may be even more
tolerant of them in situations such as Iraq, where many of the civilian
deaths are caused by other Iraqis."
If Gelpi or the AP has any evidence for this, I'd love to see it. It's
the "in democracies" part of the quote that is disturbing,
and which led Sheehan to ask why – then – we should want
to impose democracy on anyone. Gelpi seems either to be implying that
people in dictatorships are less genocidally inclined than are people
in democracies, or to be assuming that in democracies and only in democracies
what the people think matters at all. But US public opinion is currently
strongly against the war. The people have already "shied away from"
this mass murder. And, according to the AP poll results, 77% of Americans
find the level of civilian deaths in Iraq unacceptable.
Gelpi further pontificated thusly:
"Gelpi said that while Americans may not view Iraqi deaths through
the same prism as American losses, they may use the Iraqi death toll
to gauge progress, or lack thereof, on the U.S. effort to promote a
stable, secure democracy in Iraq. To many, he said, 'the fact that so
many are being killed is an indication that we're not succeeding.'"
Does Gelpi have evidence that Americans view people's deaths as part
of such a meaningless calculation? Does the AP? Maybe they do, but the
AP goes on to offer additional reason to believe that Americans have
already "shied away," and done so for possibly decent reasons:
"Whatever their understanding of the respective death tolls, three-quarters
of those polled said the numbers of both Americans and Iraqis who have
been killed are 'unacceptable.' Two-thirds said they tend to feel upset
when a soldier dies, while the rest say such deaths are unfortunate
but part of what war is about."
In fact, if you look at the results of the poll, 65% said they feel
upset when a US soldier dies, and 60% said the same about an Iraqi civilian
dying. It's that 35 to 40% we obviously need to be worried about! Meanwhile
77% said the US casualty count was unacceptable, and an identical 77%
said the same about Iraqi civilians. And this is the same group of respondents
that tends to have no idea how many Iraqis have been killed.
If you read further in the poll results, you find that two-thirds of
Americans believe Iraqi civilians oppose "the insurgency."
So, Americans have no idea how many Iraqis have been killed and no idea
what the ones left alive are thinking. Would any Americans lose their
sympathy for Iraqis if they understood that most Iraqis support the
violent defense of their nation? Is there a way to educate Americans
to recognize their nation's crime in aggressively occupying another
country, without in the process diminishing what empathy Americans can
currently manage for the victims they see as their little brothers and
sisters in empire?
It's hard to imagine the US corporate media ever conducting such an
experiment. And this AP poll reveals the extent to which what the corporate
media shuts out and stays shut out. A majority of Americans understand
that this war was based on lies, largely because that fact has slipped
through, here and there, into the media's noise machine. Americans have
no idea what is happening in Iraq, because those facts have not made
it through the filter.
And they won't if George Will has anything to say about it. His new
column attempts to persuade us of the urgent and timely fact that the
Japanese during World War II were human beings. Will draws no connection
to Iraqis today, and avoids any mention of how the U.S. government treated
Japanese Americans during World War II. Nor does Will for a moment question
the acceptability of war and of war on civilians. Rather, he argues
for achieving a higher plain of understanding from which we slaughter
families but feel bad about doing so. However, he does not insist that
we feel bad until some years after the war is over:
"Perhaps empathy for the plight of the common enemy conscript is
a postwar luxury; it certainly is a civilized achievement, an achievement
of moral imagination that often needs the assistance of art. That is
why it is notable that Clint Eastwood's 'Letters From Iwo Jima' was
one of five films nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture."
Having achieved this civilized feat by watching a movie, Will goes on
to reassure the 40% of Americans who find killing civilian non-Americans
acceptable that he's still on their side:
"Japanese forces frequently committed barbarities worse even than
those of the German regular army, and it is difficult to gauge the culpability
of conscripts commanded by barbarians. Be that as it may, the pathos
of the letters humanizes the Japanese soldiers, whose fatalism was a
reasonable response to the irrational. Viewers of this movie, while
moved to pride and gratitude by the valor of the U.S. Marines, will
not feel inclined to cheer."
Cindy Sheehan believes her son was commanded by barbarians. Abu Ghraib,
Haditha, Fallujah: these are the names of unsurpassable barbarities.
If the best we can manage is to refrain from cheering, we have a long
way to go.
David Swanson is the Washington Director of Democrats.com
and of ImpeachPAC.org.
He is co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org
coalition, creator of MeetWithCindy.org,
and a board member of Progressive
Democrats of America, and of the Backbone
Campaign. He was the organizer in 2006 of Camp
Democracy. He serves on the steering committee of the Charlottesville
Center for Peace and Justice and on a working group of United for Peace
and Justice. His website is www.davidswanson.org.