8. Toward a Just Conclusion

On one point we can agree with UK Defence Minister Adam Ingram: he is right to say that in a military operation the size of the Iraq invasion, civilian loss of life “is unavoidable.” He should only recall that the invasion itself was avoidable, and therefore so too were all of its casualties.

And we must also note here the markedly different meaning given to the concept of ‘avoiding civilian casualties’ when applied to different parts of the world, particularly when it is ‘us’, not ‘them’, who may get in harm’s way:

In mid-November the US launched ‘Operation Iron Hammer‘ in which the bombing of targets within Iraqi towns and cities was resumed. On the 19th AP reported that:

The U.S. Air Force used some of the largest weapons in its inventory to attack targets in central Iraq in an escalating crackdown on suspected guerrilla strongholds, the military said Wednesday.

A pair of 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs were dropped late Tuesday near Baqouba, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, on “camps suspected to have been used for bomb-making,’ said Maj. Gordon Tate, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division.

Near the northern city of Kirkuk, fighter-bombers dropped 1,000-pound bombs on “terrorist targets,” he said without elaborating.

It was unclear whether the airstrikes caused any casualties, Tate said.1

– while by the 22nd the Washington Post was reporting that “Fighter jets have dropped 500-pound bombs in the cities of Samarra, Ba'iji, Balad and Baqouba.”2

On the 23rd of November came a report from the BBC of an almost exactly concurrent and little-noticed event in Europe:

WWII bomb causes Milan evacuation

Italian police evacuated 55,000 people from the centre of Milan while an army bomb disposal team defused an unexploded World War II bomb.

The unexploded 1,000-pound bomb was dropped by the allies during the bombing of Milan in the war.

Shortly after dawn police began evacuating people living within a radius of one kilometre from the building site.

Traffic at one of Europe's busiest railway terminals nearby came to a halt during the bomb disposal operation and all trains were diverted to other parts of the city.

Elderly people and children were taken to local schools and given meals and hot drinks while an army bomb disposal team defused the bomb.

The bomb was successfully defused after about two hours of work.

It will be transported to an underground quarry on the city outskirts where it will be blown up in a controlled explosion.3

The contrast could not be more stark. When the lives of Western European bystanders could be threatened, no effort or expense is spared by Western leaders to prevent a single death, and rightly so. When the lives of Iraqi women and children are at stake, it is a different story. Other priorities suddenly prevail.

Every human death is a tragedy. Every human life snuffed out requires honouring, remembering, grieving, and comforting and supporting the bereaved.

Iraqi civilian deaths were caused by the actions of the US and UK governments, voted for by the elected representatives of these two countries, paid for out of the tax revenues supplied by the citizens of these countries, and undertaken on the back of promises by the political leaders of these two countries that “everything possible” would be done to avoid civilian casualties. These factors place on the people of the USA and the UK an equally sacred duty to record every single resulting Iraqi death, so that none is missed, and none may be forgotten, and the war's true impact may be recognized.

We walked (or were led) blindly into a war for which there was, and still is, no justification. It is time we opened our eyes and discovered the full effect of this terrible mistake on the people of Iraq.

John Sloboda and Hamit Dardagan - Feb 7 2004