There will be an anti-war protest on the Drillfield tomorrow at 5 p.m. on the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
Critics should ask why.
Let's examine the current state of the Iraq War. We must examine current conditions because the previous, necessary rationale that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was an imminent threat has been well documented as false.
We should look at the facts. The two most authoritative estimates of violent deaths because of the war are more than 600,000 through 2006 (according to the Lancet medical journal study) and more than one million through 2007 (Opinion Research Business survey). Out of a population of 27 million, two million more are now refugees, and five million more are orphans.
Although these numbers should preface any article on the war, they are virtually never reported. And with good reason - killing a million people is wrong, and the American people wouldn't stand for it. According to Reporters Without Borders, Iraq ranks 158th out of 173 countries in the Press Freedom Index.
What has changed since we magnanimously removed Saddam Hussein, who himself was a monstrous, genocidal dictator? Infant mortality rates, life expectancy, homelessness, ethnic violence and all social services (except for electrocution in a few areas of the country) are worse. Unemployment has stayed the same - at about 25 percent, or American Great Depression levels.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that some refugees have experienced state-sponsored rape. Seventy percent of Iraqi doctors have fled.
The Iraqi surplus rests in U.S. and European banks, the state oil and banking sectors partially sold to foreign investors. This is the extent of our magnificence: Iraq has been destroyed. Therefore, supporters of the Iraq War must look beyond facts to vacuous political slogans designed to quell dissent.
We can dismiss rhetoric about "freedom," "democracy" and so on. Iraq has become a classic American client democracy. The principal opposition, Hussein's Ba'ath Party, has been banned from running in elections.
Furthermore, the parties that win don't have autonomy. (To be fair, regional autonomy has increased in Iraqi Kurdistan. However, Kurds also don't get their top wish - independence.) Elections to choose between various factions of a regime that can't force out the brutal occupiers mean little.
The New York Times reported on Feb. 23 that five of six Iraqi widows don't receive the government widow stipend ($50 per month plus $12 per child). As a response to this inconvenience, the government is starting "a campaign to arrest beggars and the homeless, including war widows."
The phrase "support our troops" is usually used to do exactly the opposite. More than 4,000 American soldiers have died. The rate of soldier suicides is at the highest level ever recorded.
Ninety-five percent of veterans don't receive full benefits and other reliable job opportunities are dwindling. People who support our troops would undoubtedly want to do anything possible to end the war.
John McCain correctly criticized Barack Obama for failing to acknowledge "the surge worked." Obama, playing the anti-war candidate, couldn't acknowledge it because he didn't know what the surge was.
Everybody knows that the surge was an increase in troops. But it was primarily a shift in tactics: Petraeus ordered the troops to stop fighting as much. American troops stayed in their bases and newly-created outposts.
We also gave some Iraqis jobs (albeit as mercenaries). Any kindergartener knows that if you stop hurting people, they will probably stop hurting you. Petraeus deserves every credit for his ingenious subterfuge, which slightly improved a hideous situation.
However, the surge also walled off neighborhoods ethnically. Petraeus was allowed to implement his strategy in Iraq because of the success of his strategy in Mosul.
In Mosul his walls cut down violence in the short term. Now Mosul is the site of the most brutal ethnic cleansing of Christians in the entire world. And, as of Feb. 28, Mosul's "streets are among the most dangerous in the country," according to the New York Times.
Obama has barely improved upon George Bush's strategy. Obama has already reneged on his campaign promise to remove all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months.
He now says they will be removed in 19 months, leaving 35,000 to 50,000 troops to provide security.
The New York Times trumpeted "Iraq Withdrawal Plan Gains GOP Support," including from McCain - perhaps because it is not a plan or a withdrawal. In the recently submitted budget, Pentagon spending will "change" by rising 2 percent to $534 billion.
"The invasion was a mistake, but we have to deal with the situation at hand." When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, did people call on the Soviets to "deal with the situation at hand?"
We rightly called for an immediate withdrawal and insertion of a UN peacekeeping force in addition to paying massive reparations. Why is the American invasion of Iraq any different?
Hypocrites are people who refuse to apply the same standards to themselves that they apply to others. For those who use this slogan, the American invasion is justified because we did it.
"Saddam used chemical weapons on his own people." When Iraq actually had and used chemical weapons in the 1980s, the United States helped our friend Saddam with photographic intelligence to judge the efficacy of these attacks. He was executed for crimes he committed in 1982 - the year America took Iraq off the list of terrorist states.
"Iraq will be better off now than it was before America invaded it." This is not a serious statement. Meaninglessly, France is better off now than it was before Germany invaded it.
The rationale, "facts" and political slogans used by supporters of the Iraq War aid in the traditional mission of supporting state violence for economic gain.
For those who reject this doctrine, there will be a protest on the Drillfield tomorrow at 5 p.m.