For years we have known that the estimated number of Iraqis who died due to U.S. sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s was at least ½ million. These deaths occurred while Bill Clinton the Democrat was president. We’ve also read the Lancet study estimating that more than 600,000 Iraqis have died since we occupied their nation in March 2003. According to the June 2003 issue of Air Force Magazine (48-53) during the Gulf War of 1991 the estimates for Iraqi deaths ranged from 1,000 to 50,000. Human Rights Watch has estimated the number at 2,500 to 3,000. 293 Americans are estimated to have died in the Gulf War.

American body counters apparently do not tally up the number of nationals we kill when we invade and occupy a country, which is why we can only estimate the appalling number of Iraqi dead. For this reason I must estimate conservatively that the U.S. government has been responsible for, either directly or indirectly, the deaths of well over 1,000,000 Iraqis and nearly 4,000 American and allied military personnel in the past 16 years.

These numbers are important. They are important because most of the Iraqis killed were civilians. We are asking our military personnel, most of them under the age of 25, many still teenagers, to go to Iraq and, for the most part, kill civilians.

I have to believe that our government hopes we won’t do the math. George Bush asked us to go shopping a couple of days after the attacks of September 11, 2001. He also asked us to go shopping right before Christmas of 2006. That’s because as long as we are in the mall, shopping and consuming, we won’t be thinking about the more than one million Iraqis and nearly 4,000 Americans who have died over the past decade and a half.

We Americans seem to have a schizophrenic relationship with the rest of the world. On the one hand we like to reach out and help those in need, those who are beset by adversity, the underdog. At the same time we sit on our hands and do nothing while our government kills, or helps kill, over a million people in a country that never harmed us.

We stare blankly when someone mentions the occupation of Iraq. We speak meaningless euphemisms when someone dares to mention the dead Iraqis and the dead Americans. When the parent of a dead soldier, like me, starts to talk about our loss, our anguish, the unfairness of what our government has done, people avert their eyes, gulp, take a breath, nod and then change the subject. Didn’t we learn anything from our failed invasion and occupation of Vietnam? Do we think that we’ll wake up one morning and the infamy of Iraq will have been a dream.

Every Sunday I read the obituaries of military personnel reported killed by the Department of Defense for the prior week. It is painful to do this. Sunday, January 28 there were 40 obituaries. This act of tribute to the Americans killed makes me think about my own loss and remember what it felt like in the first hours, days and weeks after my son was killed. My heart hurts for the families. I do it because we must remember the dead and I’m not sure Americans are aware that people are dying daily in Iraq, otherwise we would stop the madness.

I’m afraid we’re not thinking about the ruin we have brought to Iraq. I’m afraid that in the end all the Iraqis we have killed and maimed, all the soldiers, marines, airmen and seamen we have caused to be killed and maimed will be simply numbers – part of the mathematical equations of war. Statistics.

The very least we can do is remember with humanity and respect the faceless, nameless Iraqis on whom we have declared war for no apparent reason and upon whom we have rained terror and death. The least we can do is keep alive in our hearts and in our minds the dead Americans whose names we will see in print each week, then probably forget as we head out to the mall.

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