I am continually astonished at the lack of overt empathy over the fate of countless innocent Iraqi citizens who are enduring an onslaught of violence that appears to be spiralling out of control. While it is common for U.S. media coverage to highlight families of U.S. military personnel who are paying the ultimate price with their lives, I cannot help but wonder why the vastly greater numbers of Iraqi deaths (at least 600,000 according to a number of reputable sources), if alluded to at all, are usually mentioned as a subtext to the U.S. deaths.
If one accepts, as I think any reasonable person today must accept, that the trigger to the present chaos in Iraq was the U.S.’s deliberate invasion of that sovereign country, then we bear the burden of responsibility for the deaths of so many innocent Iraqi men, women, and children. And yet, the media is systematically failing to attach a human face to what is essentially a hecatomb for large numbers of the Iraqi population. Our newspapers are full of sorrowful accounts of family members of young U.S. military recruits who have lost their lives for their cited ideals of ‘’defending their country’’, but where are the ‘’up close and personal’’ descriptions of the infinite depths of grief suffered by at least a few of the thousands of Iraqi mothers and fathers who are paying the ultimate price by losing their sons and daughters due to this immoral, criminal invasion perpetrated by the Bush Administration? At the very least, U.S. military recruits demonstrate a measure of free will in signing up to serve, but the Iraqi people were allowed no voice in approving the invasion into their country which has led to such wide scale, tragic loss of life, just as much of the world’s population ominously forewarned.
In addition, if the U.S. population is to buy into one of the professed presidential reasons for invading Iraq, ‘’to promote democracy’’, it would suggest that the well-being of the Iraqi people is foremost in our thoughts. Then why aren’t we showing the signs of outrage over their deaths that this concern would dictate? Acting out of sincere concern for another individual or group which has had no voice in a given action makes it imperative that we act to ensure that no harm befall that group as a consequence of our actions. And yet, not only has devastation been inflicted on the population our government has claimed to help, but our press has actively suppressed reporting of the true human scale of this unfolding tragedy.
In the past couple of weeks there have been two incidents reported in the press of suicide bombers detonating themselves outside universities in Iraq resulting in the horrendous deaths of dozens of young female students. Why aren’t the leading U.S. newspapers and TV reports filled with details about these young people whose lives were so tragically and abruptly ended? Shouldn’t we know more about these irreparable human losses, if we are so concerned about transforming their society into a democratic one? What do the surviving parents and relatives think about the U.S. military presence and recent escalation? And finally, what does the silence of our media tell us about whether our aims are truly linked to altruistic ‘democracy building’?
To ignore the Iraqi features of the human face in this Middle East debacle gives us our answer.
Kirsten M. Hummel is a professor of linguistics at Université Laval in Québec, Canada, with a personal interest in highlighting the human cost of war.
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