The U.S. Government Loved the Iraqi People to Death

by Jacob G. Hornberger
Dec. 08, 2011

Now that the 9-year military occupation of Iraq is presumably coming to an end, it would be appropriate to reflect on the Iraqi people who died as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of the country.

How many Iraqis have died in the process? We don’t know. The reason we don’t know is that the U.S. government did not keep count. Unlike U.S. soldiers killed over there, the Iraqi people were not deemed sufficiently important to keep track of how many were dying.

That cavalier attitude toward the Iraqi dead reflects how U.S. officials have long viewed the Iraqi people — as a substandard, inferior class of human beings whose value is considered secondary compared to, say, Americans or Englishmen.

You’ll recall that after U.S. officials failed to find those infamous WMDs that were supposedly going to be launched by Saddam Hussein on the United States at any minute, the primary purpose of the Iraq invasion and occupation was converted from one of self-defense to one of altruism.

Thus, while the troops and the CIA were initially killing Iraqis (and torturing, sexually abusing, and executing them at Abu Ghraib) under the notion that they were protecting America from an imminent WMD attack, once the WMDs failed to materialize, the troops and the CIA remained in the country, killing countless Iraqis for years afterward under the notion that the United States was bringing democracy to the country.

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