Arthur Veno from Australia sends this review of a new book disscusing the impact of the Iraq invasion and occupation on Iraqi civilians:
Dead bodies don’t count: Civilian casualties and the forgotten costs of the Iraq Conflict written by Richard Hill and Paul Wilson (Zeus Publications, 2007) is an extraordinary book for many reasons.
It is beautifully written for intelligent audiences and, to date is the only explicated and developed critical analysis of the machinations of the remaining world superpower to justify the holocaust occurring in Afghanistan, Iraq and (soon) Iran.
This book pulls no punches and is a gritty and realistic portrayal of events which reveals a disturbing practice – state terrorism. The actions of the neo conservative Christian Right who is in the ‘driving seat’ in the US and its vassals comprising the “coalition of the willing” are shown to be what and who they are. Motivated by both greed and fundamentalist religion, the leaders of the coalition of the willing have utilized their vast publicity machines to insure that the axiom “The first casualty of war is truth” characterizes the current situation.
Of course, exposing the underbelly of the American Empire’s expansion into the mid East is not a pleasant topic. However, this book remains alongside Pilger’s film work as essential reading for a complete understanding of just how far the Empire is willing to go to profit from war. The book left me feeling angry and deeply concerned about our fellow human beings… for both the line soldiers and civilians.
It will, no doubt be one of those classic works which spawns and galvanizes a coherent resistance to the ‘dogs of war’. I believe it to be a ‘must read’ for all those who are and will become resisters to war.
Arthur Veno, Ph.D.
Introduction
The Politics of Death
The terror and ‘collateral damage’ inflicted by governments on civilians leave them just as injured or dead as a terrorist attack would.
Silence plays a key role in the exercise of power. It creates spaces that are occupied by those who seek to assert their views of the world and establish their place in it. Some people therefore possess voices that are powerful and noisy, while others are rendered voiceless, bereft of an opportunity to speak out about their experiences, and seemingly unable to assert their grievances. They become what John Pilger recently referred to as ‘unpeople’—a shadowy population whose identities are stripped away and, in effect, consigned to the distant footnotes of history. This book is about a group of unpeople who have suffered extreme harm and yet received precious little attention from the Western media and virtually none from military or political elites.
The people of Iraq —men, women and children—have experienced considerable pain and suffering over the past few decades. In addition to having endured well over twenty years of brutal dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, they have also borne the brunt of a prolonged and bitter war against Iran, the 1991 Gulf War, several years of UN-imposed sanctions, repeated bombings by US and British forces during the 1990s, and the US-led invasion in 2003 followed by a bloody and protracted period of occupation. Perhaps the most tragic phase of Iraq ’s recent history is this period of occupation because it has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, more often than not at the hands of their own people. A virtual state of civil war has led to unprecedented acts of random killings and tit-for-tat murders in a country torn apart by ethnic and religious rivalry and bloody resistance to military occupation.
What started out in March 2003 as a war of ‘liberation and freedom’ has ended in years of bloodletting, with the prospects for peace and stability becoming increasingly remote. For the people of Iraq , the war and subsequent occupation have resulted in extensive death and injury as well as significant damage and destruction to the environment, economy and society. There is of course nothing new about this—wars and conflicts have always resulted in significant harm to innocent people.
Our primary concern in this book is with the bodily harm as well as the many other personal, social, economic, political and environmental costs of the conflict from March 2003 to late 2006. Additionally, we discuss how the question of civilian casualties has, or has not, been addressed by the instigators of the war, namely the US -led ‘coalition of the willing’. This is a political story about how the world’s leading superpower, along with its acolytes, sought to prosecute a war which many legal experts regarded as both illegal and unjust, and how it proceeded to ignore or play down the issue of civilian casualties. In shrouding this issue in silence the leaders of the coalition were intent, consciously or otherwise, on presenting their role as the benign guardians of Iraqi interests. Yet as is now clear, this sanguine picture has been repeatedly shattered as events have unfolded since March 2003. This apparent tension between image and reality, representation and actuality, is in part a function of war since the victors are almost always able to present a certain sanitised, self-serving view of events.
In attempting to break the official silence over civilian casualties, we are contributing to a view of events that is somewhat at odds with many of the official claims and justifications made by politicians and military leaders. Our aim is to develop a reading of events relating to the second Gulf War that focuses on the lived experiences of ordinary Iraqi people. In so doing we are adding to the growing and important body of literature—much of it written by journalists on the ground in Iraq —that documents some of the realities of war from the perspective of everyday citizens caught up in this calamitous conflict. We also draw on more formal studies of the conflict—usually conducted by non-government organisations, research institutes and centres—that have attempted (bravely at times) to amass evidence on the Iraqi dead and injured. Although our focus is on civilian casualties we do not forget about the thousands of Iraqi, US and other troops who have died or been injured, nor the police officers, security personnel and reconstruction workers who have suffered severely as a result of the ongoing insurgency.
Dead Bodies Don’t Count comprises five chapters, beginning with The Culture of Official Silence that examines the way in which the governments of the ‘coalition of the willing’ have consistently refused to undertake a count of the Iraqi dead and injured. This is followed by a discussion of the term ‘civilian casualties’ and what this means when we take into account the full consequences of war on civilian populations. In Chapter 2, Counting the Casualties, we discuss the specific context of Iraq and summarise findings from key international studies on the nature and extent of casualties that have resulted from the invasion and subsequent occupation. Chapter 3, Beyond the Body Bags, builds on this account by arguing for a more comprehensive view of the harm done to the Iraqi people. Specifically, we examine the personal, social, environmental, economic and political implications of the conflict and what this means for the present and future challenges faced by those caught up in a bloody battle. Chapter 4, Media Spin, Media Silence, discusses the ways in which the US-led coalition has responded, or not, to the question of civilian harm and how they have represented their own position in relation to the conflict. We examine the implications of the official refusal to conduct a body count and how this has given rise to competing explanatory narratives. In the final chapter, Breaking the Silence, we discuss the political implications stemming from public knowledge about the harm experienced by the Iraqi people as a result of the ongoing conflict.
We argue that the resounding silence over Iraqi victims is in fact symptomatic of various exclusionary processes that underscore relationships between the powerful and the subjugated, and that this relationship is characterised by narratives that emphasise one account over others, and which ultimately seek to legitimate the actions of the victor. However, in the case of Iraq the attempt by the powerful to sanitise the war, to render it ‘clean’ and ‘swift’, have gradually crumbled in the face of evidence of widespread atrocities. Such accounts have brought into sharp relief the gulf between official claims and the lived realities of the Iraqi people. In acknowledging the pain and suffering of ordinary Iraqis we insist on the necessity of taking seriously the consequences of war and recognising fully the rights of non-combatants under provisions contained in the Geneva Convention and Hague protocols.
If this book achieves anything, it is to draw greater attention to the central role that international law, conventions and protocols should play in determining relations between countries, especially during times of tension. These legislative measures have been put into place to ensure the protection of various legal and civil rights of innocent people and that capricious decision-making on the part of the victors is kept to a minimum. In challenging the official silence about death and injury, harm and destruction, we wish to highlight the consequences of war including the deaths and injuries suffered by coalition troops since the time of the invasion.