Victims of circumstance
The U.S. faces some tough choices as the civilian toll grows in Iraq
Inside his Baghdad office, Iraq's deputy health minister scans a tally of Iraqis killed and injured in the last months. He whistles under his breath. "It's terrifying. It's terrible," says Ammar al-Saffar as he looks up from the paper and shakes his head. "A year ago it was difficult for me to look at the shattered body of a victim. Now, it's part of my routine."
The sheet in al-Saffar's hands shows 1,811 dead from June 10 to September 10, including 516 Iraqis civilians killed in terror attacks and 1,295 Iraqis dead as the result of military clashes between insurgents and Americans. To that count al-Saffar will have to add the toll of the last days: 13 people, including children and a journalist, killed in Baghdad during a September 12 clash over a disabled Bradley fighting vehicle; 67 civilians killed in a weekend of terror attacks; 20 Iraqis, at least some civilians, killed in a September 13 airstrike on Fallujah; and 47 dead from a car bomb outside a police station the next day. The days go by; the list grows longer.
Amassed from reports by the health department's provincial offices and the press, the official numbers are surely incomplete. And, of course, it is nearly impossible for Americans to tell who among the dead were members of the insurgency and who were innocents. But Iraqi officials--and the Iraqi public--have no doubt that between growing numbers of terrorist attacks and collateral damage from American strikes, civilians are dying at a faster pace than ever before in the conflict.
It is hard to overstate the problem these deaths pose for American officials when it comes to winning Iraqi hearts and minds. The accidental killing of women, children, and bystanders has repeatedly angered Iraqis and is turning the public against America and fueling the insurgency. At the same time, the insurgency's growing strength has thrust the war back to the fore in the U.S. presidential race. Last week, details leaked of the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, which forecast a troubled future for Iraq. That assessment may have given John Kerry the campaign issue he's been looking for as he quickly charged that President Bush has not told the nation the truth about Iraq. The Bush campaign shot back that Iraq was on the path to democracy and Kerry's views were too pessimistic (story, Page 28).
For the U.S. military, Iraq is increasingly feeling like a Catch-22: U.S. forces get criticized when they fail to stop attacks by insurgents and terrorists--and blamed for the civilian deaths that occur when they do go after them. The Arab satellite channels amplify the situation by focusing relentlessly on civilian deaths. When one of its own reporters was killed on camera last week by an American helicopter, the Al Arabiya network repeatedly showed his final, heartbreaking cry, "Please help me, I am dying."
In Iraq, where conspiracy theories abound, many believe the American superpower is omnipotent and so U.S. forces could avoid the collateral damage, clamp down on street crime, and end the terror attacks--if only they wanted to. "The majority of people blame the Americans for creating this crisis in order to stay longer and longer in Iraq," says Majid Salim, a Baghdad talk radio host.
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