THINKING FOR OURSELVES

Dominating the Discussion

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, Dec. 9-15,2007

This administration understands the power of words to erode our capacity for thought. By focusing the framework for public discussion on single, carefully-chosen questions, it restricts and limits the public debate. The mainstream media goes along with this narrow framing, seamlessly reporting the administration’s perspective with barely a comment that the perspective itself is constantly shifting.

The latest focus is the “surge” and its success. The basic line from the administration is “See, we’ve got it right.” Troops increased. Violence is down. Let’s stay in Iraq.

There are many things wrong with this claim, as with the administration’s previous claims. But progressive forces join the debate on the administration’s terms, pointing out the flaws; and within days the public is lost in arguments about the surge, the methods of counting, the cooking of the books. In the twists and turns of these arguments, the administration dominates the discussion, deciding what we talk about, how we talk about it, and keeping us from discussing larger questions.

The most difficult questions we face are around the violence we have allowed to happen in our name. We are committing mass murder. We, the people, have allowed and are allowing crimes against humanity rarely seen even in the last bloody century.

Last month, almost unnoticed in the mainstream media, the group Just Foreign Policy estimated that the invasion of Iraq and its occupation by the U.S. have killed 1,118,846 people.

This estimate is based on figures originally developed from a study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The study, which found that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation, was published in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, in October 2006. Denounced by the Bush administration and quickly lost to the back pages, it was widely praised in the scientific community. The report methodology has been called "robust" and "close to best practice" by Sir Roy Anderson, the chief scientific advisor to Britain's Ministry of Defense.

Since this report the Iraqi people have suffered increasing violence not only among themselves but from increased U.S. military strikes, especially from the air.

In an effort to bring the cost of this war and occupation to the world. the British research polling agency Opinion Research Business, following up on the original Lancet methodology and the Just Foreign Policy estimate, has extrapolated a figure of 1.2 million deaths in Iraq.

"The scale of death caused by the British and U.S. governments,” observed the veteran Australian-born journalist John Pilger, “may well have surpassed that of the Rwanda genocide, making it the biggest single act of mass murder of the late 20th century and the 21st century."

Over the last five years the Bush administration has focused our attention on weapons of mass destruction, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, voting, constitution-making, the surge, and returning refugees.

But it has used each of these to keep us from facing the hard truth that in the name of our security we have killed more than a million people by illegally invading and occupying a country that was no threat to us.

We, the people, need to refocus the public debate. It is about war and power. It is about the U.S. president ordering an unprovoked first strike on another nation. This crime has implicated all of us. Now, we the people, must find a way to peace.

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