Collateral Damage

Collateral Damage

"Collateral Damage". Such a sad, unkind, non-feeling term that trivializes the lives of one, tens, hundreds, or thousands of people. Donald Rumsfeld felt comfortable coining the civilian lives lost during this Iraqi conflict in the name of spreading "freedom" and "democracy" collateral damage. Research has revealed that during all conflicts between WWII and today, 90% of the casualties have been civilians, in addition to the countless injured that will never be recorded, and lost to the inattentiveness of history. If these civilians are collateral damage, then what is the real goal of this conflict? The phony assertion regarding WMD's that it turns out were nowhere to be found - and were never there - could no longer hold water. So George W Bush decided to reinvent his focus as being on the outing of the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein, and all of the death, poverty, and inhumanity he was raining on his people. While it's true that Saddam Hussein's ruling style was a far cry from the Noblesse Oblige of France in the 19th century, it turns out the war from democracy in Iraq is against the people instead of on their behalf. It's a sad state of affairs when a population that supposedly "welcomed us as liberators", and was to be a bastion of democracy in the "evil" Muslim Middle East, must pay for the sins of their ousted leader with the lives of 650,000. On a side note, it is interesting to recognize the correlations between present-day United States and Germany under the Third Reich. Both regimes use fear as their motivational tool to create nationalism and revolutionary apathy. Also borne of this fear is the retraction of individual rights and freedoms in the name of necessity and national security. Another characterization of Nazi Germany that the United States espouses is the idea that we are "right" and that those against us are "wrong"; and we will triumph in the end because of this fact. Much of the world - especially the Islamic world - views the present-day United States in much the same way as the world views Nazi Germany; imperialistic, nationalistic, close-minded, and hungry to expand their empire in an attempt at global domination. Although the means are quite different - the United States using clandestine methods while Germany used genocide and open conquest - the ends are eerily similar.