MORAL ARMY?

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak responded to world-wide criticism that the recent incursion into Gaza included blatant attacks on civilian women and children and the elderly by saying that “The Israeli Army is the most moral in the world, and I know what I’m talking about because I know what took place in the former Yugoslavia, in Iraq.” In an interview with The New York Times, Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old history graduate student in Jerusalem and a military reservist, said he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed in training discussions before his tank unit entered Gaza in January. “Shoot and don’t worry about the consequences,” was the message from the top commanders, he said.

This morning’s Union-Tribune newspaper in San Diego reported on another war, our very own Iraq War. U-T staff writer Stever Liewer writes, “Six years ago today, Americans sat rapt in front of their televisions as U.S. and allied tanks thundered across Iraq’s dusty frontier. The ensuing weeks of shock and awe brought a tumultuous roll into Baghdad, the fall of President Saddam Hussein and a premature assertion that the Iraq mission was accomplished. In that heady spring of 2003, few expected that nearly 1400,000 U.S. troops -- almost as many as were involved in the invasion -- would still patrol the country six years later. More than 4,200 American military personnel have died in the war."

Nowhere in the U-T story is there mention of the many thousands of Iraqi citizens who have died in the six years since the war began. As a matter of fact, between 91,000 and 100,000 thousand Iraqi civilians have died from violence since the war began. The Iraq Body Count project’s documentary evidence is drawn from crosschecked media reports of violent events leading to the death of civilians, or of bodies being found, and is supplemented by the careful review and integration of hospital, morgue, NGO and official figures.

So, now who wants to be the first to talk about “moral” armies and “moral” war?