Iraq: Heartwarming stories no substitute for serious discussion

Yes, look in their eyes. (Look deeply.)

By WILLIAM F. DAVNIE, StarTribune.com

William F. Davnie is a retired Foreign Service officer who served in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from April through July 2007.

March 28, 2008

Katherine Kersten chirpily tells us in her March 23 column that the U.S. effort in Iraq is worth it because of "the look in his eyes" -- the eyes of an Iraqi interpreter who has been forced to leave his country and seek refuge in Minnesota. To be precise, she quotes an American officer telling us it's worth it because of the look in the Iraqi's eyes, but I have to assume she agrees. To which I ask:

• What would we say about the Iraq campaign if we looked into the eyes of the 2 million Iraqi refugees forced into neighboring lands, where their welcome has quickly worn thin? Or into the eyes of the additional 2 million Iraqis who are refugees within their own country, and therefore are called, in the tender words of international humanitarian law, "Internally Displaced Persons"? (As a proportion of population, these numbers would be like 50 million Americans.)

• What we would say about the Iraq campaign if we looked into the (dead) eyes of the (bare minimum) 80,000 Iraqi civilians who have died in the course of the five years of our military presence in that land? I know, only a small portion of that number were killed by U.S. forces -- terrorists did more damage -- but they are dead nonetheless. And spare me the claim of how awful it was under Saddam. It was awful, but the death rate was far below what it has been for the past five years. (Again, in proportion, we would be talking about nearly a million Americans.)

• What if we looked into the eyes of our children and grandchildren -- and their grandchildren -- who will be paying for this war? This war was so important to our security that we had to initiate it over significant domestic and international objection -- but not quite important enough to pay for out of current income. So not only its direct costs, not only its indirect health costs, but even its interests costs will be borne by future taxpayers.

(Continued here.)