Syrian forces are killing civilians; in Iraq we avoided killing civilians. In 5 years of fighting the insurgencies and terrorists with US forces, the civilian death toll in Iraq was over 100,000. In about 8 months of fighting in a smaller Syria, the death toll is 60,000.
This is astounding:
More than 60,000 people have died in Syria's uprising and civil war, the United Nations said on Wednesday, dramatically raising the death toll in a struggle that shows no sign of ending. ...
U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said in Geneva that researchers cross-referencing seven sources over five months of analysis had listed 59,648 people killed in Syria between March 15, 2011 and November 30, 2012.
Unless it gets much worse, of course. The rate of killing has been accelerating over the last year.
Granted, this includes military and insurgent deaths. I guess we could add 35,000 more dead (going by my memory) to the Iraq total by including coalition, government, and insurgent deaths. Still, we're talking an annual toll in Iraq during the main part of the war of nearly 30,000.
You might ask why it doesn't seem that way from what you see in the news. You remember the death toll of Iraq, after all. The Syrian total is a shock.
The difference is that the news doesn't dwell on the casualties as it did in Iraq and that the Syrian government keeps reporters out of Syria.
One has to wonder if the Syrian press calls it the "increasingly unpopular" Syria War.
I'm not saying that Iraqis didn't suffer tremendous casualties in their war. But we weren't the ones killing civilians, recall. And it pales in comparison to the Syria War. But thank God we didn't "militarize" the conflict, as our Secretary of State warned against doing a year ago in explaining why we wouldn't arm insurgents.
And recall the Libya death toll where we led from behind.
Can it really be said that we are to blame for war death tolls and that things would be better without us? When we seem to be the only major combatant in recent history to take care to avoid civilian deaths? Add in Israel if you don't care about the qualifier I used.
Obviously, I'm not arguing to intervene to save lives. Intervention should still be done when it is in our interests. But I'm tired of being blamed for deaths when our intervention is generally the most humane option when you look at recent history in the region.
UPDATE: I suppose some caution is in order before accepting the amount as absolute. Perhaps this is a The Lancet study, which for Iraq once concluded that 2-3 katrillion Iraqis died in the war, of whom approximately 400% were killed by American bombs.
UPDATE: Yes, Responsibility 2 Protect had a short shelf life, since Syria would seem to scream for that justification to intervene a year or more ago.
Also, as a general lesson, winning fast with overwhelming force rather than dribbling out force in a mis-guided effort to use "proportional" force as if that term means matching enemy actions rather than matching the threat to be defeated is also a way to reduce casualties in the long run.
Although to be fair, we were apparently distracted by Libya at the time.
UPDATE: I corrected the two lines after the quote since I misread the start point for the casualty count. The lines previously read "So that would a rate of 90,000 per year in Syria, extrapolating deaths for a few more months. Unless it gets much worse, of course."
