"100,000 deaths haven't gone away"

As we approach the wonderful day when Iraqis gratefully see the dawn of democracy in their country, it would be fitting to remember, as Daniel Davies does at Crooked Timber, that the Lancet study has not gone away, nor has it been debunked.

Because the fundamental point that Roberts makes in the article is absolutely correct; it is a far greater disgrace that 100,000 people1 can be needlessly killed and everybody carries on as they were before. You don’t have to accept an entirely consequentialist view of wars to accept that the consequences of wars have to be relevant to assessing whether they’ve succeeded or not. The best evidence that we have is that the consequences of this one were bloody disastrous. And as far as I’m aware, the list of war supporters who have seriously engaged with the possibility that this war was a failure numbers two; Marc Mullholland and Norman Geras. Marc mentions the Lancet specifically and ends up worried about his previous position; Norm doesn’t and doesn’t. If you know of any other examples, I’d be very grateful. But I honestly think, that’s it.

Other than that, the response in the world of weblogs has been exactly the same as the rest of the media; in the immediate aftermath of the report, half-assed attempts to rubbish the survey, or links to same. Then, when this didn’t work, just pretend that it’s all been dealt with and move on. Maybe say “I’ll get back to you on that” and never do. After a few months of this concerted inattention, many pro-war voices have even decided it was safe to use the old slogan “well Iraq is certainly a better place because we got rid of Saddam”, when this claim is quite obviously highly debatable (just like “of course the world is a safer place because we got rid of Saddam” …)

Whether or not one supports the war, whether or not one believes the voting that takes place will be a successful turning point in this gruesome conflict (unlike all of the other "turning points" that have been hyped thus far), and whether or not one is confident that Iraqis can shake off one hundred years of colonialism, monarchy, and despotism to become a beacon of democracy in the middle east, our collective shrugging off the death and suffering we have brought down around the ears of Iraqis is shameful, disheartening, but, I'm afraid, not surprising.

The fact that left wing, anti-war voices have generally ignored the Lancet study just as assiduously as the freepers indicates just how far we have lurched to the Right in this country, and just how far removed we are from the very people we're supposed to be "liberating."

And no, I am not shrugging off the price American soldiers are paying every day for this grand experiment in democracy-building either.

We have lost our moral bearings. I realize that Bush's day of accountability has passed, but it is amazing how quickly we have become desensitized to the horrors daily coming out of Iraq.