RE: editorial: MPs and Syria: in the shadow of Iraq
Dear Guardian editors
This editorial claims that the “shadow of Iraq” “looms large” over the debate about Syria.
However, in the most important way, that is not true at all. In the most important way, the shadow of the Iraq war has been invisible.
According to a ComRes poll conducted in May of this year, 59% of the UK public believe that 10,000 Iraqis or less (civilians and combatants combined) died as a result of the war. In 2007, a similar AP poll in the USA produced the same results.
As you should know, the death toll from the war in actually in the hundreds of thousands and could possibly be over a million.
Would western politicians ever be able to invoke concern about civilians to justify war were it not for this astounding level of ignorance?
Who is responsible for that ignorance?
When has the Guardian even reported the ComRes poll, much less written an editorial on its implications?
When has any UK newspaper?
A horrific pattern keeps repeating itself. Western politicians invoke concerns about civilians in foreign countries in order to justify bombing them, but the concerns evaporate after the bombing ends. The politicians then move on to new targets invoking the same excuses.
A free press would make such murderous cynicism impossible.
Joe Emersberger
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