The Clipboard: Pause to remember deaths of Iraqis, too

From an article¹:

Do dead Iraqi civilians get a Memorial Day, too?

I am talking about people such as 19-year-old Farah al-Janabi. She lived with her family in an apartment near Baghdad. Farah took her last breaths right after U.S. soldiers came knocking at the door.

I am talking about Muhammad al-Qubaisi. Muhammad, just 12, and his siblings liked to go to the roof during the hot Iraq summers. He was bringing bedding of his brothers to the roof when members of the 82nd Airborne saw what they thought to be a weapon and fired a lethal shot.

I'm talking about 14-year-old Zaid al-Rubai, who was riding in a car driven by his brother. They were on their way to pick up food when U.S. forces loosed gunfire on them.

The three deaths -- among several documented and investigated by Human Rights Watch -- are but a few of the countless stories from the war in Iraq -- the untold stories.

Civilian fatalities involving Iraqis are reduced to faceless, nameless numbers. Few Americans seem to care. (link)

Read more about some of the Iraqi civilians who have been killed here.

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Complete text of the article, Pause to remember deaths of Iraqis, too, by Robert L. Jamieson, Jr.

Do dead Iraqi civilians get a Memorial Day, too?

I am talking about people such as 19-year-old Farah al-Janabi. She lived with her family in an apartment near Baghdad. Farah took her last breaths right after U.S. soldiers came knocking at the door.

I am talking about Muhammad al-Qubaisi. Muhammad, just 12, and his siblings liked to go to the roof during the hot Iraq summers. He was bringing bedding of his brothers to the roof when members of the 82nd Airborne saw what they thought to be a weapon and fired a lethal shot.

I'm talking about 14-year-old Zaid al-Rubai, who was riding in a car driven by his brother. They were on their way to pick up food when U.S. forces loosed gunfire on them.

The three deaths -- among several documented and investigated by Human Rights Watch -- are but a few of the countless stories from the war in Iraq -- the untold stories.

Civilian fatalities involving Iraqis are reduced to faceless, nameless numbers. Few Americans seem to care.

Conservatively speaking, the tally of Iraqi civilians killed by insurgents or the American military since the U.S.-led coalition marched into Iraq two years ago lies between 6,000 and 25,000.

Other counts put the figure as high as 100,000.

Victims such as Farah and Muhammad and Zaid are the flip side of the conflict's toll.

The U.S. side we know more about: soldiers such as Army 2nd Lt. Ben Colgan of Kent, Army Pfc. Andrew Martin Ward of Seattle, and other brave men and women we honor today for giving their lives in battles past and present.

U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq -- the figure stands at more than 1,600 -- get their names in the paper, even as their deaths blur in the public mind.

Dead Iraqi civilians get no attention at all. They get a hole in the ground.

Politicians in Washington, D.C., like to call the Iraqi victims "collateral damage," which is an awful misnomer. Such a clinical phrase doesn't do the deaths justice.

While most American soldiers are not deliberately targeting Iraqi civilians, the open question is whether the U.S. military is doing enough to minimize harm. Human Rights Watch is concerned about overly aggressive U.S. military tactics, indiscriminate shooting by soldiers in residential places and a quick reliance on lethal force -- all reasonable concerns.

The grief and sorrow Iraqi families feel when their loved ones are killed is no less powerful than the pain American families reel from when sons, daughters, mothers and fathers come home in flag-draped caskets.

Hardly anyone tracks collateral suffering.

Farah's family heard loud knocks and demands to open the front door. "We thought it was looters or criminals because we heard only Arabic," reported Farah's 16-year-old brother, Harun.

The family kept an assault rifle for protection. Because Farah's father was not home at the time, her brother fired a shot to scare away the looters.

The looters weren't looters but American soldiers looking for bad guys.

The soldiers claimed gunfire came through the door. They burst inside as Farah hid in the kitchen. A soldier tossed a grenade. Farah succumbed to her injuries.

Human Rights Watch concluded that ballistics evidence at the scene "does not support the claim that U.S. soldiers took fire from inside the apartment and from the roof." That "puts into question the military's assertion that the raid was strictly by the book," the organization said.

Remember Muhammad, the kid on the rooftop? Loved ones rushed to help him after he was shot. "We brought Muhammad downstairs and he was bleeding," his mother later told human rights investigators. "I held him."

U.S. soldiers insist the boy had an AK-47. "Soldiers determined the situation was hostile and engaged," a U.S. military spokesman said.

Other people claimed soldiers confused Muhammad's bedding for a weapon.

War muddies many things, so conflicting accounts about what happened to Iraqi civilian victims are understandable. I chose to present a sampling of stories that aren't black-and-white cases of military abuse or of civilian wrongdoing, but like much of life, gray.

What is less understandable -- and indefensible -- is the callousness Iraqis allege occurs in encounters with the U.S. military. For example, neighbors tried to take the wounded Muhammad to the hospital, but U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint would not let them through. Soldiers said a curfew was coming. Muhammad died in the streets.

Young Zaid was in a gray Chevrolet Malibu when bullets riddled the car. Just before the gunfire, Zaid's 16-year-old brother, who was driving, said he was told it was safe to drive down a certain road, so long as he drive slowly and stopped when ordered. "We started driving slowly toward the Americans, preparing to stop," the teen later told human rights officials. "Soldiers were hidden on both sides of the street -- we could not see them."

Shots strafed the car. "When the shooting started, I lowered my head," the young driver said, "so I lost control of the car."

The car rolled to a rest. Zaid was dead. A U.S. military statement said, "The forces fired on the vehicle when it did not slow down at the checkpoint and started to run the barriers, appearing to be hostile."

The government always seems to have an explanation for why the people we are supposed to be helping in Iraq -- our brothers and sisters in democracy -- are dying at the hands of U.S. soldiers who risk and lose their own lives.

Today, we remember Americans who perished in war. We cannot ignore dead Iraqi civilians.

Memorial Day is about us. And them.

reference=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/226309_robert30.html?source=rss