Body Counts: 2000, 1000, 1000 - differences in class
Robert Zaller
Issue date: 10/21/05 Section: Ed-Op
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Very shortly, the American death toll in Iraq will reach 2000. It stood at 139 the day George W. Bush played Captain Marvel on the flight deck of the Abraham Lincoln and announced that "major combat operations" in Saddam Hussein's erstwhile republic of fear were over. It's those minor, pesky combat operations that seem to be the rub.
Two thousand American dead, and counting. An unknown number of Iraqi dead-five figures? six?-but nobody's counting. In the republic of the dead, not all are equal. A dead American is a hero. We learn his name, we see his picture and we meet his grieving family. (Sometimes the mothers linger too long on camera, like Cindy Sheehan. People should know when to move on.)
Iraqi dead are something different. They are counted if killed in combat operations-counted, not sorted. Twenty dead in this operation, thirty in that. (Have you noticed that the body count, that staple of the Vietnam War, has made its unlovely return?)
But civilians are no good to count-a baby here, a grandmother there. Even heroes don't want credit for those. So they are lumped in, with bridges and oil wells, as collateral damage. To be collateral damage is not quite the same as being dead. It's more like being no longer alive: or, more accurately, never having had the value of being alive. Not as dead Americans do.
Sometime soon, too-between November and January, in all probability-the thousandth American since Gregg v. Georgia reinstated the death penalty will meet the needle, noose, gas chamber, chair or firing squad. (It's almost always the needle these days; less fuss, less blood and less smell.) The government doesn't keep tabs on these dead, at least not for public consumption.
The body count is courtesy of private organizations like the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty or the Death Penalty Information Center. It includes women, minors, the retarded and the insane. It also, almost certainly, includes the innocent.
Two thousand American dead, and counting. An unknown number of Iraqi dead-five figures? six?-but nobody's counting. In the republic of the dead, not all are equal. A dead American is a hero. We learn his name, we see his picture and we meet his grieving family. (Sometimes the mothers linger too long on camera, like Cindy Sheehan. People should know when to move on.)
Iraqi dead are something different. They are counted if killed in combat operations-counted, not sorted. Twenty dead in this operation, thirty in that. (Have you noticed that the body count, that staple of the Vietnam War, has made its unlovely return?)
But civilians are no good to count-a baby here, a grandmother there. Even heroes don't want credit for those. So they are lumped in, with bridges and oil wells, as collateral damage. To be collateral damage is not quite the same as being dead. It's more like being no longer alive: or, more accurately, never having had the value of being alive. Not as dead Americans do.
Sometime soon, too-between November and January, in all probability-the thousandth American since Gregg v. Georgia reinstated the death penalty will meet the needle, noose, gas chamber, chair or firing squad. (It's almost always the needle these days; less fuss, less blood and less smell.) The government doesn't keep tabs on these dead, at least not for public consumption.
The body count is courtesy of private organizations like the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty or the Death Penalty Information Center. It includes women, minors, the retarded and the insane. It also, almost certainly, includes the innocent.
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