is every iraqi murder committed by the west?

Norm quotes from an interview with Christopher Hitchens:

I have nothing but contempt for humanitarian peaceniks... They blame the death toll on anybody but the murderers.

Even smart people like Johann Hari regularly throw about the "fact" that America's war on Iraq has killed 1.2 million people. Not only is this is a wild exaggeration, empirically speaking, but its straightforward assignation of culpability is, to say the least, deeply problematic.

When, in 2010, a Shi-ite death squad intoxicated by its own dark but highly developed ideology sends a bomb-packed van into a crowded market, do we blame the resulting forty Iraqi deaths on America and Britain? Apparently we do. I prefer to blame it, mostly, on the people what done it.

You might even detect the traces of a colonial mindset in those who blame every Iraqi murder of Iraqis on Americans; a worldview in which the only actors in this tragedy worthy of being assigned intentions and ideologies and responsibilities are Western - whereas Iraqis are merely reactors, helpless pawns in our game.

Comments

[twitter.com/nikshah]

I'm guessing, however, that if we hadn't invaded, Saddam would not have massacred as many Iraqis as have died in the ensuing violence? Obviously we can't be sure of this, but before the invasion, Iraq was a stable, if repressive regime, with terrible punishments inflicted on a small minority of the population. For many years afterward, it was a bloodbath. We removed the forces that kept latent violence in check, and created the spaces for militias to flourish. Of course the murderers are still the ones who pull the trigger. But the murders would not have happened without our intervention.

What matters is what purpose we have in assigning blame. If we are looking to prosecute Bush and Blair for every Iraqi death, then that is a legal as well as a moral absurdity. If, however, we are trying to assess the consequences of our invasion, it is perfectly relevant to consider people killed by non-coalition forces as part of the total account. This has to be relevant if we are to learn from historical experience, surely?

[Ian Leslie]

Yes I see your point, and it's a tricky question. But when somebody murders people, it's a good rule of thumb to blame the murderer. Otherwise, where do you stop? If France hadn't screwed Germany over so spectacularly at Versailles then Nazism would have got much purchase. But I wouldn't blame the millions of deaths in WWII on the French. Tempting though it is.