The Sacred Body-count

3223 US soldiers have died in Iraq so far!

Terrible! Shocking! That's over three thousand families that are mourning a direct relative, and many more mourning those losses. And that's a good reason not to go to war, and a good reason to get out and end the war. But we need to get past that. Maybe as a non-American I don't care about US troops as much as Americans might. But the reason to stop war cannot be because of the deaths of US soldiers alone.

Much more important is the deaths of over, as a recent estimate said, 2 million Iraqi people. That includes men, women and children. That's a lot more devastated families, and a lot of families that have been completely annihilated. This is a much bigger reason to stop war. The total death count tells much more about the war. And given the Iraq war, and indeed all recent wars, are just the games of the rich, selfish and greedy 'elite', that's a lot of innocent people who have been sacrificed to them, a lot of blood on their hands. The Bush Management (I refuse to call them an 'administration' - those involved are corporation heads who are masquerading as politicians and are working solely for the good of themselves and their corporations) has so far played a game that has killed over 2 million people, and they have played this game in a similar manner to how one might play a game of chess - sacrificing as many pawns as necessary in order to protect (and secure) the king (fuck the queen, she's replaceable).

But the move from counting US deaths to counting total human deaths is becoming more and more important. In a recent article in Harpers magasine, the 'Coming Robot Army' was discussed. The result of robot warfare is that it ceases to be warfare at all and merely becomes 'target practice'. In the world of robot warfare, there will be even less US deaths, and even more potential for killing, even more mistakes. The 3000 vs. 2000000 will become more like 100 vs. 6000000. Or worse. And the traditional cry of "Bring home our troops" will not be heard, partly because so few are dying, and partly because most of them will be home playing the computer 'game' of target practice. Oh, and by the way, they are not ever 'our' troops. They are the troops who belong to the unaccountable multinational corporations by proxy of the a government that sees them as a renewable 'resource', something they can use and exploit to boost their own power and (so-called) riches.

But we also have to go further. Moving on from 'me' and 'my side' centredness, by look at the total death count we have only managed to get to an anthropocentricity. The '2 million deaths' are merely '2 million human deaths'. We also need to count the death and mutilation of animals, of plants, of soil and of land, of the psychology of the survivors (human and none), of beauty (in the landscape and elsewhere), and of future generations (of all living things). We need to count the death of knowledge, of what is forgotten. We need to count the death of genealogies and of habitats. We need to count the death of innocence, and we need to count the death of a healthy society (even if it wasn't healthy before, it was healthier), both in the 'target-practice-zone' and in the rest of the world. We need to count the desertification, the permanent annihilation of fertility and fertile farmland. We need to count the pollution, of land, sea and sky. We need to observe the tears shed by Gaia. And we need to lament.