Iraq Suffers More Death

I am not certain how America, as a nation, can ignore the Iraq when things like this occur:

Iraq bomb in toy cart hits children in playground

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A bomb hidden in a cart of toys killed two children and wounded 17 others in a playground in northern Iraq on Friday, the first day of a national holiday to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The attack came the day after U.S. forces killed nine children and six women in an air strike northwest of Baghdad targeting suspected al Qaeda leaders. The U.N. mission in Iraq urged U.S. forces to conduct a “vigorous” probe into the strike

I have read numerous arguments about why America should leave Iraq. They all very eloquently point to the evidence that America is failing to ‘win’ against the Insurgency, or how Americans are needlessly dying, and so on. Democrats oppose the war because Bush initiated it – and the reasons we went to war were terrible – while Republicans are hardly eager to extend the war a decade.

Unfortunately, I haven’t much examining the moral consequences of American’s actions in Iraq, and the ‘War on Terrorism’ in general. I would not want to live in a place where my child could be killed or seriously injured by an indiscriminate bomb in a school. And how, precisely, do we rationalize an estimated one million Iraqis dying post-US invasion? Can we realistically argue that Iraqis are better off without Saddam if this is the result? How do we justify torture, and imprisonment without charges, trial, or recourse to the legal system?

When did the threat of terrorism acquire the power to silence all moral, ethical, legal, and political criticism? And why is our response to the threat war, torture, assassination, and spying?

And: what do we do now? If we leave Iraq, what will happen? We cannot simply dismiss the issue as “not our problem:” it became our problem when we invaded, dismantled the Iraqi government, and killed 3% of their population. We bear responsibility for their situation, and so we bear responsibility for what becomes of it. Leaving may very well allow Iraq to settle down, but it’s not the key question.

I believe the best question is ask is: how do we ensure Iraq’s success, as a nation, in the years to come? How do we restore the damage we’ve inflicted on their infrastructure and their people, and help them become a modern, healthy country?

We don’t exist in a vacuum, and it’s a mistake to think that the rest of the world doesn’t matter.