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The death toll of 30,000 civilian deaths released by President Bush in December may be seriously underreported. Three years of war have caused serious damage to the infrastructure of Iraq. Precision bombs often miss their targets or destroy adjacent buildings and/or apartments. Years of sanctions are likely to have produced much collateral damage that is not directly related to the actions of warfare. A study conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health states that the death toll of Iraqis is somewhere around 655,000. The statistics would equate to about 2.5 % of the entire Iraq population who has died because of either the invasion or strife caused by the invasion. Other estimates range from 143,000 per year published in The Lancet to 49,000 according to verified Iraqi body counts. Most of the dead, or 60%, were boys and men ranging in age from 15-44. Gunshots appear to be the main cause of death. Most researchers acknowledge that the actual death toll ranges from 426,000 to 800,000. Ethnic battles and religious strife don’t appear to be reported in this statistic. America is at a crossroads on how to proceed with the war. Should they leave Iraq and risk a visible defeat that may bolster subversive groups or should they maintain their course and fear that the American presence is actually increasing the resistance? Decisiveness is required at this junction for fear that the situation will get worse. It appears that America is a powerful world force stronger in terms of its economic viability than the entire Western Europe. Yet, America is also on a decline as China threatens to surpass the U.S. GNP by 2015 and Europe begins to capitalize on their gains through the European Union. Economically the United States cannot afford the 333 billion dollars it has spent in creating a worse situation. America must spend her time mending, building a stronger school system, cultural reform and economic viability. 333 billion dollars would give a good jump to the American economy. The war is becoming sourly unpopular. According to a CNN poll six in 10 Americans are not in support of the war. They feel that the government has lied to them, that the presence of troops in the country is exacerbating the problem and the costs in terms of human life and financial burden to the country is too high. The Russians said it correctly that Iraq will be a quagmire like Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. Even though the military has made great stride in reforming to the new realities of warfare much is still left undone. American armed forces are still working off of the Cold War mentality and have to quickly adapt to the ingenuity of the Muslim and Iraqi people. The insurgents do not need large caches of weapons, sidelight dishes, and multi- million dollar bank rolls to fight their war. They only need organization, supporters and recruits. Thus they are better able to sustain a prolonged war using urban methods adopted from past generations and can cause substantial damage to a first rate army. When put in their totality the decline in the American economic dominance, the rise of Muslim organization, the incomplete transformation to a new military model, poor public opinion, little support at home and the growing of the insurgency leave American with a single option of leaving the country. Gracefully leaving albeit is of paramount. “Staying the course” is likely to give these insurgents further cause to become stronger. Murad Ali is a labor relations professional at a Detroit area Casino, the owner of the Muslim Times at http://www.themuslimtimes.com, a consultant, a ph.d student and gives tutoring lessons to children.
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