On Monday Matt argued that the media response to the deaths of the two CBS News employees in Iraq smacks of racism, especially the comment of CNN anchor Rosemary Church, who said of the deaths of two Western journalists:

It does — it does put a human face on this conflict, doesn’t it?

The deaths of all the Iraqi civilians and journalists don’t count. When Western civilians or journalists die, that puts a human face to it.

Well, it’s not just the media, it’s also the U.S. military:

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a senior U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said in Friday’s statement an inquiry showed that four bodies, including that of a guerrilla, were found after the raid.

It added that as many as nine “collateral deaths” resulted from the raid, but said a precise death toll could not be determined because of collapsed walls and debris.

Those damn Iraqis don’t count as human beings, so why bother to count how many died, huh?

Can you imagine any kind of accident anywhere in the U.S. where authorities would say we couldn’t count how many people died because of collapsed walls and debris, and the statement wouldn’t cause an instant outrage?

And we are talking of deaths that the U.S. military itself has classified as “collateral deaths”–innocent Iraqis accidentally killed by U.S. forces. I’m sure we say “Sorry” very nicely indeed every time we kill some Iraqi civilians by accident. But we aren’t even sorry enough to count how many people we’re supposed to be sorry for?

No wonder the military doesn’t keep an official count of civilian deaths in the war on Iraq. We don’t care enough to even bloody count how many innocent buggers we killed.

Maybe the two-to-four hour combat ethics training sessions the military has ordered for all forces in Iraq
can be supplemented by a 20 minute refresher about pretending, in public statements at least, to treat Iraqis as human beings? Starting at the very top, of course, before some other stupid general puts his big foot in his fat mouth, and brings even more shame upon us.