Omar at Iraq the Model tackles the recent Lancet figures on Iraqi deaths.
I think his closing paragraphs sum things up well. He says what few dare:
When I read the report I can only feel apathy and inhumanity from those who did the count towards the victims and towards our suffering as a whole. I can tell they were so pleased when the equations their twisted minds designed led to those numbers and nothing can convince me that they did their so called research out of compassion or care.
To me their motives are clear, all they want is to prove that our struggle for freedom was the wrong thing to do. And they shamelessly use lies to do this…when they did not find the death they wanted to see on the ground, they faked it on paper! They disgust me…
This fake research is an insult to every man, woman and child who lost their lives. Behind every drop of blood is a noble story of sacrifice for a just cause that is struggling for living safe in freedom and prosperity.
Let those fools know that nothing will stop us from walking this road and nothing will stop our friends and allies from helping us reach safe shores. There’s simply no going back even if it cost us more and their fake statistics will not frighten us…our sacrifices, like I said, make us proud because our bloods are not digits in those ugly papers. Our sacrifices are paving the way for future generations to live the better life we couldn’t live.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t need some cowardly U-Turn to be provided, I wasn’t “tricked” into supporting the war, I wasn’t mislead. I genuinely though and still do that deposing Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do.
Why? Because freedom comes at a blood price, one our ancestors paid unselfishly and willingly.
We live in the societies we cherish today because we are Free Men and Free Men and Women invent, discover, explore and they will continue to do so for as long as they live because, to employ the imagery of Orwell’s 1984, when that boot comes down from the sky to stamp on their faces they spit at it.
Those who seek to ignore the boot, ignore the actions and sacrifices of their ancestors. For the first time in the history of the Human Race, more people now live under democracies than under despotic dictatorships. That’s the legacy we have been left and I for one will not countenance leaving the status quo to my children.
I heard Sting’s “Russians” yesterday in my Party Shuffle playlist and despite being a very good song I couldn’t help marveling at its tone and message. “There’s no such thing as a winnable war, it’s a lie we don’t believe anymore/ Mr Reagan says we will protect you, I don’t subscribe to that point of view”. It conveyed what many people felt, an acceptance of global Communism as something which ought to be left alone. If not ignorant of the pleas from those trapped beneath its heel, such people were at the very least complacent in the face of them.
Well now we instead have millions of people who enjoy the rights and freedoms that are their birthrights as human beings. Complacency didn’t win them that, an adversarial economic policy and a belief in the fundamental rights of humanity did.
I know I’m wont to write soaring rhetoric and bombastic diatribes about the subject but it’s one I feel passionate about. I’m not a relativist. Human Rights are Human Rights.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at October 12, 2006 08:29 PM