And we must point out that this number does not include non-military personnel killed in the conflict. It does not include private security contractors or aid workers. It does not include reporters or employees of private companies. The real cost of this war is much higher. We also need to consider that there have been over 18,500 troops injured. These are not little scrapes on the knee. Thousands upon thousands of American troops are coming home with missing limbs and other debilitating injuries.
What was the response from the US government to this gruesome milestone? The next day, the Senate voted 93-6 to defeat a motion to withdraw the troops from Iraq by the end of the year. Despite their losses, the imperialists are incapable of pulling out of Iraq. They’re compelled to stay, not just for the oil, but for the strategic base for operations in the whole of the Middle East.
All of their guns and thunder will not silence the people of Iraq. Why won’t Iraq be pacified? The answer is very simple; since the US invasion of Iraq, roughly 40,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed (and this is almost certainly a conservative estimate done by Iraq Body Count, who only count verifiable media reports of deaths). When that figure is considered, it is easy to understand why the Americans haven’t been greeted as liberators. They are seen for what they are: an imperialist occupation force that brings nothing but death and blood.
The US military could send another 500,000 troops to Iraq and they would still never hold down the population. The fact of the matter is that they only control the ground they stand on. Anywhere that doesn’t happen to have a troop standing on it is enemy territory. The casualties will continue to pile up until the US withdraw from the country.
The imperialists will lose their troops one at a time in Iraq, but they will be defeated at home. The troops will not come home until the US government is more worried about the prospect of facing America’s population that Iraq’s. Despite a 10:1 kill ratio in the Vietnam war, the US was eventually forced to retreat with its tail between it’s legs. They lost the Vietnam war on US soil, in the battle for public opinion. The same fate awaits them in the Iraq war.
