I Guess We Don’t Count Them If They’re Not Americans

Posted on February 19, 2004

One of the things that burns me up is when I hear people say that Iraq is “over”, that it’s “yesterday’s issue”, that people should “move on”. It’s bad enough that you can’t open the paper on any given day without the news of a new American casualty; what’s even worse is the way that we are completely blinkered to the casualties that are being inflicted on Iraqi civilians and Coalition forces, all of whom have even less desire to be there than we do.

The latest example of this is a twin car bomb attack by insurgents yesterday near the town of Hilla that left 11 Iraqis dead and 58 allied troops wounded. The wounded troops included “at least 12 Filipinos, 12 Poles, 10 Hungarians and two Americans”.

Filipinos? Poles? What the hell does the average Filipino care about Iraq? I’m sure they’re going to have an abiding love for the U.S. if they come home missing an arm after fighting our war for us.

What makes this all so tragic, of course, is that these Poles and Filipinos are getting shot up over there for us, and we’re not even hearing about it!

Don’t believe me? Go look at Google News’ roundup of stories on the subject. What publications do these stories come from? The Guardian UK; Reuters; BBC News; South Africa’s Independent Online; Pakistan’s Daily Times; and so on. The only American newspaper in the list is the San Diego Union Tribune! The only reason I even know about the story is because Juan Cole blogged about it.

Could there possibly be a better demonstration of how utterly disconnected we are from the rest of the world? Think about that the next time you wonder why so many people out there increasingly look on America less as a partner in global security, and more as a bull in their china shop.