More deaths needed

One of the great questions of the Iraqi debacle is whether the West can any longer pay the price of imperialism. That is actually one of the things that Melanie Phillips gets right, though she does not notice the more interesting corollary, which is that we are run by experts in public opinion who believe that we can’t. In particular, the idea that the British and the Americans cannot take casualties on their own side is an article of faith among democratic politicians. 3,000 Americans killed in Iraq is considered a national calamity. But in the quietest year of the Iraqi war — 2004 — more than 16,000 Americans were murdered, in America, mostly by their fellow citizens. Now, a country in which you are more likely to be murdered1 by your own side than to die at the hands of enemy troops is not in a state of war as this has been traditionally understood.

Similar calculations could no doubt be made for British casualty figures.

What’s interesting about this is that everyone knows it’s true, and often bases their policy making on it. For instance, the latest justification for the decision not to investigate the bribery of Saudi princelings by BAE comes from the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, who says that if we did so more Britons would die in terrorist attacks. But isn’t that what war means? If we were really fighting for the rule of the law and other good things, then we would expect to take casualties, because, obviously, these things are threatened and don’t come for free. Yet, at the same time, T. Blair argues for an army which will fight all over the world for our interests and values. I suppose, in his mind, he can reconcile the two positions, that the safety of British civilians is paramount and that the army must go around the world killing people. But I can’t. It seems to me that if we go around to other people’s countries and kill them, in no matter how good a cause, we must be prepared for them to come here and kill some of us. That may or may not be worthwhile. Sometimes in the past it clearly has been. But to pretend that there isn’t a choice is an absurd position.

1 Though less likely than before. In 1990, the apogee of American global power, the national homicide rate was 23,440.

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