Is Iraq Sliding Into Civil War?

This week in Iraq, over 400 men, women and children have been killed, most of them in bomb explosions that leveled buildings and incinerated cars leaving mangled bodies or body parts where only a heartbeat earlier, people were living their lives. In addition perhaps a thousand or more people have been seriously injured, some of them now missing limbs or other body parts.

Last month, 460 Iraqis were killed, making this the deadliest period since the summer of 2008. It appears that May will be even worse. And there is no end to the violence.

To put this in perspective, the U.S. has about 14 times the population of Iraq. When The Boston Marathon explosion took place, it was tragic as three people were killed and dozens more were wounded, including some people who sadly lost limbs. We as a nation mourned this tragedy and we continue to do so, as our hearts ache for the victims.

But what about Iraq? Our war and military occupation have devastated that nation, leaving hundreds of thousands of men, women and children dead, vastly more seriously injured or orphaned. More than two million Iraqis have fled their nation.

Have we no compassion for the Iraqi people? Do we not mourn their losses? Do we not take any responsibility? In the U.S. it appears the Iraq War is largely forgotten, along with the U.S. veterans who fought in that War, which lasted from 2003 to the end of 2011, nearly nine years.

4488 veterans are dead, a loss their families must bear and including post traumatic stree disorder, hundreds of thousands of additional veterans are struggling to rebuild their lives.

And the backlog at the Veterans Administration is so bad, many of them are being deprived of the essential support they were promised.

And this doesn't even address all the soldiers and their families who were among what President George W. Bush called "The coalition of the willing," nor does it count all the U.S. "contractors."

The lesson to all of us is to raise our voices to prevent wars or to stop the ones that have begun. And yet the Afghan War and other wars are being fought largely in silence and indifference by most of the American people.

Dear Reader, my voice has never been silent and I hope yours won't be silent either.

Dick
To learn more about the most recent Iraq attacks: http://news.antiwar.com/2013/05/21/over-400-killed-in-a-week-of-iraqi-violence/ http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2013/05/20/monday-mayhem-116-killed-240-wounded-in-iraq/