Every year since the
Iraq War started I take a great interest in the
State Department's annual report on
global terrorism. Year after year the numbers in the report increase while it seems that the American population (and much of the media) tends to tread these reports as
small potatoes.
This year is about the same, but with a twist.
The 22,685 killed by terrorism in 2007 is up 9% from 2006, the 44,310 injured is up 15%.
But the twist is this: in Post Global (a publication put out by The Washington Post and Newsweek) this morning, Fareed Zakaria wrote that this years numbers, which like years past have increased yet again, are skewed by deaths in Iraq. He claims that "Iraq accounts for 80 percent of all deaths counted. But if you set aside the war there, terrorism has in fact gone way down over the past five years."
Other media outlets have reported this as well.
To me it seems like an attempt to say "Look, the war we are fighting is just, because the deaths in Iraq were deaths as a result of a war. And if you take out those deaths than terror is down globally. So clearly the War in Iraq is a just cause."
Another study, by Canada's Human Security Research Project corroborated Zakaria's findings. That...IF you remove deaths in Iraq...terror has decreased.
Yet...why so quick to remove deaths in Iraq?
Why so quick to label those deaths as casualties of war and think that justifies pushing those deaths aside from casualties of the War on Terror?
The bottom line is this: deaths as a result of the War on Terror are up across the world, yet again.
And the numbers about Iraqi deaths "skewing" the results doesn't ring "just cause."
It rings "the coalition we are leading in Iraq is serving to instigate more deaths in the War on Terror than any place else in the world."
How is that a just cause?