The Meaning Of Civilian Casualties
One hundred and seventy people died in that weekend truck bombing of a small town in northern Iraq, according to U.S. military figures.
That would make it the worst civilian death toll of the entire war. Civilian casualties are just one measure of chaos in Iraq, but for Michael O'Hanlon, who publishes an index of war-related statistics for the Brookings Institution, it is the key, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports.
"Civilian fatalities really is the crux of the matter because Iraq is very violent and if it doesn't get less violent you can't see the economy improve, you can't see political confidence grow, you can't see these hatreds diminish," O'Hanlon says.
The purpose of the American troop surge is to protect the Iraqi population, and U.S. military officers said civilian casualties were starting to come down — by 46 percent in June. But all it takes is one horrific bombing — like the one this weekend — to reverse the trend and add to an already staggering toll of innocent Iraqis.
"I would put the, my best guess, at somewhere between 75 and 100,000 but it could be higher," says former pentagon researcher Colin Kahl.
While working for the Pentagon, Kahl compared civilian deaths in Iraq to Vietnam, the last time the United States fought a counterinsurgency war. By conservative estimate, half a million South Vietnamese civilians were killed — roughly five times more than in Iraq.
"Historically the numbers are kind of low but we shouldn't trivialize the fact that still thousands of Iraqis have died during U.S. combat operations in Iraq," Kahl says.
He estimates about 10 percent of the deaths have been caused by the U.S. military and 90 percent by insurgents with their car bombings and sectarian killings. But, says Kahl, the U.S. can not escape blame for any of it.
"To the degree to which our occupation was mishandled or not competently handled and that set in motion a chain of events that has contributed to the volatility and instability that we see today claiming thousands of Iraqi lives, we have some deeper responsibility for that," Kahl says.
The numbers may say Iraq is not as brutal a war as Vietnam, but the bottom line is the same — in both wars the U.S. failed to protect the population.