Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>At 11:09 AM -0400 10/9/02, Nathan Newman wrote:
>>I am against the war in Iraq but a war there is pretty damn irrelevant to
>>global suffering-- over 30 million people are projected to die of AIDS in
>>coming years, millions more will die each year from poverty, lack of
decent
>>water, lack of food, and so on.
-I missed this first time around. Nathan, are you really arguing that -a few extra Iraqi deaths from a war wouldn't really matter much in -the big picture? With all the millions who die prematurely, what's a -few thousand more? Are you really saying that? Or was this just -infeliciously phrased?
As I remember the few thousand deaths of Kosovars before NATO intervention was considered a small issue compared to the bigger issue of NATO imperialism. I'll dig up the quotes where the words "only" and "2000 deaths" were rather closely paired in many arguing why Milosevic's crimes were not very significant. At points there are choices where relative deaths are measured-- that's why all violence is not unjustified if it can prevent more.
If worries about military deaths drive the left's focus on foreign policy, that is miserably misguided, since the deaths from US military interventions are miniscule relative to the deaths due its involvement in global capitalism, its IP laws, and so on. And truly dealing with the mass deaths from starvation require engagement and responsibility by the US and Europe, not disengagement as in "USA out of everywhere."
-- Nathan Newman