April 12, 2003
MICHAEL DUFFY previews Sunday's anti-war
MICHAEL DUFFY previews Sunday's anti-war rally:
One of recent history's most bizarre events will occur tomorrow, when good and decent people will march through Sydney to express sorrow Iraq has just been delivered from an odious tyranny.
If Australia's peace marchers had had their way and this war never occurred, what would the residents of Iraq have been doing?
In the State Security headquarters in Basra it would have been business as usual, the regime's jailers torturing away, hanging people from hooks, whipping them with electric cables, prodding their flesh with lit cigarettes. Once they had finished, many of their victims would have been shot or killed more slowly.
Yes, but at least it isn't war with awful Americans. Duffy has some interesting statistics from an Australian academic who might be the opposite of Marc Herold:
Bob Cotgrove from the University of Tasmania has pointed out that the poverty Saddam enforced on his nation created a massive death toll, in which the peace protesters appear completely uninterested.
Mr Cotgrove estimates that, in the late 1990s, 66,900 more people died a year in Iraq than would have been the case had the death rate been the same as in neighbouring nations. Of this number, 41,300 were children.
Where were the marches when this was happening? Why are 600 deaths caused by liberating forces so much worse than 66,900 deaths a year caused by Saddam Hussein?
Maybe the peace folks think Saddam Hussein's murders are some quaint local homegrown cultural deal, and therefore OK. Down with corporate American McDeaths imposed by global capital! Preserve diversity of killing!
Posted by Tim Blair at April 12, 2003 06:49 PM