How many deaths

The question is asked, how many deaths will it take before he knows that too many have died.

First a quibble, possibly there is some sense of horror for the deaths that the United States is inflicting (much of it indirect, to be sure, but quite a lot of direct random civilian death too) on Iraqis, Afghans and those Lebanese (children or otherwise) that George W Bush pushed the Israelis (who might not yet have been ready to unleash random death on civilians, although they would have done it on their own eventually) to kill. But that sense of horror, if it's there, doesn't show (at least in that post, maybe it shows in previous posts).

Instead, the cost is measured only in American deaths. That's par for the course, I suppose. I should not be surprised.

But to the answer. Apparently, to George W Bush, Iraq is like a volkswagen beetle. There's always space for one more. It's not like anyone is going to be able to stop the Americans in their march to a million or two million dead. They're the hyperpower of the world. One can hope (although that dwindles steadily now), that, after all that death and blood, the American people will learn something, perhaps that they should stay home and stop killing the rest of us off, defend their country and not destroy countries all over the world. But I'm not too sanguine on that lately. It's that American can-do attitude. Of *course* you can destroy this or that country. The question is, should you do it? How many dead civilians are you willing to spend? (Not your own, foreigners, rag-heads, towel-heads, gooks, whatever). Perhaps the threshold is 100,000. But perhaps not, they're far beyond that now. Perhaps it's half a million. They're a bit beyond that now in Iraq, but they spent several million Vietnamese and Korean civilian dead to pacify those countries (there's nothing quite so peaceful as the dead), so my guess is, when half the Iraqis are dead, possibly George W Bush will be done. I think that won't stop the terrorism though. As a practical matter, he'll have to kill them all. And then not stop, but leave Saudi Arabia, Iran, the West Bank, Syria, Egypt and, oh, the rest of Northern Africa a dead zone. Then, possibly he might be ready to turn on the Indonesians, Malaysians, Nigerians, Sudanese (man, maybe there's the solution to Darfur, finally), Pakistanis (oh, never mind them, they've got the Bomb, maybe they can be bribed off). And after a billion dead, the Chinese will be an existential threat. There's another billion and a few right there.

It's not that I think the Muslims of the world should be exterminated, but because killing off a fraction of them is not going to help America. Either you kill them all, or you stop killing off their civilians (and, frankly, the US government should pay incredible reparations to the survivors, but the Americans will never do that either, they can do no wrong). Unfortunately, at this point, I don't think George W Bush, or Cheney and his gang know how. They *can't* stop. It would be too humiliating to their party and their ideology to be so wrong, and with so much blood on their hands. They have to go on. The only way they're going to stop is to be kicked out of office. But GW Bush has another two years to continue the killing. Possibly losing his majorities in both the House and the Senate will put a brake on the killing though. If only for that, I pray that the Republicans lose *big*. I normally root for Republicans since they are marginally (very marginally) more conservative and less stupidly leftist as the Democrats. But this year, and perhaps for another decade, they need to be kept away from the rest of the world. We'd rather not die, or be tortured, either by the US government or by countries to which the US will export us to be tortured. No thanks.