The Courage to Count the Dead

John Faulkner NSW Labour Senator on the Iraq War Dead quoted in the SMH:

"It is the duty of the Australian government, the US government, the British Government to try. It is their responsibility to take account of the dead, of their names, their ages, their families and the ways and reasons they died.

It is their duty to take account of numbers like 98,000; or 41,000; or 55 murders a month; or 16,389 deaths reported in the Western press alone.

The point is, we should know the price.

I do not expect the armed forces of any country to be able to invade and occupy another without killing civilians, without damaging hospitals or water treatment plants, without disrupting food shipments. That is an unrealistic expectation.

Wars are bloody and horrific. A lot of people die, and they die hard. Most of them have no connection to the abstract causes being fought for or interest in the politics that brewed the battle. Every one of them leaves a lasting wound in the lives of those who loved them.
And knowing that, we should be very careful about when and why we go to war. It is inexcusable to pretend we can wage a war without cost, as the Howard Government is trying to do. And it is inexcusable to take our nation to war based on a lie, as the Howard Government did.
This government didn’t have the strength to say no to the United States nor the integrity to tell Australians why we were going to war.
They ought at least to have the courage to count the dead."

Listening to Yo La Tango & Glenn Gould.