Talk about the blind men and the elephant.
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Friedman gives a lovely quote from the professor’s recent book, “The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World’s Government in the 21st Century.” The U.S., Mandelbaum writes (to Friedman’s applause), “is not the lion of the international system, terrorizing and preying on weaker animals in order to survive itself. It is, rather, the elephant, which supports a wide variety of other creatures – smaller mammals, birds, and insects- by generation nourishment for them as it goes about the business of feeding itself.”
“The best evidence” for this benevolent "elephant" thesis, Friedman feels, “is the fact that no military coalition has ever formed to counter America’s global governing role – as happened with other hegemonic powers in history.”
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Who has done the killing and wounding? By IBC's meticulous account, based on multiple verifiable media reports, anti-occupation forces have killed less than 10 percent of the total number of the nearly 25,000 dead for whom killers can be identified. "Criminal elements," who have thrived in the lawless environment created by the destruction of Iraqi civil authority, killed 8,935 or 36 percent.
The biggest killers have been U.S.-led armed forces, who ended the lives of 9,270 Iraqis or 37.3 percent. And "at least 21,000 of the 45,000 reported injuries," IBC adds, "were caused by U.S.-led forces."
In separate databases that include real-time observations from reporters on the ground, IBC presents a number of journalistic accounts of Iraqis killed by their supposed American "liberators." IBC's "Falluja Archive" contains (to give one among many examples) an April 2004 Associated Press (AP) story relating how more than 600 Iraqis, "mostly women, children, and the elderly," were butchered during Uncle Sam's massive "retaliatory" (after the resistance killed U.S.-funded Blackwell Security mercenaries) campaign in Falluja. "Iraqis in Falluja," the AP noted, "complained that civilians were coming under fire by U.S. snipers."
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Most of the planet’s politically cognizant populace actually sees Friedman and Mandelbauam’s friendly elephant the U.S. as the single greatest threat to world peace and prosperity. The preponderant majority of the world’s citizenry, we can be sure, supports the development of effective international institutions and rules to “counter America’s global governing role,” which consigns more than 2 billion people to life on less than a dollar a day. Absent such institutions and rules, military coalitions to check deadly Uncle Sam are a certainty in the 21st century.
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