On Genocide

Mike writes:

First of all, I love your cartoons…and agree with ALMOST everything you say about MOST subjects. But I do want to offer a minor quibble- whatever you think of the Iraq war or the Afghan war (I’m totally against the first, but felt the second was justified), you really shouldn’t use the word “genocide” to describe it. In my opinion, its not even close to genocide, and cheapens the word (sort of like when people throw around the word “rape” to describe things other than, well, rape.)
“Genocide” is more than just killing a lot of people- we usually use that word when we are talking about the attempt to wipe out an entire ethnic group, and where they are singled out because of their ethnicity. “Genocide” also usually means specifically going after civilians, as opposed to killing significant numbers of them while going after soldiers. There are always civilian casualties in any war, but all wars are not genocide. Whatever you think of the Iraq war (and I’m almost as opposed to it as you are), you must realize that if we really wanted to wipe out the Iraqi people, we would have done it a bit differently, and there wouldn’t be 160,000 dead- there’d be millions.
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So stop throwing around the word “genocide”, when “slaughter” or “humanitarian disaster” would be more accurate. Other than that, keep up the good work.

I wish more thinking folks like Mike would take another look at the invasion of Afghanistan–the war even lefties can get behind because the Taliban were such brutes. (Like Saddam wasn’t?) But hey, I’ve already written two books about that. If only I could convince more people to read them!
So. What about genocide?
Noting that it’s a new word, dating to the liberation of the first Nazi death camps in 1944, my dictionary calls it “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” The United States is presently engaged in the deliberate and systematic destruction of a political and cultural group: Iraqi civilians. Remember, even the insurgents are civilians–our own Pentagon designated them as such by virtue of denying them protection under the Geneva Conventions. So every insurgent/resistor we kill in Iraq is by definition an act of genocide against Iraqi civilians. Of course, others may take issue. And I may change my mind, since genocide is usually reserved for events like the attempted extermination of the Tutsis in Rwanda during the early ’90s. But I don’t feel prepared to back away from the term just yet.