Iraqi lives matter: 30,000>3,000

I read this in a column on ESPN.com today (TMQ by Gregg Easterbrook) and thought it was worth thinking about:

"Of the many moral questions regarding the Iraq War, the one the American political and media systems are not dealing with in any way, shape or form is the number of Iraqi deaths. A few months ago President Bush said the estimate he has been given by military intelligence is 30,000 Iraqi deaths caused either directly by our military or set in motion by our invasion. American forces have been trying to avoid killing the innocent. But no matter how carefully our armed forces have behaved, why is the American conscience not shocked by so many innocent people killed owing to our unilateral decision to seize another nation? Why did the media shrug when Bush used this shocking figure?

Had some other country or group done something that caused 30,000 deaths here, we would claim an unlimited right of self-defense and retaliation. Yet the death the United States has brought to the innocent of Iraq isn't even being discussed here. Some of the Iraqis who have died because they have been hit by our bombs, or in the sectarian violence our destruction of the Iraqi government set loose, would have died by now regardless; perhaps some of them would have been killed by Saddam Hussein, had he remained in power. But by invading Iraq we made ourselves responsible for what happened next, and what has happened next is killing of the innocent. When 3,000 were villainously slain here, we called it a crime against humanity. Since then we have caused or played a role in the deaths of perhaps 10 times as many in Iraq, and this is spoken of here as if it were some mere unfortunate side effect of policy. History may judge America harshly for acting as though Iraqi lives have no value. "