Apathy is our greatest enemy

What does it take us to shock us into action these days? Some days back, an Opinion Business Research (ORB) survey of Iraqi families indicates as many as 1.2 million Iraqi civilians may have died as a result of the war.

That's five times more than the death toll wrought in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's also the equivalent of killing every man, woman and child in, say, Amsterdam.

And just why were those people's lives sacrificed again? Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a committed Republican who served four American presidents, says it was all about oil, which most of us who were against the war from day one knew all along. Yet when we mentioned the "O" word, we were invariably targeted as crazed conspiracy theorists.

If Greenspan is right - and he probably is - then why aren't we outraged? Why aren't we spilling out onto the streets in protest? Are we prepared to accept the death of 1.2 million innocent individuals just so we can fill our tanks with cheap fuel?

What if 1.2 million Americans or 1.2 million Britons had been sacrificed for the same goal? Would they have been acceptable collateral damage?

[Excerpt of an article by Linda S. Heard, Gulf News]