May 23 2006
What Price For A New World?
What price did we pay for a democratic Iraq, who is now an ally in our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism? Let’s see:
As of Tuesday, May 23, 2006, at least 2,459 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 1,938 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.
Statistics show accident numbers seem to remain steady during wartime and peace time, so the numbers we can attribute to Iraq directly are those associated with hostile numbers. More than three years have passed, which makes this 646 deaths a year. I hate to be cold and calculating, but if we are to understand our sacrifice we need to put it into context. The number of months is more like 38, so that is 51 deaths a month.
I did a study of civil war deaths a while back to show how this is not a civil war. But let’s see what else this compares to. In 2004 42,800 people died just driving our roads. That is 3,567 deaths a month! Just driving in America is nearly 70 times more dangerous. 67% of all traffic fatalities are due to the mighty gaol of drinking. So that means 28,767 people died to alcohol. that means 2,390 deaths a month related to the high moral action of getting drunk (as opposed to freeing a country and hopefully a region).
The act of swimming in the US causes roughly 6500 deaths a year in the US. That is nearly ten times the US deaths directly linked to freeing 25 million people of Saddam’s murderous brutality. So when people use statistics to say Iraq wasn’t worth it, ask them if they are ready to ban swimming first, because that is ten times more disasterous than Iraq.
You make a good point, AJ, but the statistics aren’t so rosy. Those road accidents are from a population of 300 million Americans, and no matter how many more troops John F Kerry would’ve sent to Iraq before he withdrew them, it would never have been even 1% of that figure.
My way of putting it is that four and a half years of war have finally matched the death toll of one day, 9/11/01. Our military men and women who’ve given the ultimate sacrifice have died both to avenge our September 11th dead, but also to give, in the words of Abraham Lincoln:
“that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Only now Lincoln’s words are applied to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the rest of the world who will receive it.
There is a little whiff of Swift in this. This is a modest attempt at putting our casualty numbers in perspective. Knowing the MSM as I have come to, you can believe that they care little for the members of our military. They do not rise to defend them when they are slimed by Murtha or Kerry. Rather they cheer. The light casualties and large accomplishments of the War on Terror do not impress them, because they have a larger agenda of hate towards George Bush to prosecute.
We are winning the War on Terror, no thanks to the Main Stream Media and the NYT who cannot tell a purple heart from a purple star.
I have read deep into WWII history and am stunned at
AJ, I ran across this interesting piece a couple months ago that puts Iraq War casualties in an even broader historical context. Compared to numerous other conflicts of the last century, Iraq (even counting civilian deaths) is a grain of sand on the beach.
Politechnical,
It doesn’t so much have to do with statistical likelyhood as it does with the absolute numbers. Some people try to come across as if they are against the war because the deaths there are “senseless”. The point is they could save many many many more Americans from a “senseless” death by mandating a national 50 mph speed limit or some other silly crap. Or maybe if there was a manditory lifetime revocation of drivers license, insurance, and automobile registration when caught drunk driving many thousands could be saved. If it’s lives they want to save, there are ways to save a lot more lives. 100 a day (general rule of thump number) die on American’s highways and many more are burned, maimed, scarred for life. But I suppose someone who dies in Iraq is somehow “deader” than someone who dies on the freeway.
And as for violence, just wait to see what happens in this country when the Hayward fault lets loose in the East side of San Francisco Bay. Richmond, California is already a free fire zone. Wait till you see what that whole area looks like when we get into a situation where the police are too overwhelmed digging themselves out of their own homes to respond to a gang war. It’s going to look like Beiruit during their civil war.
Each and every loss is the ultimate sacrifice. There is also the even longer term deminishment of those who were relegated to life changing injuries.
Still as wars go..AJ has it correct. Our technical advantage and an enemy that really had only a small competent core of forces have allowed this result.
Sadam had only a small core of well trained forces that he purged regularly. The level of competence of the baseline forces was always supressed by Sadam to untrained cannon fodder to prevent a possible overthrow.
We are now in a steady effort to train and develop a real credible military for local control. Sure it will have it’s ups and downs and hopefully eventually develop a true self defense force and root out all the inside bad guys playing wolf in sheeps clothing. Even the terrorists have admitted they have been fighting a loosing battle in this effort. If the Iraqi people sense that a true effort is being made to develop and maintain a fair and non threating to religious faction force at all levels of the military and police and not just death squad vehicles. Then the momentum will be established for their stability by their own self interest.
Also though each loss by our forces is a terrible loss, compare the numbers to the left’s original projections of 100,000 plus body bags and reflect on that.