Heartbreak

This is so sad. I thought I should do something to note the fact that we've passed the 4,000 casualty mark in Iraq. It's perfectly true as some people are eager to note that there's no particular significance of the 4000th rather than the 3895th. But that's sort of the point. Each and every one of these are sensless tragedies of monumental proportions to their loved ones. Each and every one of these men and women should make headlines. But realistically it's not going to happen for a lot of interconnected reasons. At least when it hits a nice big round number it creates an excuse to look closely at the awful cost of war to brave men and women and the families and friends that love them. I'm often accused of liking "dark" or "depressing" stories, but I truely feel that these stories are essential to empathy of the human condition. I don't particularly like how this article makes me feel, but it is important to understand that this is being done by our elected govenment to our citizen volunteers, not just in an intellectual "i am aware it is happening" sense but in a real viceral, emotional way too.

It's worth noting that thanks to modern medicine and improved body armor, the wounded to dead ratio is now 8:1, instead of the 3:1 it was in Vietnam. So if you want to compare casualty numbers with historic conflicts, remember to convert it to metric (double it and add thirty).

I'd like to see more emotional understanding of the consequences of war. It would be good to come to terms with the horrible sacrifices that are being made by Americans. Even better would be to feel love for our "enemies," the uncounted (quite literally, and on purpose) Iraqis who have died so we could "free them" by erecting blast walls between neighborhoods, around shopping areas, and infront of Mosques. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, but no one knows exactly how many. We don't count, I suspect because we don't want to know.

Image found via google image search. I could not locate information for attribution but it was taken from www.talkingproud.us/Culture120707.html.