The new biography of George W. Bush is titled “Dead Certain.” Today we get a cheery headline from the Pentagon, “Combat Deaths in Iraq Decline,” which should be called “Dead Wrong.”
Not only is the conclusion faulty, but the numbers themselves have been doctored. Using as its source iCasualties.org, the report says about fatalties that “by June, the number fell to 93, then to 66 in July and to 57 in August.” But the figures on the web site are 101, 79 and 81 respectively.
For those months a year earlier, the numbers were 61, 43 and 65. The only “decline” seems to be in the veracity of the people trying to make a case that the Surge is saving American lives.
Those numbers, right or wrong, represent young men and women with grieving families who will not find comfort in any statistics about this endless mayhem. But the least they, and we, should be able to expect is the simple truth of how many there are.
Today the President is in Anbar, saluting the “remarkable turnaround” there. The only turnaround worth hailing would be that of our troops starting to leave.
For more on this subject, see this.
Showing posts with label U.S. casualties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. casualties. Show all posts
Monday, September 03, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Honoring the Dead, Conveniently
As Americans turn against the war in Iraq, the deaths of our young people there are getting harder to bear. At one Army base, Fort Lewis in Washington, the Commander has decided to honor the fallen, instead of with services for each soldier, a collective memorial once a month.
“If I lost my husband at the beginning of the month, what do you do, wait until the end of the month?” asks the wife of one soldier in Iraq. “I don’t know if it’s more convenient for them, or what, but that’s insane.”
From the Gettysburg Address on, Americans have been torn between gratitude and grief for the young men, and now women as well, sent to die for such abstractions as freedom and honor. But until the past half century, those words had weight and meaning.
Now on Memorial Day, when the President says “patriots from every corner of our Nation have taken up arms to uphold the ideals that make our country a beacon of hope and freedom for the entire world,” how many of us believe that?
Vietnam changed everything. In a movie 20 years ago, “Gardens of Stone,” about old soldiers who tend graves at Arlington National Cemetery, one of them says, "In this war, there is no front. It's not even a war. There's nothing to win and no way to win it."
Now Iraq makes that seem an understatement. But even in the most senseless and brutal of wars, dying is the same solemn reality it has always been. Politicians can debate whether our young men and women are giving up their lives “in vain,” but those deaths can’t be “disremembered.”
The Ft. Lewis Commander will probably feel too much pressure to go on with his wholesale remembrances once a month, and so he should. If we are to stop the deaths and prevent more in the future, we can’t conveniently avoid grieving over them one at a time.
“Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead,” Susan Sontag wrote. “Heartlessness and amnesia go together.”
“If I lost my husband at the beginning of the month, what do you do, wait until the end of the month?” asks the wife of one soldier in Iraq. “I don’t know if it’s more convenient for them, or what, but that’s insane.”
From the Gettysburg Address on, Americans have been torn between gratitude and grief for the young men, and now women as well, sent to die for such abstractions as freedom and honor. But until the past half century, those words had weight and meaning.
Now on Memorial Day, when the President says “patriots from every corner of our Nation have taken up arms to uphold the ideals that make our country a beacon of hope and freedom for the entire world,” how many of us believe that?
Vietnam changed everything. In a movie 20 years ago, “Gardens of Stone,” about old soldiers who tend graves at Arlington National Cemetery, one of them says, "In this war, there is no front. It's not even a war. There's nothing to win and no way to win it."
Now Iraq makes that seem an understatement. But even in the most senseless and brutal of wars, dying is the same solemn reality it has always been. Politicians can debate whether our young men and women are giving up their lives “in vain,” but those deaths can’t be “disremembered.”
The Ft. Lewis Commander will probably feel too much pressure to go on with his wholesale remembrances once a month, and so he should. If we are to stop the deaths and prevent more in the future, we can’t conveniently avoid grieving over them one at a time.
“Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead,” Susan Sontag wrote. “Heartlessness and amnesia go together.”
Monday, June 11, 2007
Beyond Paris Hilton and Tony Soprano
She’s in jail, he’s gone, the weekend’s over, but the war in Iraq goes on and people keep dying.
In dry, actuarial terms, this week’s Time tells it all:
“According to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution at the end of May, the number of sectarian murders, carried out mainly by Shi'ite death squads against Sunnis, has risen noticeably in recent weeks after a drop-off that began in the latter part of February. Sectarian deaths are often described as ‘extra-judicial killings’ (EJKs) and involve the abduction, torture and murder of the victim, with the body usually left on the street.
“In May...there were roughly 700 EJKs across Baghdad. While still lower than the pre-surge figure of 800 in February, that's a substantial increase from the estimated 500 in each of March and April, the first two months of the surge.
“So far in June, about 20 bodies have appeared on the streets of Baghdad a day; at that rate, at least 600 murder victims will surface in Baghdad by the end of June. Meanwhile, the number of bombings targeting civilians in Baghdad, the chief tactic of Sunni extremists out to kill masses of Shi'ites, has remained roughly the same since the surge began, at about 50 per month.”
Our own people keep dying at a slower rate, but we are past 3500 now and counting. While those talking heads in Washington give us more words, that will be the reality.
Paris Hilton had what for breakfast?
In dry, actuarial terms, this week’s Time tells it all:
“According to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution at the end of May, the number of sectarian murders, carried out mainly by Shi'ite death squads against Sunnis, has risen noticeably in recent weeks after a drop-off that began in the latter part of February. Sectarian deaths are often described as ‘extra-judicial killings’ (EJKs) and involve the abduction, torture and murder of the victim, with the body usually left on the street.
“In May...there were roughly 700 EJKs across Baghdad. While still lower than the pre-surge figure of 800 in February, that's a substantial increase from the estimated 500 in each of March and April, the first two months of the surge.
“So far in June, about 20 bodies have appeared on the streets of Baghdad a day; at that rate, at least 600 murder victims will surface in Baghdad by the end of June. Meanwhile, the number of bombings targeting civilians in Baghdad, the chief tactic of Sunni extremists out to kill masses of Shi'ites, has remained roughly the same since the surge began, at about 50 per month.”
Our own people keep dying at a slower rate, but we are past 3500 now and counting. While those talking heads in Washington give us more words, that will be the reality.
Paris Hilton had what for breakfast?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)