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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Neocon who wrote (152268)11/22/2004 1:08:40 PM
From: cnyndwllr  Read Replies (2) of 281500
 
Neocon, re: Anyway, from my perspective we are still running terrifically low in fatalities. This is based on historical comparisons, not arbitrary standards. We are being very conservative with the lives our troops.

From your perspective, how many lives would it take for the needle to get out of the "terrifically low" category? When would we get to the point where you would no longer consider us "very conservative with the lives of our troops?"

In your eagerness to put a positive face on the suffering and dying of our more than 100,000 troops in Iraq, you spin numbers as though you were spending dollars and not the lives of human beings with loved ones, dreams, and hearts and souls.

Here's what I think. I think one American soldier's life lost is terrifically high. I think we are being extremely wasteful with the lives and health of our young men and women in Iraq. And I think that because the question has two parts; one of which you have ignored. The second part of any equation when you're analyzing the loss of the lives and health of our troops hinges on necessity and the benefits gained from such losses. This was not a necessary war and the benefits are growing more and more speculative. In that circumstance even one life unnecessarily lost in a wasted effort is far, far too high.

Every American on whose behest and behalf those young men and women are dying should understand that simple truth. But you toss around silly comparisons of numbers from other conflicts to justify some bean counting formula that tends to minimize the enormity of what we ask of our young and what is happening in Iraq.

Someone wrote on this thread about the concept that spin can distort our perception of reality but it does not change the reality. It is what it is. When it comes to recognizing the seriousness of our human losses in Iraq, the least we can do is to acknowledge them as immense, rather than attempting to minimize them by comparing deaths in other wars, deaths from accidents or diseases or using some other silly "it could be worse" analysis. We at least owe them that much. Ed
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