Which is fine, since we didn't _get_ a high number of American casualties. Any death is a tragedy, and the death of any American soldier is an immense tragedy. But the British lost 40,000 people in the first few hours of the Somme. We lost ~50,000 in Vietnam. We've lost less than 600 people in a year in Iraq. By any measure that's an astonishingly low rate of casualties.
Unless you're one of them.
I find it disquieting that it's always the noncombatant conservatives who so sanguinely accept any casualties at all. If it was one of your relatives, I doubt you'd be so dismissive of "les than 600". Especially considering that the soldiers who have died and been wounded and had their tours of duty endlessly extended and the rest of the country and the entire world were lied to about why the US invaded Iraq and those "less than 600" died (most of them since Bush disgustingly went on board that aircraft carrier and declared combat over). Do you think the American people would have supported this war if we knew in February 2003 what we know now, that Iraq does not - and DID NOT - have WMD? No matter how much your bones shriek that we needed to free the Iraqi people of a tyrant, would that alone have sufficed to generate American support for the war? I don't think so. Under those circumstances, even a single American casualty is too many.
To have more people die since the end of major combat operations than before, and to have them die because they and we were lied to - and because this Administration obviously was completely unprepared for occupying Iraq after so easily conquering it - is disgraceful.
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Tom Beck
my LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/tomfodw/
"I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never thought I'd see the last." - Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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