U. S. Deaths in Iraq: The Numbers Game Continues

Since the United States invasion of Iraq, the major media press has posted the daily death toll of American soldiers killed in action. The first milestone was one thousand. For weeks, the press anticipated with almost a ghastly glee on which day that number would emerge. One would have thought the press had a football over and under pool going. Then the next milestone was two thousand, then three thousand, with the same ghoulish fascination. There is a tragedy behind each death to be sure, with a grieving family in a world of pain. When anyone like me dares to criticize those who bandy about those numbers as a reason to redeploy our troops elsewhere, there is a tendency to look at those numbers not in historical context. During the Second World War, American casualties were often in the thousands every day. If it is true that huge numbers desensitize one's ability to see beyond each death that a grieving family has incurred a devastating loss, then it is also true that individual deaths reported in isolation bring those figures into grievously sharp contrast. Those in the media who seek only to portray the Iraq War solely as a bad thing use these deaths to shamelessly suggest that the very few deaths of this war are more to be felt than the infinitely higher death tolls of the two world wars and the Korean War. If critics of the War in Iraq want to make their case to end the war, then they ought not to parade a pie chart of American dead just to make their point.