The 2,000th Death Lie

While everyone on the left is apparently eagerly preparing for the inevitable story of the "2000th American death" in Iraq -- here is Reuters' salivations -- it might be worth mentioning that the entire story will be based upon a little white lie. As of October 15, 2005, there had been 1970 deaths in Iraq. That much is true. But what none of the stories will tell you is that 436 of these deaths were "accidents/other deaths," meaning deaths from car accidents, training accidents, illnesses, suicides, murders, etc. Such deaths, of course, happen all the time to human beings and, given the fact that we have 150,000 or so Americans in Iraq, it is not surprising that several hundred of them would die in accidents or from illness or suicide or murder, etc., over the course of a two-and-a-half year period. In other words, the 2,000 Death Meme that the media will push will include probably around 450 deaths that would have happened anyway had the same soldiers been stationed in Madison, Wisconsin, or Ann Arbor, Michigan, or Berkeley, California, or some other bastion of the peace-at-any-price Left.

The 1534 deaths in actual combat over a period of 31 months work out to almost precisely 50 deaths a month. I know these deaths are tragic for the families involved, and our prayers are with them, as well as our thanks for their sacrifice. But individual tragedy and foreign policy as enforced through military capability are two different things. The reality is that this number of deaths is extraordinarily low by any rational historical standard... the equivalent of losing about two platoons a month. This amount is not just easily replaceable from a military readiness perspective, amounting to 1/3000th of our troops on active duty in Iraq. It is undoubtedly within the margin of error of the Pentagon's estimates of how many troops are battle-ready at any given time in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Left apparently believes that any loss of life in military action is per se indefensible, regardless of the cause. A good question for future Democratic Presidential candidates would be: Is there any series of events short of an invasion of the Continental United States that would bring the current Democratic Party to use military force?