Death and Politics

Every life is precious, but some perspective here. Dadmanly, via Jules Crittenden:

Jonah Goldberg, posting at The Corner (here and here), highlights the factual basis behind what a lot of military people know intuitively, and goes virtually unrecognized by the media and the public whose trust they so willfully neglect.

We lose no more soldiers in Iraq than we would lose, on average, through training accidents, other accidents, and other causes. In other words, soldiers are no less safe (or no more in danger) in Iraq than they are anywhere else.

Sound incredible? It shouldn’t.

Because our soldiers are in Iraq, they are a target for terrorist attack, just as they are virtually anywhere in the world, and have been for two to three decades. Just as are diplomats, business people, and journalists.

Our soldiers sacrifice for us and in wartime and in peacetime. And the world has become a riskier place.

UPDATE: More perspective later in the same post:

The bottom line is that we're fighting this war with lower casualties than that expected from normal training accidents in a peacetime army.

And this:

The total military dead in the Iraq war between 2003 and this month stands at about 3,133. This is tragic, as are all deaths due to war, and we are facing a cowardly enemy unlike any other in our past that hides behind innocent citizens. Each death is blazoned in the headlines of newspapers and Internet sites. What is never compared is the number of military deaths during the Clinton administration: 1,245 in 1993; 1,109 in 1994; 1,055 in 1995; 1,008 in 1996. That's 4,417 deaths in peacetime but, of course, who's counting?

Meanwhile the defeatist Democrats demagogue these deaths to belittle their sacrifice and suggest our troops are not up to the task and can't win. What lies.

Previous posts: Die by the poll Dems, The Right Side of History, Dead Souls Democrats