Posted by
JDComments on Saturday, September 23, 2006 4:47:24 PM
With the announcement that the number of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached the "milestone" of the number of people killed on 9/11, the media has created an importance for this amount which is without foundation. As horrible as it is to have almost 3000 of our fellow countrymen die, the really amazing aspect of the figure is that we have freed fifty million people with that sacrifice. I doubt if anytime in history has so large a victory been attained at so small a cost. Any death is horrible, especially for the families involved, but to turn this into a "milestone" which intimates that it should be taken into consideration in assessing our success or failure and in determining what our future policy should be is just wrong. 3435 deaths were sustained at Pearl Harbor, but I doubt if that number was trumpeted by newspapers when our armed forces reached it in combat, and considering that we had 300,000 casualties during that war, I am sure that the number 3435 had no significance in our policy making [or we would all be speaking German now!]. There have been many milestones in the last five years: the toppling of the Taliban, the capture of Saddam, the three national votes by the Iraqis, and they all represented important steps in the War against IslamoFascism. The number of dead US soldiers represents something else: the fact that our liberty and security comes at a price, and Thank God many of us are willing to pay that price. So the Liberal establishment may try to turn this into a moment to reassess our strategy, and pull out, but hopefully the citizens of this country will come to see it as an investment in our future which we cannot allow to have been made in vain.