October 26, 2005

See It


This a map showing the location of US fatalities in Iraq by hometown. It comes from this invaluable web site. Sometimes just the number isn't enough. You have to see it. The numbers, the geography, the simply, horrible math that every day we stay in Iraq it mean 2 more dots at this map.

2 comments:

Laura said...

At the risk of repeating myself...

Yes, the cost is high, there can be no doubts about that. The loss of even one life is awful and I hope like hell that every night while he tries to sleep, GW is haunted by the faces of families who have endured these losses. I hope that every day he is aware that he is responsible for each and every one of these deaths. That his decision to enter in to a war we had no business starting killed our soldiers and destroyed families.

But, what nobody seems to want to talk about is the toll on Iraq. Where is the map that shows all the lost Iraqis? And what would that nonexistent map look like if we left? Do we really believe that American lives are more important than Iraqi lives? For that matter, why aren't we involved in stopping the genocide in Darfur, and why did we stay home when the genocide occurred in Rwanda?

This situation is different from those last two because in a very real way, the U.S. created the mess in Iraq. So, while it is wrong of us to stand by watching as innocent people die in Darfur, it would be murder if we decided to pull out of Iraq without putting things right.

Laura said...

I checked out the site the map came from and they do, in fact, list Iraqi civilian and military/police deaths.

In August alone, 1,806 Iraqis were killed. That's only 194 less than our entire total for over a year. If we're asking about costs, it seems to be the Iraqis are paying a much higher one.