One Side of the Story

2000 deaths of American soldiers in Iraq... some kind of milestone, the papers say. This is not a milestone at all. The two thousandth death means the same as the first, and the same as the last. Further, why not tell the story of the real milestones? Tell of what we have accomplished! Tell of the the miracle that in the invasion of a nation and subsequent station keeping in the face of a continued stream of assaults calculated to take said nation for a new band of slavers, that only two thousand have had to lay down their lives! We built a nation where once was naught but a tyrant and his slaves! How about that milestone? Women voting for the first time ever in the entire region? A constitution? The thousands of new schools, hospitals, and stores? The dramatically increased standard of living? As a certain Lt. Colonel says, celebrate the daily milestones (hat tip: Malkin)! Shoot, I just got done reading about how Air Force EOD (Explosive Ordnace Disposal) teams are clearing thousands of UXO (Un-eXploded Ordnance), mines, IED, and wepon caches. Dammit, stop with just the American body count and start with what it is buying! Tell our story, the story of our success! The success of a war is not told only in how many of our soldiers die! You know, every last one of those who has fallen did something first. They did something good, something worthy of telling about! Then there is what all the rest are doing, what the units collectively are doing!

All I see from those blathering about 2,000 deaths so far is how badly this war is going, how it is wrong, and how we must leave now before a single other soldier dies.
That attitude is not what built the world's great democratic nations. It is not what stopped slavery in the western world (it still goes on elsewhere). It did not liberate the whole of Europe from the Nazis. It is not what will save civilization from the monsters that now roam the earth, monsters seeking only to destroy and enslave.

This war is not a war of deaths, it is a war of lives: of lives saved, of lives improved, of lives restored, and of lives protected.

A BBCstory crassly suggests that this was supposed to be easy... War is never easy, never has been, and never will be. Nobody I know said that this one would be easy. In a war, you fight ceaselessly until the enemy is destroyed or yields. The enemy are still streaming into Iraq, so must we continue the fight until they stop or there are none left to come. We set a nation free, and now there is an attempt to take it in the name of a new evil. No, it's not easy. The worthwhile things never are.

I am not happy that two thousand of my brothers and sisters are dead. I could easily have been one of them. I could be one of the next thousand, but I know why this job has to be completed.
War costs lives. You all know that. What seems to escape those of you who criticize, those who count only bodies, is that these lives buy something. These lives buy your life. Tyrants and slavers do not go away because you ask them to. Security from militant deconstructionists does not come from negotiation. Freedom and peace come from the blood of soldiers... You sit is relative peace now because men like those now working in Iraq once fought for you... and millions of them died for you. In many cases, it was men who were not from your country and who did not speak your language. Are you better than the Iraqis? Do you deserve more than they?

Homework assignment: How many Americans died to secure Iwo Jima? The Ardennes? In the Big Week raids? To secure France? To secure Germany? To liberate the Phillipines?