The 2,000th 'victim' -- Victor Davis Hanson weighs in...
Was reading
Maggie's Farm and saw there that
Victor Davis Hanson had a column at the NY Times regarding the 2,000th death in Iraq:
2,000 Dead, in Context
As the aggregate number of American military fatalities in Iraq has crept up over the past 13 months - from 1,000 to 1,500 dead, and now to 2,000 - public support for the war has commensurately declined. With the nightly ghoulish news of improvised explosives and suicide bombers, Americans perhaps do not appreciate that the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the effort to establish a democratic government in Iraq have been accomplished at relatively moderate cost - two-thirds of the civilian fatalities incurred four years ago on the first day of the war against terrorism.
He then compares this with some other wars:
Compared with Iraq, America lost almost 17 times more dead in Korea, and 29 times more again in Vietnam - in neither case defeating our enemies nor establishing democracy in a communist north.
Contemporary critics understandably lament our fourth year of war since Sept. 11 in terms of not achieving a victory like World War II in a similar stretch of time. But that is to forget the horrendous nature of such comparison when we remember that America lost 400,000 dead overseas at a time when the country was about half its present size.
An excellent read... 60 years is a long long time ago but the lessons and sacrifices then need to be brought to present times and reflected on. First one being that fascism has not died and that we are dealing with it again.
Posted by DaveH at October 27, 2005 10:11 PM