Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

3,000

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A sad milestone to start the new year: the US has lost 3,000 men and women in Iraq.

In the print edition of today’s NY Times, pages A10-A13 provide a gallery of the last 1,000 members of the military to die.  It’s unbearable to look at.  Online, there’s an interactive feature that lets you bring up information on any American killed in Iraq.

Finally, also in today’s Times, there’s an unbelievably painful front-page appreciation, by a Times editor, of her husband who died recently in Iraq.

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Comments

  1. “There are at least two lessons for us to take away from such a day of remembrance. The first is one our leaders should carry next to their breasts, and contemplate every time they f ace a crisis, however small, which puts our military at risk. it should echo in their consciences, from the power of a million graves . It is simply this: You hold our soldiers’ lives in sacred trust. When a citizen has sworn to obey you, and follow your judgment, and walk onto a battlefield to defend the interests you define as worthy of his blood, do not abuse that awesome power through careless policy, unclear objectives, or inflexible leadership.

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    The second lesson regards those who have taken such an oath, and who have honored the judgment of their leaders, often at great cost. Intellectual analyses of national policy are subject to constant re-evaluation by historians as the decades roll by, but duty is a constant, frozen in the context of the moment it was performed. Duty is action, taken after listening to one’s leaders, and weighing risk and fear against the powerful draw of obligation to family, community, nation, and the unknown future.”

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    Full Speech.

  2. If 3,000 Americans dead isn’t sobering enough, an estimated 54,000 to 57,000 Iraqis have died also.  Why do you suppose the US gov’t isn’t concerned with documenting each and every war-related death of the people were are ostensibly there to liberate?

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    MichianLiberal.com puts up a brief bio diary for each dead soldier with MI ties.  WHat about doing something similar here as a constant reminder?  I suggest such diaries include the proper multiplyer so that we can also honor the loss of Iraqi people cought in the cross fire.

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    A hanging and a landmark deathtoll – what a way to ring in the new year.

  5. America no longer has the stomach for war. Our enemies know this and will use it to their advantage. I have a family member heading back to Iraq and I asked him what he thought of all the people counting our dead heroes. He said “people who occupy their time with how many of us are dead are missing the point;how many of us return alive is what they should be counting” He has lost numerous friends 3 out of 4 in a Humvee on one occasion he being the fourth who lived.

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    When our enemies come knocking on our door ten years from now; you can thank your senseless obsession with how many troops die and not about what they died for;your continued freedom. When you are hiding out in your basement with the windows taped up,thank your body counting friends who stopped our troops from winning in Iraq. 
    I hold george bush as reponsible as the rest of you;but keep the troops in your thoughts and prayers and support them. We need them to win for our countries pride and future
    generations peaceful existence.

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