I think we should keep things in perspective here.
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With the death of an American soldier yesterday in an ambush outside Baghdad, more American military men and women have now died in the postwar period than perished during the war itself.
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This is an unusual statistic. I heard it mentioned on NPR news yesterday, right before "Talk of the Nation" and thought it very strange. Would the New York Times prefer more soldiers died during the war? Think of it in reverse terms: more soldiers died in World War 2 than in the post-war occupations of Germany and Japan. Would we prefer America be embroiled in World War 2 than the quick liberation of Iraq? Of course not, no reasonable person would be.
Some posters have mentioned Vietnam. Over 58,000 troops were declared KIA in Vietnam in 10 years (vietnamwall.org). In Iraq, as of yesterday 281 soldiers have died, 143 after "combat operations" were over. Of those, 66 were KIA, with 77 in non-hostile actions (San Jose Mercury News, Aug. 27). The combat death rate (as it currently stands) of 66 since May 1 is half that of the accident rate of peacetime (John Hinderaker of the Claremont Institute).
In comparison, over the last 10 years, an average of 165 police officers are killed each year in the United States (Howard County Police Department, Maryland). This does not include the 72 that were killed in the World Trade Center. Yes, this gives us the meaningless statistic that more police officers were killed in the World Trade Center than US soldiers killed by insurgents in Iraq.
Last, according to Amnesty International 275 Iraqis died per day as a result of Saddam Hussein. To be willing to accept French "sass," so to speak, would mean that one would rather have 275 Iraqis die per day than the currenty fatality rate of just under 1.5 GIs per day. Or, in other words, one would be saying that 1 GI is not worth 183 Iraqis.
The death of a single soldier, police officer, or innocent Iraqi is never to be taken lightly. But cheap shots like that "statistic" demean what those brave soldiers have done for not only our country, but for a country halfway around the world. I would welcome, for example, French and Russian soldiers to help patrol Iraq. But considering they initially resisted lifting sanctions on Iraq (Sydney Morning Herald, April 18) as away to politically undermine the reconstruction, I would insist on an American commander -- an arrangement, it would seem, that Bush would accept (Ireland Online, Aug. 28).
(EDIT: Grammar and spelling mistakes. Darn it!)