The Real Meaning of 4,000 Dead

I didn't see this diaried here yet, so I thought I would share with everyone a heartbreaking editorial on the Iraq war written Lieutenant Sean Walsh on the real cost in the Iraq war.

I am going to keep my editorial comments to a minimum, since his words speak volumes more than mine every could.

The Real Meaning of 4,000 Dead

The passing of the 4,000th service member in Iraq is a tragic milestone and a testament to the cost of this war, but for those of us who live and fight in Iraq, we measure that cost in smaller, but much more personal numbers. For me those numbers are 8, the number of friends and classmates killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 3, the number of soldiers from my unit killed in this deployment. I'm 25, yet I've received more notifications for funerals than invitations to weddings.

Lieut. Walsh goes on to describe how he heard the news that one of his closest friends was killed in combat in Afghanistan.

I am certain that I am not alone when I open up the Stars and Stripes, the military's daily paper, and immediately search for the section with the names of the fallen to see if they include anyone I know. While in a combat outpost in southwest Baghdad, it was in that distinctive bold Arial print in a two-week-old copy of the Stars and Stripes that I read that my best friend had been killed in Afghanistan. No phone call from a mutual friend or a visit to his family. All that had come and gone by the time I had learned about his death. I sometimes wonder, if I hadn't picked up that paper, how much longer I would have gone by without knowing — perhaps another day, perhaps a week or longer until I could find the time and the means to check my e-mail to find my messages unanswered and a death notification from a West Point distro list in my inbox. The dead in Afghanistan don't seem to inspire the keeping of lists the same way that those in Iraq do, but even if they did it wouldn't matter; he could only be number 7 to me.

While the mainstream media seems to only turn into reports about casualties in the Iraq war every time the death toll hits a number with a bunch of zeros in it, soldiers like Lieut. Walsh deal with the impact of these casualties every day.  Lieut. Walsh asks us not just to focus on the number 4,000, but on the 1,000,000 men and women service members that have fought in Iraq and have had their lives forever altered by this conflict.

For the vast majority of Americans who don't have a loved one overseas, the only number they have to attempt to grasp the Iraq War is 4,000. I would ask that when you see that number, try to remember that it is made up of over 1 million smaller numbers; that every one of the 1 million service members who have fought in Iraq has his or her own personal numbers. Over 1 million 8's and 3's. When you are evaluating the price of the war, weighing potential rewards versus cost in blood and treasure, I would ask you to consider what is worth the lives of three of your loved ones? Or eight? Or more? It would be a tragedy for my 8 and 3 to have died without us being able to complete our mission, but it maybe even more tragic for 8 and 3 to become anything higher.

So while John McCain parades around Iraq mixing up our enemies like it's no big deal, and George W. Bush swooning over how "romantic" the war is, people like Lieut. Walsh lose their friends and loved ones.  Every day this war continues, numbers like 8 and 3 continue to rise, and everyday soldiers are put through more suffering than any of us can imagine.

If this isn't a reason to end this damn war, I don't know what is.