Lest we shrugg it off

"But they live so fast
and they die so young
and we just keep wondering
What goes on?"
Midnight Oil

There have been 2 974 coalition deaths in the war in Iraq announces a CNN web page. Sad isn’t it? But easy to disregard until you start scrolling down the page which lists each and every one of them.

Suddenly, it’s not an abstract number anymore as you discover their smiles, their names, the way they died, their age. Most of them so young. And for each casualty, how many broken hearts? The parents, the siblings, the girlfriends/wives, the kids?

I took the time to scroll down, lest they should remain an abstract number very few care about. I was surprised by the number of deaths not combat-related. Vehicles crashes seem frequent and deadly and then there’s the mysterious “died from non combat-related injuries”. How do you die from injuries when not in combat? Does that mean in training? If that’s the case, they’re losing an unacceptable number of men in training.

All in all, it’s very sad and sobering. How many of them never wanted to be there in the first place and were just itching to get back to a normal life?

Here’s CNN’s page.

Yet for all my sorrow, I must not ignore that these men and women were the aggressors. They attacked a country and occupied it. Bring war, you reap death.

Now if only they would do a similar page with the Iraqi casualties. How much longer the list.