Thinkin’bout Stuff

Spree over at Wake Up America sparked an interesting debate on the topic with this post: Withdraw NOW… Cut and Run.  Since it’s late and I spent all my blogging time writing my thoughts over there, thought I’d just go ahead and share my input here in a cross-post

From Wake Up America (just a peek… you’ll need to visit to get the full post):

… those of you that have screamed SO hard and SO loud about how dangerous Iraq is, and how it is in the middle of a “civil war”, have any of you bothered to get the crime statistics of our own country and do your own comparisons? I doubt it. You do not want facts, god no…. please not THOSE.

And one of the dissenting opinions:

You do realize that the number of murders in Iraq are higher than the numbers you just published for the US. Plus, Iraq only has about 7% of the population of the US.

So, if we’re comparing apples to apples, the murder rate in Iraq is 20 times higher than the US. If you really think that Iraq is safer for US troops than the US is, I suggest you get on the next flight to Baghdad for Thanksgiving.

And then there’s my two cents: 

The murder rate in Iraq will not go down when we leave, so that is not actually a variable that has any meaning.
 
The key here is that the pull out proponents are not pushing for us to leave Iraq because of Iraqi deaths, but because of US deaths. The argument is that we are engaged in a bloody engagement on a par with Vietnam and WWII which is clearly false and is on the borderline between sensationalistic journalism and propaganda.
 
A case could be made that the death rate (based upon active military in country) needs to be compared to death rates for civilians in the US within the same age group, but that is a hypothetical that assumes military and civilian mortality rates in peacetime are equivalent which is not likely considering military jobs are risky even when there are no active engagements. 

The point that I believe spree is making (and that I was making at my place) is not necessarily an apples to apples comparison. The point is that the press & left are painting a bleak picture based upon the number of deaths (not a death rate) that is low in comparison to many other risks in life (and for far less noble a cause).  That in no way is meant to minimize the loss or to diminish the value of the precious lives of these brave men and women. If you believe the rate is the issue and not the number, please think about whether the press would think 3,000 deaths was acceptable if we had 3 million troops in Iraq… would that make it OK? I’m guessing it wouldn’t.  No deaths are acceptable, especially in an unpopular war; the interesting paradox is that the press has used the casualties to create the perception of an unpopular war.

Drop by Wake Up America and join the fun…  or drop me a line here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 2:37 am and is filed under Politics, Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.