As Iraq announces the approval of its draft constitution (which passed in a manner Slate‘s Fred Kaplan has deemed “the worst of both worlds“), the war claims its 2000th US military casualty. (Of these, 357 were under 21, 487 were National Guard, and 1863 — over 9 in 10 — have died since Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished” fiasco.) We’re still well under the casualty rate for Vietnam, true, but what comfort is that to the families of the fallen? Two thousand US men and women have been killed in the line of duty, and this blatantly amateurish administration still has no plan either to win or to disengage from a conflict they orchestrated, other than “stay the course.” As with so much else under this president, the conduct of this war from its inception has been shameful and unacceptable — in short, a national embarrassment.
3 thoughts on “Dubious Milestones in Baghdad.”
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I don’t know Murph. 2000 is an awfully small number for such a long conflict. It’s a milestone, sure, and it’s sad for the families, but it’s still a tiny number. The first rule of war is that young men kill. The second rule is that young men (and now women) die, and when they do, we shouldn’t be surprised. Nor should their families or neighbors be surprised, nor reporters, not even your dog (who is as stoic as they come in the canine world), et cetera. That’s what soldiers have done since the first time Gurk organized cave Alpha into a band to attack cave Beta.
When the number of killed approaches something a little more significant in comparison to other foreign conflicts in American History, then I think people will be more outraged or as outraged as you think they should be.
And the first rule of Bush War, no one talks about Bush War.
I dunno, J-GO…people seem pretty outraged.
Like I said, the death count is still well below that of Vietnam, by an order of magnitude. But that doesn’t excuse the Dubyas of their rank amateurism in both starting and conducting this war as they have, with no actual WMDs anywhere, no planning for the peace, no exit strategy, and no attention to the broader questions of the war on terror and America’s image in the world. We shouldn’t have to wait for a Vietnam-size body count to know that this war has been badly bungled and has worked against our attempts to curb terrorist organizations in the world.
There’s no question that this has been a poorly executed conflict, or that the reasoning behind our policy in Iraq is fundamentally flawed. The bottom line is that while his approval rating on his handling of the war may be down, that matters very little in terms of his overall popularity, especially in the red states. 50,000 dead plus no progress, and then you’ve got some chinks in the armor. 2000 dead and well reasoned argumentation, as you’ve exhibited above, isn’t going to mean dick in terms of stranglehold of the Bushies now or, god forbid, of their chosen successors in 2008.