How many damn people have to die in these crazy assed wars we are waging?

In 2009 there have been 304 American military deaths in Afghanistan, this was twice as many as in 2008 and even 152 deaths is to many! Seems crazy to me that the media is mum on the numbers of dead because of our quest to catch and stamp out the bad guys, whoever the hell they are. They are not easy numbers to find either and I am not sure why. I am not positive about the 304 number, I found other numbers that were all close. They all hovered around the 300 mark so I assume that general vicinity is correct. That is only US casualties, not included are the coalition troops, contractors, journalists and last by not least, the Iraqi and Afghani troops and or civilians. Does it not stagger your imagination that these numbers are not talked about by everyone who is sucking air and able to have a conversation? Why is it that we do not have the daily body count on the evening news, like they did during the Vietnam offensive? What are the human costs for our American military men and women? What are the costs for their families? And why in the hell are we doing it??

Trust me I believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, I oppose many of our governments current policies. This does not mean that I am anti-American, it does not mean I am a redneck, it does not mean I am a terrorist-sympathizer. What it doe means is that I believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché. I believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while the antithesis leads to the oppression, war, terrorism, poverty, and misery. Does it not seem preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, are we as a country so shallow? What difference does someone’s race or nationality, religious views or lack of religious views really make in the grand scheme of things. In an age when political correctness has run amuck and the decision makers have their heads up the asses how are the citizenry, us common folk, supposed to react to the wrong minded decisions of our government? What are we doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? What is the objective? Why has it fallen to the United States to deal with problems a world away? If we just left folks alone more often I suspect that they would leave us alone a little more often.

I want to get back to the numbers for a bit here though because the US casualties only play a minuscule part in the make up of human life that has been lost since we proactively and preemptively started these two wars. I will start with Afghanistan because that is where we started. We (coalition forces) have killed in the neighborhood of 8,600 and injured almost 26,000 Afghan troops. So, we have negatively impacted almost 35,000 Afghani soldiers, that seems a significant number to me. Now, when we move over to Afghani Civilians killed or injured I really took note. Almost 8,200 killed and almost 15,000 injured, that is CIVILIANS I am talking about now. That is over 23,000 innocent bystanders! Why have we not heard about this travesty? The amount of loss of innocent life is crazy to me. Now the numbers of US and Coalition forces killed and injured pale by comparison, almost 1,500 killed and 4,455 injured. I suppose one could say our military is better equipped and an all around bunch of bad asses and they would be right, our military is second to none but………. My point is we are killing an awful lot of people, innocent and otherwise and it makes my heart hurt to see so much loss. The military should not be forced into doing this fools errand, as I see it that these wars are. The totals, everyone killed or injured in Afghanistan is a bit over 18,000 killed and over 47,000 injured. That includes everyone from all the sides and even the journalists who were killed. 47,000 people affected – holy cow.

It took me a couple of days to digest those numbers, lots of sorry and sadness. Once I was able to stop crying enough to continue my investigation of the other war, the one in Iraq, I was even more stunned than I was by the numbers out of Afghanistan. The numbers here are truly staggering so please stop now if you do not want to know. There have been nearly 4,400 American Casualties and over 31,000 injured in the time we have been there. It breaks my heart to see those numbers, because as sad as that is it is multiplied by a magnitude of order when you consider the impact that those deaths and injuries have had on the families of those military Men and Women. When you look at the coalition numbers, while every bit as sad you can begin to see that the US is bearing a disproportionate amount the deaths and injuries. Keep in mind I am not talking about the Iraqi numbers just yet. Coalition forces causality numbers sit at a bit over 300 killed and the injured are in the neighborhood of 2,300. A fraction, less than 8% on deaths and injured numbers, it begs the question – what are the coalition forces actually doing. Seems to me that they are doing about 7.5 percent of what the United States is doing - if we use the numbers to determine it. Not a bad thing, just a thing and I think it tells a story, I would not want to help us either in this open ended boon dogle that is costing HUGE in the number of lives and at the same time the financial obligation could bankrupt a country.

Here are the really staggering numbers, if we look at Iraqi troops, 30,000 of them have been killed and 90,000 of them injured. Yep, 120,000 Iraqi military members have been negatively impacted by our invasion of their Sovereign Nation. Imagine what would happen if someone invaded our country, we would all be fighting in some way or another. And that is EXACTLY what happened there, we invaded a Sovereign Nation. All said and told there have been almost 800,000 Iraqi CIVILIANS killed in the war and another 1,500,000 injured, just imagine every person in Jacksonville being injured, that is about what the injured numbers equate to. CRAZY we have not heard about this! If you add up all the numbers killed and injured it comes up to 2.5 million folks – 2.5 million. That is damn near the entire population of Chicago – what in the hell is going on! That amount of loss of life is staggering, during the Vietnam conflict the number was a bit over 3 million and we rose up and protested in the streets. Why not now?

I am quite sure that there were no terrorists in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in power. I mean think about it, he was a power hungry dictator who controlled the populace through fear and intimidation. Anyone who secretly or publicly questioned his authority was dealt with, in the harshest of ways. He was a tyrannical leader who had a lot of blood on his hands. He was a dirt bag, plain and simple. The one thing he was not, was tolerant of ANYONE stealing any of the sunshine from his brilliance. What makes any normal person believe that there was a terrorist problem in Iraq before we showed up. That was before we created one by removing the one person who could keep it from happening, the tyrannical dictator. He was a devil we know, he was a devil we created when he was fighting Iran. He was a monster of our own making and we wonder why when we let him off the lease he attacked. Even me in my infinitesimal knowledge and ability to understand any of it can see that, why could not our elected officials in Washington?

I am not even sure what point I want to get across with this Oratory but I think the cost in human lives is even more important than the 12 billion+ dollars a month our government is putting on the Visa card. I ask that each of you say a prayer for everyone who was lost and everyone his or her loss has impacted. I want to pray for everyone because we are all human beings and any loss of life means something, especially senseless loss of life.