Oh, and I meant to ask, what "context" is implied by comparing US combat casualties to drunk driving accidents or heart attack rates?
I haven't and don't compare our military casualties to civilian deaths due to living in the US. The "context" is the objective versus the losses. We didn't keep a scorecard in WWII using casualties as the measure of whether we were winning or not. We tried to minimize them, but the achievement of victory was paramount because we believed that our very survival was at stake.
When Clinton pulled out of Somalia after the Blackhawk down incident, he was sending our enemies the message that we were casualty averse. We didn't have the stomach for the fight. Losing 2,814 military personnel in Iraq [or twice that much] over a 44 month period should not be the basis of a decision to cut and run or stay. If the mission is deemed important and vital, then casualties are really secondary, especially as low as these numbers are.