Posted on 11/02/2006 8:26:18 AM PST by Dominic Harr
In a month of fighting on Iwo Jima, we had over 6,000 dead, 25,000 wounded.
And that was a victory.
And now, many Americans consider 2,500 dead/20,000 wounded over several years to be a loss!?
The only hope for victory the enemy has is American public opinion. We've won all the battles. We kill more of them than they kill of us. We hold most of the territory.
Yet I even see Rs calling this a 'failed' war, and suggesting we can't win.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=594867
While I thought the "joke" about pulling out of D.C. was kind of funny, I couldn't believe that those figures were right, so I checked them. They are not even anywhere close based on my calculations. Whoever published that email really twisted his statistics.
According to the email, there have been 2112 deaths in 22 months.
Average US soldier population in Iraq was 160,000
2112 / 1.6 = 1320 deaths per 100,000
1320 deaths / 22 months = 60 deaths per MONTH per 100,000
DC has had 188 murders so far this year, 11 months. http://www.safestreetsdc.com/
Population of D.C. is around 550,000 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108620.html
188 deaths / 5.5 = 34.2 deaths per 100,000
34.2 deaths / 11 months = 3.1 deaths per MONTH per 100,000
So take your pick:
D.C. = 3 people killed per MONTH for every 100,000
Iraq = 60 soldiers killed per MONTH for every 100,000 (or 2 per DAY for every 100,000!!!)
That amuses me, to be honest. That's so 'politically correct'.
The objection here is that for 'big victory' I'm using the term cake-walk?
Jeez, even here on FR we're PC to the max.
I hate to see acrimony among some of the older members on this thread. A better title would have been (borrowing from RVN Airplane Driver's paragraph):
"Although every loss is tragic, compared to WW I or II, Viet Nam, or Korea, Iraq is a relatively low loss war."
IMO, dominic's post was meant to say we need to support our troops by seeing them through to the end by winning the war, NOT cutting and running, and if comparisons needed to be made to prior conflicts and wars to remind fence straddlers that this war is one of many we have proudly waged and won, then so be it.
On an individual basis every loss is obviously tragic for the soldier and the family, hence the reaction that is being generated on the thread.
Just my 2 cents.
Poor choice for a title. It's titles like this that give conservatives chikenhawk and arm chair general.
Is your whole objection here the term 'cake walk'? Or do you feel we are not winning big at all?
We've become so PC, we can't even say we're winning big in a cake walk now? We have to qualify our statement of victory now?
Interesting. We're embarrassed to win.
Can you suggest a better term than cakewalk? I don't like it either ...
The underlying point is correct, though. Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan have been very few compared to the carnage that characterised many previous wars. The MSM hysteria is 'way out of proportion.
Part of the problem is expectations; many Americans expect to have the world handed to them on a silver platter. Life ain't like that. Another part is that thousands of casualties in one day are literally mind-numbing. Folks just can't really grasp the enormity of it the way they can a single death or maiming. "One death is a tragedy; 1000 deaths is a statistic."
Only if the PC media has won, and we're embarrassed to admit we're winning a war big.
Consider -- if I went to a mother of a dead soldier and said, "Your son died fighting the enemy, and we won in a cake-walk".
That is in no way insulting, in fact it's gratifying.
Yet look at how the PC world has house-broken FReepers!
Yes and it ticks me off too. These people need to GET OVER Vietnam and get on with the real world. It drives me crazy.
Right, it's all PC here now.
I'm saying we're winning big.
But people are freaking out that I stated it so blankly. Militarily, this enemy has never once threatened to win. That makes it a cake-walk.
The MSM with their PC insistence has made inroads even with FReepers.
Hi Dom,
No, it is not a case of being PC, far from it. It is just obvious that your title suffers from being misinterpreted.
If you had just added the words:
"Compared to WW I or II, the Iraq War is Cake-Walk"
you would have been more clearly understood.
My two cents;)
Because, a Cake Walk is Admiral Dewey in the Spanish-American War where there was only one death in the battle.
Granted, we will win, and with minimal losses, but cake walk isn't the best description...
But Cakewalk??? How would you like to commute to work every day wondering if some raghead had buried a pile of explosives under the highway?
I like it cuz it's an attention getter. People get all up in arms, come in to argue the point, lose the argument quickly, and go away thinking about it.
I don't want to be liked. I want to get in people's faces, and make them think about this war, about the victory we're winning.
I like it cuz it's an attention getter. People get all up in arms, come in to argue the point, lose the argument quickly, and go away thinking about it.
I don't want to be liked. I want to get in people's faces, and make them think about this war, about the victory we're winning.
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