Sept 14, '07 9:40am Starbucks Morgan Young Iraq: An Attempt at a Non-political Op-ed The Iraq War. It's been going since March 19, 2003. No two people can seem to agree on reality as to any part of it: "Why are we there?" "Is it winnable?" "Is it getting better? Worse? Same?" "Should we be there?" "How long should we stay?" "Should we have an exit strategy?" I know how most republicans would answer those questions. I know how most democrats would answer those questions. But as a nobody, a normal guy who isn't in the loop---who doesn't have access to the intel data---who gets different answers based on which news program I listen to---it seems our Iraq War is purely subjective. I hate that. With so much at stake shouldn't we all be able to agree on something more than, "We support our troops."? "Troops." Now there's a tangible word. A word that all the war rhetoric must stand upon. With so many subjective intangibles like: Timelines... Patience... Progress... Winning... We're missing the words that are the denominators for all those numerators. Words like: Troops... People... Moms... Dads... Sons... Daughters... All of the subjective intangibles of the Iraq War all stand upon human life. So in all the subjective talk of war, why don't we talk about the measurable tangibles that are human lives? I get concerned in these times that we use non-human words when talking about the lives of people with families. My wife remarked to me last night, "I just realized that 'ethnic cleansing' means killing people." Granted, we are not trying to ethnically cleanse Iraq , but I feel angrily unsettled when politicians and reporters talk about Iraq like it's a football game instead of a lethal game that has daily death tallies. There is one thing that is not subjective about the Iraq War: On average, soldiers are killed daily. Our count is accurate. It is not subjective. It is perhaps the one thing in the murkiness of Iraq that is clear and measurable. Look at the graph below. It's neither liberal democrat nor conservative republican; it's a clear measure of people who no longer breathe and interact in this world. (Sept is low only because this was as of Sept 13th.) This graph represents what we call casualties. "Casualty" is a one of those benign sounding words, but casualties are people who've bled---people who've returned home horizontally. People proudly draped in United States flags. People who have been wept over. People who's absence leaves painful holes in the hearts of surviving family and friends. People who won't raise their own children. People who have left widows and widowers. People who will never see grandchildren... "Yes, but they knew what they were signing up for. They proudly gave all." Indeed. And it is an incredibly brave man or woman who voluntarily serves. But that doesn't make human life any more trivial or the loss to survivors any less painful. I don't profess to know what to do with the Iraq War. But I wonder if we collectively live with it too easily because we aren't talking about it in human enough terms. We may be able to succeed if given enough time. I know things can improve. But I also know that every day Americans come home in coffins. Something else seems odd to me: if things are getting better---shouldn't we clearly see the deaths of Americans declining? Shouldn't the number and trend of American deaths be a measurable indicator of how well we're doing? Perhaps I'm too simplistic for Washington but shouldn't the same or more American deaths mean things are not improving? Likewise, if American deaths are declining perhaps then something is indeed getting better. Again, if we were to embrace the humanity of our Iraq War perhaps we could more easily measure it. As a person trying to clumsily follow God, it seems impossible for me to ignore this loss of life---the loss of people created in the image of a Creator---people His Son died for. Compassion for life, (American and Iraqi) seems mandatory in Christianity---seems mandatory for humanity even apart from religion. More than being for or against the war, I am for life. It's a gift. It doesn't seem like something I am supposed to take lightly. So this is my attempt to help us listen to or talk about this war less flippantly---less like a football game and more like the literal life-ending skirmish that it is. As I write this there are 3,780 dead American soldiers. 27,848 American wounded. Iraqi dead are estimated at somewhere between 72,000 and 78,000. |
