<p>With the latest roadside bombing, the US casualties have reached over 4,000 <a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/23/iraq.main/index.html[/url]”>http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/23/iraq.main/index.html</a> Please, enough.</p>
<p>Since the other thread has been locked, I though it might be appropriate to resurrect the earlier thread on the topic. Lets please stick with the topic and not digress to commentary about other posters. It is an important topic, and worthy of notation and discussion.</p>
<p>Thanks jym626. Your thread is the only one that should have been considered. </p>
<p>I think the 4000 number is irrelevant. Why? Because the loss of 3999 or 4001 of American lives is just as horrible as any other number including 4000.</p>
<p>What also saddens me is that according to the Opinion Research Survey, over a million Iraqi civilians have died since this war began. What are we accomplishing here? <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War</a></p>
<p>4000 could not be more relevant. 97% of those that have fallen were killed since the declaration of “Mission Accomplished”. Despite 5 years of fighting there remains no plan, no exit strategy, nothing on the horizon but expansion of this into Iran.</p>
<p>Hello andi!</p>
<p>What also disturbs me is that I heard that the militay is building more facilities there-- more permanent-type rather than temporary type, which suggests that any discussion about a planned exit strategy is probably, at least at this point, disengenuous.</p>
<p>I agree wholeheartedly with you razorsharp. </p>
<p>“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may perpetual Light shine upon them; may their souls and all souls, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”</p>
<p>We will NEVER forget these precious, irreplaceable lives. </p>
<p>[Honor</a> the fallen: Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom casualties](<a href=“http://www.militarycity.com/valor/honor.html]Honor”>http://www.militarycity.com/valor/honor.html)</p>
<p>We have a volunteer armed force composed of men and women who will go anywhere, at any time, to carry out the military policy our political leaders initiate, pretty much without question. They are a brave and, in a very real sense, noble group.</p>
<p>Which is why we as a nation should not spend their lives and health casually. If in fact their work and their sacrifice has defended our nation, that’s all good. That’s what they signed up for, and I think that as a group that’s what motivates them. But if the policies they were sent to carry out were misguided, dishonest, or just plain stupid - so that their sacrifice hasn’t actually resulted in the defense of our nation, that is a tragedy. I think each of us owes it to each of them to consider, carefully and continually, if the sacrifice we ask them to make is warranted. For the most part, they won’t ask that question. But that is our job, as citizens of a free nation.</p>
<p>I’ve asked a question in another long gone thread about the cost in American lives of continuing to try to make Iraq a viable nation - and the likelihood of benefit to America in doing so, at each level of “troop surge.” That cruel, cold calculation has to be made. I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. I do sincerely fear that the equation is skewed by the current administration in Washington by a fear of being proved to have been wrong, a failure. The urge to keep throwing the dice, in hopes of coming up a winner - particularly when the dice-roller isn’t paying the price of his bets - is strong. And that’s what concerns me in assessing the wisdom of asking the next 4,000 American soldiers to sacrifice their lives, and tens of thousands of other soldiers to injure their bodies and their psyches in war in a far off nation: </p>
<p>Is the prize worth the price?</p>
<p>My father-in-law enlisted the Army in the 1950s, a high school graduate from a very poor area of Northern New Mexico. Before he retired 30 years later, he became a college graduate and the Command Sergeant Major of the Fifth Army. He served in Viet Nam (or Vietnam or Nam Viet, take your pick), Korea and during peacetime, in France, Germany and the U.S.</p>
<p>He has always said that emotionalizing a soldiers’ duty by those who have never served makes him very uncomfortable. I think perhaps because sometimes it can be done in a dishonest way, as we see by politicians and those with an agenda. But also because there is the silent implication that a soldier is not intellectual enough to comprehend the ramifications of his career choice. </p>
<p>For the record, the man has never voted for a Republican in his life. But he has never questioned the policy of any administration that put him in harms’ way. He made the choice to be a soldier knowing that to do his job properly, he could not go down that road. To some of you that may sound mindless…but to him it was doing his job with excellence.</p>
<p>“What also saddens me is that according to the Opinion Research Survey, over a million Iraqi civilians have died since this war began. What are we accomplishing here?”</p>
<p>And another million by Bill Clinton - half of them children.</p>
<p>For every American death, 17.5 American soldiers with serious injuries, and that is not counting all the TBIs and PTSDs. Madigan Army Hospital is overwhelmed (I was on the phone with a mental health counselor there this very evening). </p>
<p>We received word today in my office that states will now have to treat the substance abuse problems of the Iraq veterans - since a very large number of them with such problems served in the National Guard, they live in areas with virtually no access to the VA (which is overwhelmed in any case.) The only problem is that my agency is being provided no funds to treat them, and we have a huge shortage of counselors already.</p>
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<p>We have had bases in Germany for 60 years, and that hasn’t posed too much of a problem for us or the Germans. Once Iraq is stabilized, why should it be any different? Just like a permanent US presence in Germany served as a deterrant against the Soviets, a permanent US force in Iraq could serve as a deterrant against the enemies of Iraq.</p>