May 14, 2004

The Costs of Our Wars

WWII.jpg

TIM OREN at Due Diligence pays a visit to the WWII memorial in Washington and reminds us:

The memorial is a hard subject for photography. That's probably good. It's been made for people, not postcards. I've chosen to represent it with the feature I found most striking. On one wall is a tapestry of gold stars. During the war, such a star represented a family member who had died in battle. In this case, each star represents 100 deaths. There are four thousand of them.

400,000 American dead. That's seven times more than all the names on the Vietnam Memorial not far away. Over 400 times our losses in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. And yet - meaning no disrespect whatsoever to their memory and sacrifice - we were fortunate. Those 400,000 were less than one percent of the 50 million or so total deaths in WWII. And almost all of them were combatants. Excepting one infamous Sunday, that war never came to these shores.

Our current struggle is the first in our history as a nation in which the roll call of the dead contains a majority of civilians. This is our enemy's goal, for they are murderers, not soldiers. Those fighting for us now serve to redress that balance, if needs be with the solemn honor of their own gold stars.

Email this entry to:


Your email address:


Message (optional):


Posted by Vanderleun at May 14, 2004 7:37 AM | TrackBack
Save to del.icio.us

Comments:

AMERICAN DIGEST HOME
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.
Post a comment:

"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.










Remember personal info?