The campaigns and the 4,000th Iraq fatality — one of these things is not like the other

March 24, 2008

Fairly early this morning, Barack Obama’s campaign released a statement on the milestone of the 4,000th U.S. military fatality in Iraq:

“It is with great sadness that we have reached another grim milestone in Iraq, with at least 4,000 of our finest Americans having been killed. Each death is a tragedy, and we honor every fallen American and send our thoughts and prayers to their families. It is past time to end this war that should never have been waged by bringing our troops home, and finally pushing Iraq’s leaders to take responsibility for their future.

“As we do, we must serve the memory of all who have died as well as they served our country, by providing support for their families, caring for our troops and veterans, and upholding the American values which our fallen heroes exemplified through their service.”

Shortly thereafter, Hillary Clinton’s campaign released a statement of its own.

“Five years after the start of the war in Iraq, there have now been 4,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq. On this solemn day, we remember the sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform. We honor the tens of thousands more who have suffered wounds both visible and invisible, wounds that scar bodies and minds, and hearts as well. We honor the sacrifices of their families, a price paid in empty places at the dinner table, in the struggle to raise children alone, in the wrenching reversal of parents burying children. […]

“I recall the great honor of meeting many of our brave men and women who have served our country. In meeting them, I am always struck by how, no matter how great their suffering, no matter how grave their own injuries, they always say the same thing to me: “Promise that you’ll take care of my buddies. They’re still over there. Promise you’ll keep them safe.”

“I have looked those men and women in the eye. I have made that promise. And I intend to honor it by bringing a responsible end to this war, and bringing our troops home safely.

And then there’s John McCain…

…who’s said nothing.

Maybe the campaigns should abstain from hitting each other today, on this most horrible of occasions. Here are the Dems’ statements about the U.S. death toll in Iraq hitting 4,000. One note — John McCain’s office has issued a statement today about elections in Taiwan but nothing about the 4,000.

The statement on the Taiwanese elections is fine, of course, but nothing about the latest grim milestone? The one that’s drawing plenty of national attention today?

This need not be about party or ideology. Dick Cheney talked about the milestone, as did the president’s spokesperson:

“President Bush thinks that every single loss is tragic, from the very first several years ago to the ones that sacrificed yesterday. And he’s extremely proud of the courageous men and women in uniform and all that they’ve done to help protect Iraqis, to protect each other and to protect this country.

“Most of the families of the fallen that he meets with have one request of the President, which is: Do not let my loved one’s sacrifice be in vain. And the President assures them that he is committed to staying and fighting and winning. And one of the reasons he’s taking such careful deliberation over the next few weeks as we lead up to the April time frame is because he wants to make sure that the gains that we have secured over this past year are cemented and that we lay the foundation for Iraq to have a democracy where they can govern, sustain and defend itself right there in the Middle East.

“The enemy we face is brutal. They have killed thousands of people around the world, innocent men, women and children. And they have killed our soldiers as well. And the President believes that taking the fight to the enemy is the best way to combat them for our own national security. But he definitely feels the loss. He gets a report about every single soldier who passes away, and he always pauses a moment to think about them and to offer a prayer for their loved ones and their family and friends.”

It’s a misguided statement, but it’s an acknowledgement nevertheless.

The McCain campaign couldn’t issue even a perfunctory acknowledgement? It’s surprising.

McCain doesn’t have to issue a statement.

He has so much cred with reporters already in the S&L.

I mean, in the bank.

  • Maybe McCain’s working on an estimate of the number of Americans who will have died in Iraq after 100 years have elapsed. He’s probably also working on a major speech to be delivered soon, when he will tell America that we’ll have to reinstate the draft in order to attack Iran.

    Or not.

  • Agreeing with TR, I thought everyone understood that McCain doesn’t have to issue any statement, the news anchors will tell us tonight how busy he is studying foreign intelligence, but this is what he would have wanted to say, “…”.

    So much credibility.

    It was heartening to hear Sen. Hagel’s take on the surge, “over 900 American soldiers dead since the surge began, and you want to call that progress?” Proof that all Republicans are not uncaring liars.

    Then there was the veep, “They volunteered.” Veep, Creep, what’s the difference?

  • It was heartening to hear Sen. Hagel’s take on the surge, “over 900 American soldiers dead since the surge began, and you want to call that progress?” Proof that all Republicans are not uncaring liars.

    Let’s remember that, before he was Senator Hagel, he was Platoon Sergeant Hagel, U.S. Army infantry, two tours in Vietnam. He knows whereof he speaks.

    Now, if he had just brought the courage to Washington he had back in the Central Highlands….

  • here’s why the mccain campaign didn’t acknowledge the milestone — they did the math:

    4000 / 5 = 800 x 100 = 80,000

    and oh yeah, the seriously wounded numbers too:

    30,000 / 5 = 6000 x 100 = 600,000

    what the hell, let’s do the dollars too:

    2,000,000,000,000 / 5 = 400,000,000,000 x 100 = 40,000,000,000,000

  • Then there was the veep, “They volunteered.” Veep, Creep, what’s the difference?

    One must always remember that Cheney has always had “other priorities,” since back in the day when he avoided the Vietnam draft with four different deferments. Once a cowardly fascist pig, always a cowardly fascist pig.

  • Just as Sunni, Shiite, Iraq, and Iran are all interchangeable; four thousand soldiers killed is the same as four thousand soldiers NOT killed; and we see that happen every day. Yet no one asks McCain for a statement on all the days that four thousand soldiers don’t die. So there’s really not an issue here.

    CORRECTION: Two of McCain’s campaign surrogates now say that McCain misspoke when he failed to comment on any of this and does indeed know the difference between lives lost and lives not lost; while three separate campaign surrogates as well as one of the first two now say that he hadn’t misspoke and that life and death have been interchangeable since 9/11.

    McCain could not be reached for comment, as he was baking W shaped cookies for the media while receiving a metaphorical handjob from all of them. I’d keep you updated on on this, but I adore McCain too much to think it’s worthwhile. He really does bake tasty cookies. They taste like cowshit and wet leather; which McCain assures me is quite delicious and he has so much credibility in the bank that I have no reason to doubt him on that.

  • Don’t make it in vain?

    Well, letsee… Umm. How would staying now make this effort any… Uh… Less vain?

    Look, you can say we ousted Saddam. You can say we sowed Democracy. That we implanted Capitalism. What else do these people want from our soldiers?

    Can’t we take our victories as is, without staying around and stirring the pot?

  • Good point, little bear…

    Obviously, Iraq is not the same as other conflicts; however, we still need to compare it with something to get a handle on it. In WW II, the wounded to death ratio was 2:1 (or, for every two, serious combat wounds, one soldier would die). In Vietnam, that ratio went to 4:1. The level of combat trauma care since then has increased dramatically. In Iraq, the ratio is 7:1.

    The 7:1 number pretty well correlates with the official wounded/dead statistics published by the DoD. So let’s just use 28,000 wounded for easy math. The KIA total using Vietnam’s ratio would be 7,000+ already.

    We can look at it as a wonderful side effect of modern medicine…or we can take stock of the kinds of wounds that people are coming home with, and will have to live with for the rest of their lives. The burns and amputations that are common in Iraq would have meant death; now they mean a partial life.

  • Re: The McCain Debates

    The inverted W logo on McCain 2008’s lectern– very clever.

  • Lex – you bring up valid points, but miss mine entirely:

    THE DEATH NUMBERS ARE ALL BEING LOWBALLED BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT COUNTING ACTUAL DEATHS THAT ARE A DIRECT RESULT OF THIS CONFLICT AND THE ILLEGAL DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS AND OTHER WMD THAT ARE BEING USED.

    This is a far deadlier war than we are being told – its really the PENTAGON PAPERS all over again. Is anyone surprised?

  • And why should McCain say anything? We’re only 5 years into his 100 years war. With 95 more years of carnage, 4,000 American troops dead will seem, how would Alberto Gonzales put it, “quaint?”

    Cheney’s comments are even worse. By his rule, if you volunteer to serve in the US Armed Forces, your life is therefore meaningless. He and Bush were installed into terms twice so we deserve what happens to us to. And in the immortal words of Bluto, “we f*cked up. We trusted him.”

  • little bear,

    I wasn’t attempting to circumlocute or undermine your point at all…i was just riffing on it. I don’t disbelieve the article you linked. I’m intrigued by its assertion that kills are only registered if they happen, literally, on the battlefield…not en route or at a field hospital. And i have no doubt that the DU casualties over the long term will make Agent Orange (brought to you by the same people who bring you your corn chips) look like nothing.

    I was only trying to put some perspective on the official statistics. Not trusting those is another, and logical, matter.

  • Of the seriously wounded there are many with severe brain damage. The effect of the IED explosions when inside Hummers etc. traumatizes the brain and there are hundreds comatose. I also heard that many families have asked to take loved ones in such a state off life support but the military won’t agree.

    It is all very sad for these brave people and their families and friends.

  • Bill O’Reilly’s Spin Zone points tomorrow:

    “But if we compare it to the Holocaust and WWII, 4,000 is really not that bad… The Dems are just trying to make it sound worse than it is. Did you hear about the GOOD news in Iraq today? Of course not. The liberal media won’t tell you that. On to more important news… The Republicans really are the Pro-life party…I mean it. How could any rational person doubt this? And by the way, American Vets are being taken care of just fine, and oh, oh, oh, I almost forgot, Rev. Wright said something else that scares me as a rich white man…and RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, the Iranians just found a nuclear copy of the Koran that a reliable source has informed us they plan to use to KILL YOUR FAMILY”

    Now, back in my own voice, I apologize for my above use of sarcasm on a solemn story such as this, but my anger cup runneth over. In all sincerity, my deepest sympathies to the families and friends of these fallen guardians. Please keep all of them in mind every day, not just when a “milestone” (and I HATE that word when we are talking about HUMAN LIVES) is passed. I grieve not just for our fallen soldiers, but every family; American, Iraqi, and all, that have been tragically and forever altered by the overpowering egos of immune politicians hiding behind the tall white columns of the White House and Congress. We have all been affected by these individuals…everyone of us. Our collective sanity and civilization is almost gone.

  • Pingback: Campaigns And The 4,000th Death Of An American Soldier « Suzie-Q

  • “And the President believes that taking the fight to the enemy is the best way to combat them for our own national security.”

    Too bad al Qaeda didn’t get the memo.

    Outside of labeling some obscure Sunni group “al Qaeda in Iraq” and making some videos, how has bin Laden been hurt by this “taking the fight to the enemy”?

    How much of their manpower and resources are they having the expend in Iraq?

  • First, instead of relying on the “reporting” by the leftist crapslingers at the National Journal, maybe the real statement by John McCain should be put in:

    “As you know, I was in Iraq, Jordan, Israel, France and England on my last visit.

    And a couple of days ago, as you probably know, an audiotape — actually it was last week — an audiotape was released where bin Laden said, and I have to quote bin Laden, … ‘the nearest field to support our people in Palestine is the Iraqi field.’ He urged Palestinians and people of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to quote ‘help in support of their mujahedeen brothers in Iraq, which is the greatest opportunity and the biggest task.’ Now my friends, for the first time I have seen Osama bin Laden and General Petraeus in agreement, and that is, the central battleground in the battle against al Qaeda is in Iraq today. And that’s what bin Laden is saying and that’s what General Petraeus is saying and that’s what I’m saying, my friends, and my Democrat opponents who want to pull out of Iraq refuse to understand what’s being said and what’s happening, and that is, the central battleground is Iraq in this struggle against radical Islamic extremism.”

    In a nutshell, and an appropriate one, McCain reminds everyone there’s a war on.

    Second, the National Journal at least put in all of Hillary Clinton’s statement. Here’s what CB chose not to put in:

    In the last five years, our soldiers have done everything we asked of them and more. They were asked to remove Saddam Hussein from power and bring him to justice and they did. They were asked to give the Iraqi people the opportunity for free and fair elections and they did. They were asked to give the Iraqi government the space and time for political reconciliation, and they did. So for every American soldier who has made the ultimate sacrifice for this mission, we should imagine carved in stone: “They gave their life for the greatest gift one can give to a fellow human being, the gift of freedom.”

    As much as I can’t stand Hillary Clinton, at least she acknowledged what the troops did in Iraq. Yes, they did all this. Why it wasn’t put in this post will have to be left for CB to answer.

    And third, there is Barack Obama. At least McCain and Clinton said something about what is going on. Obama’s statement is pathetic; no acknowledgment of what our soldiers did, no acknowledgment of what their families went through, nothing. 4000 soldiers died, let’s pray for them and their families. It reads like an obituary. Obama, like every other Senator who voted, unanimously confirmed Petraeus’ promotion to full general knowing what he was going to do in Iraq; and this how Obama recognizes all that Petraeus has done? This is support for the troops? God help the soldiers and this country if Obama becomes President. And if he does, he’ll get an Iraq without Saddam Hussein, he’ll get an Iraq that is stabilizing, an Iraq that very well could be the only democratic republic in the Arab and Muslim world. That’s better than what Bill Clinton left President Bush.

  • This business about “not dying in vain” always gets me.

    Do people (like Bush) who talk this way really think that our dead soldiers, if we could ask them, would say, yeah, throw more of my buddies on the pyre, which will (somehow) make MY death more meaningful?

    To me that’s an insult to their memory; a sacrilege, almost.

  • No soldier who dies for his country dies in vain–no matter how worthless the cause.

  • Pingback: The Candidates on 4,000 Dead « Politics Plus 2

  • SteveIL,

    There isn’t a “war” on, there’s an occupation on…wars require declarations. Iraq was never about Al-Queda. It may be the central front in the GWOT (specious bullshit to begin with) now, but it is so because we made it so. To proclaim the former without admitting to the latter is a big part of the problem.

    The soldiers and their families deserve every ounce of respect and every outpouring of support that the American people have to give…and then some. But if we (i.e. the government) were so intent on paying respect to their sacrifice, then why do they sneak the flag draped coffins back home in the dead of night? Shouldn’t they be given pomp and circumstance?

    The soldiers weren’t “asked” to do anything; they were ordered to do things. We have a very good idea that much of the military was against this adventure, because they could see how the plan would turn out. But they did what they were ordered to do.

    Iraq is not stabilizing, nor will it. It was never stable, but for the iron fist of a dictator…because it was never a natural country. It was created by a greasy, chubby white finger drawing lines on a map, thousands of miles away.

    This isn’t about freedom; this is about empire. If empire is our way into the future, the least we could do is be efficient about it. Iraq was supposed to show the region (and the world) who’s the big boss. By doing it on nothing but best case scenarios and inept planning (inept because it disregarded everything that anyone with a library card could tell you was necessary for planning an operation like this), we have failed miserably.

    The world doesn’t fear us. Our mighty military has been pinned down and stretched to the breaking point by a rag-tag group of insurgents. The world found out that we were bluffing. And we are finding out, the hard way, the brutal historical truth that conventional armies never defeat home-grown insurgencies on their own turf.

    We’ve made every mistake that can be made in a conflict like this. So it really doesn’t matter if the reasons were good or bad; the execution has been beyond pitiful. And now we’re publishing acclaimed new manuals that are simply repeating what should have been learned in the early 1970’s.

    The politicians are left with appealing to our sense of nationalism to cover up their crimes and ineptness.

    Presumably, you are an auto-didactic student of military history (given your blogging screen name). Read some history on the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan without your nationalism. The similarities are both frightening and striking.

  • Lex (#23): There isn’t a “war” on, there’s an occupation on…wars require declarations. I got an AUMF from 2001 that says there is one on. Even the Kucinich wing of leftist Democrats voted for it.

    Iraq was never about Al-Queda. It was. It was about keeping Saddam Hussein from expanding the relationship he already had with them to attack the U.S. or U.S. citizens abroad. There’s plenty of documentation that says so.

    It may be the central front in the GWOT (specious bullshit to begin with) now, but it is so because we made it so. That’s Obama’s and the other leftists’ line. It was Al Qaeda who brought the war there, not the other way around.

    It was created by a greasy, chubby white finger drawing lines on a map, thousands of miles away. So what? They all have been created that way, sometimes from closer distances, sometimes from further away. Did you forget how the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the countries of South America, the countries in Africa, the current configuration in Europe (which is in flux), or the countries in Asia were formed? About the only country that remained stable since independence was Australia, and that is because it’s an island.

    And we are finding out, the hard way, the brutal historical truth that conventional armies never defeat home-grown insurgencies on their own turf. Yeah? Bull. We are doing it in Iraq. And lest you forget, the Marxist FARC are being destroyed by our friend Alvaro Uribe. So you can skip that lie.

    This isn’t about freedom; this is about empire. This is the phony Marxist logic that leftists revert to since it’s the only one they had anyway. And its that kind of Marxist drivel that brings your points, and this conversation, to an end.

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