Obsessing over Numbers
How many Bush-bashing, Leftist shibboleths can one reporter put into an "objective" news story? Count along with we go through the Associated Press' Calvin Woodward.
I was waiting for this number to come up. For some reason Woodward doesn't bother to explain what 2,974 battlefield dead has to do with anything. The only thing interesting about that number is it provided Woodward a reason to write his anti-war "news" story.
The only ones obsessing over body count numbers has been a sensationalist MSM and Bush-bashing, war protesters who wish they lived in a world where we could sing "Kumbaya" with Osama bin Laden and ask him nicely not to attack us again.
While each American death in the Islamist War is awful all of us must stay focused on the goal: defeat the enemy and secure the nation from future attacks. Many have already died, and many more will perish in this mission. Afghanistan and Iraq have been two places, and expect other places where the U.S. military will extend its sword in defense of the homeland. War is hell, yet we shouldn't shudder from the fight because of a body count.
Woodward is so obsessed with numbers so I'll give him a more important one. The number of Islamist terrorist attacks since Sep. 11, 2001: zero*.
[UPDATE: I made a mistake. I meant the number of Islamist attack on U.S. soil since Sep. 11. My apologies.]
Do you think President Roosevelt cared when the number of Americans killed in World War II equaled the number dead at Pearl Harbor? I doubt it. He was too busy commanding conflicts on both sides of the world. Did it matter to the Founding Fathers that the deaths at Lexington and Concord were greater than that of the Boston Massacre? No, they were a little busy organizing a resistance to the British.
Hey Woodward, casualties have also been "remarkably light by any historical standard" in Iraq too. Before the war in 2003 I fully expected 10,000 troops to die. I thought Saddam's vaunted Republican Guard would put up a tougher fight, and chemical weapons--that the whole world thought Iraq had--would produce grotesque injuries and deaths. Despite my fears of so many deaths I firmly supported the invasion because I thought the cause was true. Thankfully, the invasion went well. The occupation and Iraq's rebuilding has been the real challenge.
Wouldn't it be better to lump these tragic deaths to Iraq's liberation and ascension into civilization? No, because Woodward wants to pull at his readers heartstrings. If anyone should be blamed for those deaths it's the resistance who reject a democratic regime.