Five Years Later

I know you don't like it when I get all serious. I know. But hey, life isn't all about fun and games, is it? No, it's not. Sometimes life is short, nasty, and brutish. And from time to time, we need to be reminded of that. So's we can appreciate the good things even more and avoid poor decision-making in the future. It also chaps me that it's so easy to forget about the wars going on right now, that the powers that be haven't asked anything from us, that it's a page 12 story, that we'd rather read about Spitzer humping hos than Iraqi veterans doing three tours in a row because our military is spread too thin.

Ergo, vis-a-vis, cogito ergo sum, I now interrupt your restaurant dining, beer drinking, NCAA bracket picking, movie watching, pot smoking, Easter celebrating, sex having, jeans shopping, money making, Kristen following, club hopping, wedding planning, and vacation traveling for a very important reminder. I know you probably gave it little attention, just like I did, but a couple of days ago, the United States celebrated a special anniversary. March 19, 2008 marked the five year anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. Five years since Shock & Awe. Five years since we were greeted as liberators. Five years since we sent our young men and women to stop Iraqis from being murdered. Five years since we invaded to find and destroy Saddam's stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Five years. That's longer than World War I. Longer than World War II. Not longer than the Vietnam War, which lasted from 1964 to 1973, but we'll get there.

So, five years later, how we doin' George?

Here's the tally:

3,992 confirmed American military dead.

145 of these deaths were self-inflicted, i.e. suicide.

175 confirmed UK military dead.

Dozens of military dead from other countries who helped form the "Coalition of the Willing."

What about the Iraqi civilian dead? For some reason, that number's a little harder to pin down. The Iraq Body Count project estimates that between 82,000 and 89,000 Iraqis have died so far as a result of the Iraq War. A Washington Post report back in October 2004 -- three and a half years ago -- estimated over 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the invasion. Then there's the medical journal, Lancet, which published a survey in October 2006 that estimated there were over 654,000 Iraqis dead, or 2.5% of the population. That's a lot of dead Iraqis, and that's a year and a half ago. At the very least, we have a fair estimate that 90,000 Iraqis have died as a result of this war, on the low end. The real number is likely far higher. Possibly ten times higher. How soon before we can start calling it a holocaust (def. any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life)?

What about the wounded, or as the Department of Defense likes to call them, "non-mortal casualties"?

Most estimates hold that there are 29,395 American military wounded. If we were fighting this war in 1968, more likely than not, a good portion of these 29,395 would be in the "mortal casualties" column. What do these wounded soldiers look like? They look like this (pictures courtesy of HBO):




Actually, I found many pictures that look far worse than this. Far worse. I thought about posting more graphic pictures on here to drive the point home, the point that a lot of people have endured extreme sacrifice in this war, this war of opportunity, not necessity, but decided against it. Our soldiers are coming home without arms, legs, eyes, entire faces. One picture I found was of a U.S. marine standing next to his bride in a wedding picture. He's wearing a crisp navy blue uniform, standing rod straight. His entire face is burned off. His hair and ears too. All you see where his face used to be are two slits for eyes, a nub of a nose that looks like it was torn in half, and two thick full lips, which somehow, improbably, survived the fireball intact. His wife is standing next to him. She's in full health, she looks just like any other 24 year-old bride. Except she's not looking at him. She's staring blankly ahead. Her face is frozen, like she's a wax statue. The look on her face is one of shock and fear. This isn't what I signed up for, her eyes say.

And then there are the pictures of the Iraqi dead and wounded. Corpses on the street. Pools of bloody water. Infants with scabbed faces. Little girls with wounds that no child should ever have to see with her own eyes, let alone suffer herself. Since I didn't post them here, do me a favor. Take a break on your busy Friday, go to Google, click on "Images" on the upper left, and then do a search for "Iraq wounded." Then take a good, long, slow look at the face of this war. Let it come home to you for a minute. Just 60 seconds. Then you can go back to your bagel and coffee and NCAA brackets.

How are we doing on the financials? Accountant?!! Get in here!

According to Congressional Research Service, the cost of the Iraq War so far is $800 billion. [Editorial note: I initially wrote that the war had cost us $171 billion to date. That number was incorrect and my mistake demonstrates why I suck at math and never became a scientist. The actual number by the end of 2008 will be more than four times that, or $800 billion.] That's a lot of hospitals, fixed bridges, health care subsidies, paved roads, new schools, job investments, and need-based scholarships. This year, we'll likely spend $12 billion per month on this war. That's $3 billion a week. Hmmmm. Cost-benefit. Hmmmm. Al Qaeda and Taliban stronger than before in Pakistan and Afghanistan. No weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. More Iraqi dead as a result of this war than under Saddam. Iran with more influence in Iraq than ever before. Hmmmm. And all this only cost us $800 billion!

One reason that this war's been so expensive (besides the rampant graft going on and all those black market payoffs we have to make to Iraqis with guns so they won't shoot at us in this "successful" surge we've got going on) is that it costs the U.S. government $180,000 annually to fund and maintain a single army sergeant in Iraq. As previously mentioned, however, we don't have enough soldiers, we're tapped out. So, in the true capitalist spirit, what do we do? We BUY some! We pay private military security contractors to do what our soldiers would normally do if we had a draft.

Olllld Blackwater, keep on rollin', Mississippi moon won't you keep on shinin' on meeeee?

Problem is, private contractors don't come cheap. They didn't volunteer for this shit, after all. So while it costs $180,000 for an army sergeant, it costs more than double that -- $445,000 per year -- to fund a private security contractor in Iraq. In 2007, the State Department spent more than $4 billion on private protection. Your tax dollars at work so you and your sons and daughters don't have to get drafted to fight this war. What a wonderful precedent this is setting.

Anyway, who's making money on this war? Halliburton ($21 billion in no-bid war contracts), Bechtel, CACI, Titan, and Aegis Defense Services, to name a few. The price of oil has gone from $30 or so dollars a barrel when the Iraq War began, to $110 dollars a barrel today. Sweet.

But hey, I don't want to end this on a sad note. It's Friday after all, and you all know what Friday means! Let's see if we can find the humor in all this. Jon Stewart summed it up perfectly last night on The Daily Show. If you missed it, here it is:



Sure would be funny if it wasn't so fucking tragic.

The Forgotten Fewest

STATISTICS

Iraq:

American deaths confirmed by The DoD: 3,444
Reported American deaths pending DoD confirmation: 11
Total: 3,455

American wounded: 24,314

Afghanistan:

American deaths confirmed by The DoD: 390
American wounded: 1,141

When someone asks you whether you would be willing to die for your country, it's a reflexive action to say in response, "Sure I would." Here in the U.S., patriotism is ingrained in us from the age of six with the Pledge of Allegiance, the Star Spangled Banner, and Memorial Day Parades. When we get older, the answer to the question is still the same, but we're not being completely honest when we give it. If we were being honest, our answer would be: "It depends." If we were being honest, we would admit that the answer to the question "Would you die for your country" is contingent on exactly what our country is asking us to do. In my case, are the leaders of the moment asking me to go fight people like the Nazis -- truly some of the most vile humanoids who ever marched on the planet -- where our freedom is really at stake? Where the enemy's wrongness is so clear that we have no choice but to fight? Is the United States being invaded? Am I being asked to pick up a rifle and go guerrilla against an invading army, like those pesky kids (led by a young Patrick Swazye) in that Reagan era movie Red Dawn, where they fought the Russians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans to a standstill? Wolveriiiines!!! No problem. Sign me up.

Or... are the grayheads driving the bus sending me to Vietnam to "fight communism," or to Iraq, to "fight the terrorists"? I think in the latter two situations, if I was being honest, I would say, fuck no, I am not willing to surrender my life, or even an arm or a leg for my country. You couldn't pay me enough to go fight in Iraq. My life is pretty valuable to me. If you're asking me to risk it, you'd better have a damn good reason. Vietnam and Iraq don't cut it, because my country's well-being and national security were not threatened by either Vietnam or Iraq before we started those wars. Why should I die on behalf of a flawed "Domino Theory," or to help Halliburton boost its oil profits? If Americans are too lazy or clueless to stop sucking the Middle East oil teat and develop an alternative fuel source, why should I put my life on the line so they can drive SUVs and pay $2.50/gallon for gas. Sorry. Na ga da.

Fortunately, I, like most Americans, don't have to worry about these little distinctions. There's no draft here; we have an all-volunteer military. So only those who have chosen to join the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines are required to go and fight. The rest of us stay at home. While they're swallowing Iraqi sand dust in bunkers and claustrophobic foxholes, we get to go to work, make money, follow our favorite baseball team, eat out at nice restaurants, shop at Bloomie's, and vacation in Maui, Thailand, and South Africa. On Memorial Day, we get to go to the beach and have barbecues while they patrol Baghdad's homicidal streets, wondering if that rock at the side of the road is hiding an IED; if the Iraqis or Afghanis watching them pass are there to distract, while someone unseen, 20 yards away, targets them with an RPG; and if that beat-up Toyota with the kids in the backseat contains an innocent family or a suicide bomber. We have all day to get our tans and read our magazines. They have only a split second to decide what to do when death is waiting for them at every corner: shoot, stop, duck, hide, run, walk, engage in conversation, piss themselves with fear (which is what most of us would do under the circumstances).

When our soldiers wake up every day in Iraq or Afghanistan, they have to wonder Is this the day? The day I die for my country? While we sit at home, forgetting all about them, focusing instead on climbing the corporate ladder and whether that cute chartreuse blouse really matches that navy skirt.

Just like always, our wars are being fought by the brave few while the rest of us sit home and watch it on t.v. Except now, since we don't have a draft, the brave few are even fewer than before. (The Pentagon learned its lesson after Vietnam; drafts tend to cause really NASTY protests when unpopular wars come around). They are the fewEST. The forgotten fewest. They serve our country and don't ask questions, even as they are called back to Iraq and Afghanistan, redeployed over and over again, abused by a flawed system where reinforcements are hard to come by. Even as they are called to walk into the cross-hairs of a civil war that will continue long after they're gone, whenever that is. Even as they have been wronged by a government and in particular, a President, who will go down as one of the worst in our history for the fraudulent, bloody, and criminal foreign policy decisions he has made.

Many of the forgotten fewest have come home in coffins framed by American flags that no one is allowed to photograph. Others have come home without arms, legs, eyes, ears, and pieces of skull, forced to live the rest of their lives with a fraction of the body they had before they left for Iraq or Afghanistan. Still others have been so debilitated by PTSD that they eventually kill themselves, or exorcise their demons on someone else, a lover, a wife, a child. Years of committed therapy and medication are the only hope for a normal life for those who are struggling to keep it together.

Did you think about any of these people this weekend while you were at the beach or in your backyard?

As usual, the heavy burden of our wars is being borne by very few people and their families. As usual, the rest of us, the majority beneficiaries of their sacrifice, haven't been asked to a damn thing to support them. Okay, we did get some tax cuts and President Bush told us to go shopping to keep the economy strong. Of course, this doesn't help the soldiers very much. But do we need to be asked? If you would like to do something real for them, something that will make a difference in their lives and the lives of their families, here are some ideas:

Operation Hero Miles - donating your unused frequent flier miles to the families of wounded servicemen and women, so they can visit their loved ones at military hospitals across the country. If you do it before midnight tonight, the airlines will match the miles you give.

Operation Uplink - you can donate calling cards so military families can stay in touch during their separations.

Any Soldier - facilitates the sending of care packages and mail to specific soldiers.

Ourfinest - an organization that provides education, job placement, and mental health assistance to soldiers and their families.

Whether you agree with the policy behind these wars or not, the people who are fighting them on our behalf, at the behest of our elected government, deserve our support and respect. They also deserve to come home as soon as possible, and it's our obligation as Americans to do something to make sure that happens.