The Magical 2000

Time now for the gnashing of teeth, the wailing and caterwauling over the loss of the 2000th American soldier in Iraq. Bad enough that the anti-war zealots have somehow forgotten the tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians, who have forsaken life, in a struggle to regain control of their own country. They apparently also have forgotten the hundreds of thousands slaughtered at the whim of an egomaniacal despot.
Not to make light of the 2000, but they were volunteers in a struggle to wrench the influence of an entire region from the hands of a madman, bent on controlling the middle east, by military force. The bad news is that these 2000 casualties over the last 3 years, were 498,000 shy of those who lost their battle with tobacco related illnesses last year alone. They were 88,000 short of the annual losses due to medical malpractice, or 8,000 less than those lost to shootings and over 10,000 no longer here because of violent homicide. But where is the outrage over these losses? Somehow the curators, in the museum of preventable deaths, have marshaled all their angst towards the losses of life, most comparable to traffic flaggers killed at construction zones in the U.S.. Make no mistake. This isn’t about the magical 2000, it is about hating this administration and all that it stands for. It is about losing the last 2 presidential elections. It is about the Republicans controlling both houses of Congress. And it is about seeing no change in sight. It’s about the Red State Liberals NOT embracing the Howard Dean Democrats and most likely not voting for them as well. The Left really needs to abandon the morally bankrupt condemnation of this war and look at what is really wrong around them. Runaway entitlements, wholesale government rebuilding after disasters, hobbling of energy resources and refining, denial of nuclear power and ecological overkill are just to name a few. In the whole scheme of things, 2000 losses in a three year effort to stabilize one of the most volatile areas on the planet struggles to rise to the number of deaths attributed to college hazing rituals.