Mensch tracht, und Gott lacht

Friday, January 26, 2007

A Little Perspective on Death

Rush had an interesting experiment on his show today related to the number of deaths in Iraq last year. He pointed out that a response to the question of how many American military deaths there were last year would indicate whether someone has been brainwashed by the MSM. I guessed around 500. The actual number was around 800. If someone came up with a larger number or a much larger number, you can bet they get all or much of their information about the war from the MSM.

He also points out something that I’m sure will turn liberals apoplectic. Why are we making such a huge deal of 3000 deaths in a war, when 40,000 people a year die in motor vehicles, or 7000 a year die from botched prescriptions. You get the idea. I can imagine liberals hearing that throwing their radios against a wall to smash it, and by extension, Rush, into a thousand little pieces.

As I was listening I came up with my own little thought experiment. Literally every day in the MSM we hear, see or read of American military deaths or bombs and destruction in Iraq. We are beaten over the head with it day after day after day after day. Imagine if every car or truck or motorcycle accident were national news every day, with pictures, video, audio, interviews, you name it. Broken down by day that would be approximately 110 accidents a day. Carnage and human suffering on that scale is really hard to fathom. If we were beat over the head with this day after day after day after day, how long before that price we pay for our freedom to travel would no longer be tolerated.

Being in the military in Iraq is relatively safe compared to any other war in history. In the almost four years 3,000 precious lives have been lost in Iraq at least 160,000 also precious lives have been lost on American highways. I agree with Rush that a little bit of perspective is in order.

2 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

MDV, there's an unwritten law in the rightosphere that Rush Limbaugh is never mentioned. To do so means the author is an idiot, a fool, and most egregiously, a "dittohead."


That said, there will be no perspective about the Iraq war. "If even one...," well, you know the rest.

As a matter of fact, Limbaugh (if he must be mentioned, it's "Limbaugh," not "Rush") is correct---a look at the casualty numbers (warning---PDF!) show not a huge bump to the casual eye.

But if even GOP senator Hagel uses absolutes like "biggest mistake," etc., the battle for perspective on this is more doomed than "the surge."

Evanston2 said...

We all die. It's the willingness to die FOR something, and what that SOMETHING might be, that really gets to the core issue.

The general public "gets it." We saw that in 2004. But as we all know (Rush included), the relentless MSM negativity is that the dead, wounded, and dollars are all for nothing.

As I said in emails from Iraq in 2004, our biggest enemy is the media.

I thank you all who are attempting to build an alternative to the useless, arrogant materialists who populate the major networks, newspapers, and magazines.