Yesterday, the Pentagon released information about the 2,000th soldier to die in Iraq, SSG George Alexander. As Faces from the Front points out, the "number" of the soldier isn't important: what IS important is that they died for something they believed in: freedom and democracy.
Numbers 2,000, 1,999 and 1,997 also strapped up every day to stand on a wall many in America are willing let crumble. And to those who would let that wall crumble, they are just numbers.
They are not men of action and conviction, to the anti-war faction, they are merely numbers of sufficient quotient to send a press releases and hold press events.
I asked Marines all across Al Anbar province two questions:
1. If something goes bad and you die here. What would you think of people who used your death to protest the war.
2. After being here, and knowing what you know, would you still join the Marines/volunteer for this deployment?The answers were invariably the same.
They did not want their death to be used as a prop and they would make the same decision all over again. These young Lance Corporals and Non-Commissioned Officers volunteered to join the Marines, many with the intent of coming to Iraq. And while few would say they like war, they all recognize the necessity of it.
bRight and Early also says it very well:
Two thousand soldiers have not died in Iraq. It is one soldier with family, friends and loved ones who has paid the ultimate price. An individual who had likes and dislikes and a personality all their own. An individual who's life is worthy of our honor and respect. A real person with a name. One soldier who volunteered. One soldier who gave the people of Iraq the freedom to vote, the freedom to choose, the freedom to hope. One hero. Repeated two thousand times.
Those who have died are not just numbers for the news and their sacrifice is not a reason to run, but to stay.
Indeed.
Each and every man and woman who has died in the service of our country to further the cause of freedom and democracy ought to be given the full honor and deep respect that they deserve - the same honor and respect that the liberal media and the loony lefty moonbats deny them.
I understand that we don't want our men and women to die. I understand that there are familes and friends left behind in grief.
But I also understand that each and every man and woman had the choice - and they chose to serve their country.
UPDATE - Partisan Pundit also has a post up, well worth the read:
The sad truth is that sometimes war is necessary. Sometimes the evil of war is outweighed by the evil it seeks to expunge.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the space of a few hours on September 11th, 2001. Innocents, unarmed civilians. ON. OUR. SOIL.
In the battle for Okinawa, 12,000 soldiers, sailors and marines were killed in just three months of fighting. During the Battle of the Bulge in Germany during WWII, 19,000 US fighting men were killed in a month and half of fighting. All told, in 5 years of conflict, WWII cost the United States 413,000 dead. In nearly two and a half years of fighting in Iraq, we have lost…2,000.
Even during WWII, there were those pacifists and apologists who counseled capitulation, compromise, said that the conflicts “weren’t our problem.” Even after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, in which 2,472 people died, there were those who said that we had brought it on ourselves. Sound familiar? Maybe we did, maybe we didn’t, but did our actions warrant that level of response? Did we really have THAT coming?
And what if we had bowed our head to the attackers? What if we had let them have their way in the Pacific? Today there would be no Australia, no New Zealand. No Alaska. No Hawaii. Who knows what our country might look like today?
Can a country of 250,000,000 people absorb the loss of 2,000 of its military men and women? I propose that this is the wrong question.
In a fight against a zealous, global enemy, one that has declared unrestricted war on us, an enemy that knows no restraint, sees no value in the Geneva Convention, one who sees our very culture and way a life as a threat to their own, can we afford NOT to risk the loss of 2,000 to save 250 million?
