"It's More than the 4,000 Dead," column by Daniel O'Rourke

| Submitted by admin on March 13, 2008 - 5:53pm.

CPJ member Daniel O'Rourke contributes a regular column to the Dunkirk Observer.  The following, "It's More than the 4,000 Dead," was published on March 13, 2008. 

A recent meeting of a local peace group included an interesting discussion about sponsoring a demonstration against the Iraq War when the number of American military dead reached 4000.  (As I write this column, the number is 3987; twelve more were killed just this week.)

Not everyone was in favor of such a demonstration, which would both honor the fallen and protest the war. Some argued that spot-lighting the 4000 dead would distract us from the horrific number of our wounded. 

Better body armor, improved technology and speedier medical treatment mean that many soldiers survive wounds in Iraq that in past wars would have been fatal. Last year the Department of Defense using an especially narrow definition reported that 28,000 troops were wounded in Iraq. More realistically the number now is closer to 36,000.

According to government statistics, in the American Civil War there were 1.7 wounded for every soldier killed, in the Second World War 2.3 wounded for every death, in Vietnam 3.2 for every fatality.  Now In Iraq the wounded-to-killed ratio is about 9 to 1. Fortunately more of our wounded are surviving, but this has brought with it many unforeseen problems.  

These wounds are often horribly serious. Some are devastating. They include multiple amputations, facial disfiguration, brain damage and burns. The White House and Veteran Administration did not anticipate the severity of the wounds or the increase in the number of wounded, as the nation clearly saw last year in the shameful treatment of wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The VA has shown itself ill equipped to provide these veterans the medical care they deserve.

Others at the peace meeting remarked that we should also remember that the war’s mental scars are just as debilitating as its physical wounds.  Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has shown itself in an increase in veterans’ depression, suicides, domestic violence and divorces. Treating PTSD gets very complicated as the military tends to minimize it and veterans have been trained to view its symptoms as signs of weakness.  

Still others argued that focusing exclusively on the 4000 military dead would overlook the number of Iraqi civilians killed.  Here accurate numbers are more difficult to come by, but The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, in an October 2006 article, “The Human Cost of the War in Iraq,” reported 655,000 Iraqis have lost their lives through violence and health factors directly related to the war. More than a year later that number is significantly higher. According to other sources the number of Iraqi dead is in the millions.

One of the problems in determining the number of Iraqi dead is just when to start counting. Back in the mid-1990, sanctions after the Gulf War included the boycotting of medical supplies to Iraq. At that time CBS asked former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright on “60 Minutes” if the sanction-related deaths of an estimated half million Iraqi children were worth it. "We think the price is worth it,” she replied. (What boycott in God’s name is worth the death of a half million children? But I digress.) 

In the end the peace group decided not to focus on the 4000 fallen but instead to protest on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, a war for which after five years no end is yet in sight – a war that continues to kill our troops and devastate our economy.

Just last month Columbia University’s Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government an expert in public budgeting and finance, published a book, “The Three Trillion Dollar War – The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.”  They factored in the lifetime costs of veterans’ disabilities and health care for future decades as well as the war’s impact on the American economy. That’s how they arrived at the three trillion figure, but just how much is three trillion? If you can’t picture it, neither can I. Some concrete examples might help. 

Following an About.com:US Government Info example, if every American decided to pitch in to pay off the war’s eventual cost of three trillion dollars at the rate of one dollar per second (that’s right per second), it would take roughly 96,000 years!  A tightly packed stack of crisp new $1000 bills, totaling $3 trillion would be 189 miles tall. That’s about the distance from the Bronx to Baltimore.  No matter how you picture it, three trillion is a massive amount of money. Stiglitz and Bilmes tell us that it could solve the nation’s social security problem for the next fifty years.

 Enough mind-numbing statistics. The local peace group together with the State University of New York Students for Peace wisely decided to stand together for peace to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. That protest will include remembering the 36,000 wounded and the irreplaceable loss of our 3,987 military dead. Readers wherever you are may also want to protest. 

Daniel O'Rourke is a married Catholic priest. Retired from the Administration at SUNY Fredonia, he lives in Cassadaga, NY.  His column appears in the Observer, Dunkirk, NY on the second and fourth Thursday each month. He has published "The Spirit at Your Back," a book of his previous columns. It may be purchased or comments sent to orourke@netsync.net