Putting Dying Into Perspective...Picture me this morning, with my ever greying, ever balding head once again spinning around at orbital rotational velocity, something I haven't allowed it to do for some time now.
I was just sitting around minding my own business, reading a few news stories when I came across
this Associated Ass Press story about yet another group of supposed innocent civilians that drove at a high speed at a convoy protected by private security forces in Iraq.
BAGHDAD - Guards working for an Australian-owned security company working for a company contracted by USAID fired on a car as it approached their convoy Tuesday, killing two women civilians before speeding away from the latest bloodshed blamed on the deadly mix of heavily armed protection details on Baghdad's crowded streets. The deaths of the two Iraqi Christians — including one who used the white sedan as an unofficial taxi to raise money for her family — came a day after the Iraqi government handed U.S. officials a report demanding hefty payments and the ouster from Iraq of embattled Blackwater USA for a chaotic shooting last month that left at least 17 civilians dead.The deaths Tuesday at a Baghdad intersection may sharpen demands to curb the expanding array of security firms in Iraq watching over diplomats, aid groups and others
...Priddin's statement offers a similar account: "The first information that we have is that our security team was approached at speed by a vehicle which failed to stop despite an escalation of warnings which included hand signals and a signal flare. Finally shots were fired at the vehicle and it stoppedThen, for no apparent reason, the story goes on to recount the balance of the death toll in Iraq yesterday:
In other violence across Iraq, at least 57 Iraqis were found dead or killed in bombings and shootings. In Beiji, an oil hub 155 miles north of Baghdad, two suicide bombers drove a minibus laden with explosives into the house of a local police chief and detonated an explosives-packed Toyota Land Cruiser outside the home of a leading member of the local Awakening Council, a group of Iraqis who have turned against al-Qaida in Iraq extremists in the area.
Police in Beiji said at least 19 died in the attacks, which badly damaged a Sunni mosque about 100 yards away from the police chief's house. Three guards there were among the dead. The men targeted in the attacks were not killed, police said.
In Baghdad, a series of four car bombs killed 16. I want to ask this question: "Why mention the other deaths in this story?"
More accurately, "why doesn't the media ever try to put the losses in perspective?"
If I were a professional journalist, would you think that I was working for a Pulitzer prize writing a story that opened like this:
"PEOPLE DIEING LEFT AND RIGHT"Virgil Rogers-ASSociated PressYesterday, in the United States of America, 123 people were needlessly killed by 3000 pound careening boxes of rubber tired sheet metal and plastic produced by angry white male engineers and capitalists from Detroit.
Witnesses said that the occupants of the vehicles were lured into a false sense of security by the air bags and seat belts and died of blunt force trauma when they crashed while babbling on camera phones and watching the displays on their in-cockpit GPS systems.
Meanwhile, another 86 citizens committed suicide, 53 were accidentally poisoned, 49 were killed as a result of crimes, 47 died by falling, 9 by drowning, 9 in fires, 8 choked while eating, 1 was killed by police action, and the medical profession screwed up treatment and took yet another 8 souls on average.Where do we run?
Where do we hide?
Certainly not in Baghdad.
All this carnage from a country with a population of
about 300 million people that doesn't actively have any military action taking place here on our home soil. (click on this link and look at the numbers for yourself.)
If you add it all up, nearly 500 people died in the past 24 hours here at home (over 182,000 per year), but the media would have you believe that in Iraq; a country with a population of over 25 million; a country where three quarters of the swarthy population is intent on blowing up the other 100%; that when a few dozen people crap out due to being vaporized by a Toyota full of Soviet tank ammunition that the world has ended--and worst of all, it's the
US's and George Bush's fault.
IT'S JUST NOT TRUE.
Now here is my main point, my "coup
de grace"...
To date,
as of September 1st, 2007, in the current conflict in Iraq, the US has lost 3,734 troops.
That would be 3,654 men, and 80 women. So much of gender equality in the military.
While we're looking at the numbers, what about Al
Sharpton and Jesse Jackson's assertion that minority kids are bearing an undue share of the burden in fighting this war?
Well, only 350 of the deaths were African American, while another 405 were Latino or Hispanic. That means that 9% of the casualties were Black and about 11% were Latino, and last time I checked Blacks made up over 12% of the population and the Latinos were running somewhere near 15%.
I guess somebody down at the recruiter office in Watts, Atlanta, and Miami better get busy before I have to call the ACLU and complain.
I think that once again Al and Jesse are proven to be full of their own partially digested collards and ham hocks, the fumes from which assault us on an almost daily basis.
All of that said, here's my final point.
I appreciate the service of every single one of these great, honorable men and women, and I extend my sympathy and appreciation to their friends and family members for their service, and in writing this posting I do not mean to demean the value of their service and sacrifice...
BUT...
In the period from January 2006 to February 2007, when we had lost
753 soldiers in Iraq due hostile action, the US military also lost 465 in non-combat accidents like car crashes, 205 died of non-combat medical illness, and 155 committed suicide.
Again, add it up folks...more people in the military died from non-combat reasons than died in combat in Iraq, and those figures are out of a total force of 1.6 million active duty, guard, and reserve forces.
Thoses losses are only six tenths of one percent higher that that of the general population wandering and driving around here stateside, even with the war going on.
Imagine that?
Did anyone every hear this kind of info from the
ASSociated Press or from Paul
Krugman at the NY times?
NO?
Well, as I said before the loss of every soul is a tragedy, but the number of losses needs to be put into perspective relative to the total population you're talking about.
Imagine how many people died in China last year? Wouldn't a news story about China's military training losses make for good "Yellow Journalism" sensationalistic reading?
After all, they have a population of nearly a BILLION and one half.
Do me a favor, and from here on out, will everyone try to keep things in perspective instead of running around joining the crowd screaming "The Sky is Falling?"
(Now get out there and get some work done, I have to go take a nap.)
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