The Forgotten American Dead

In an important study that has gotten too little attention, a demographer, William O'Hare, and a journalist, Bill Bishop, working with the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute, which specializes in the overlooked rural areas of our country, have crunched the numbers on where the American dead of the Iraq and Afghan Wars come from. The answer is: disproportionately from rural America.

According to their study, the death rate "for rural soldiers (24 per million adults aged 18 to 59) is 60% higher than the death rate for those soldiers from cities and suburbs (15 deaths per million)." Of rural areas, Vermont has the highest rate of casualties, followed by Delaware, South Dakota, and Arizona. Only 8 of our states have higher urban than rural death rates.

Demographer O'Hare, who himself grew up in the small Michigan town of Flushing, sums the matter up this way:

"We know that soldiers from rural America are dying at higher rates than those from urban America, strikingly higher, 60% higher. We know, from other research, that the rural young join the military at higher rates than those from metropolitan areas. The dearth of opportunity in rural areas simply leaves more young people there with fewer alternatives to the military.

"Dozens of case studies show that opportunities are moving away, part of a long-term shift. The opportunity differential between rural and urban America is probably higher now than at any time in the past. Our study highlights the price some young folks and their families are paying for lack of opportunity in rural America."

Just over 3,000 Americans have died in Iraq. If the U.S. population is 300 million, then that's just 0.001% of it – and many of these come disproportionately from the most forgotten, least attended to parts of our country, places that often have lost their job bases. Given our all-volunteer military (so that not even the threat of a draft touches other young Americans), you could say that the President's war in Iraq -- and its harm -- has been disproportionately felt as well.

No wonder it's been easy for so many Americans to ignore such a catastrophic war until relatively recently. This might, in a sense, be considered part of a long-term White House strategy, finally faltering, of fighting two significant wars abroad while demobilizing the population at home. When, for instance, soon after the 9/11 attacks the President urged Americans to go to Disney World or, in December 2006, to go "shopping more" to help the economy, he meant it. We were to continue with our normal lives, untouched by his war.

In an interview this week, the Newshour's Jim Lehrer asked George W. Bush: "Why have you not, as president of the United States, asked more Americans and more American interests to sacrifice something?"

And here was the President's pathetic but revealing answer:

"Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night."

In other words, our President wants -- has always wanted -- most of us to do nothing whatsoever.

To put all of this in some kind of crude context, consider the Iraqi side of this horrific equation. Just recently, the United Nations announced that in 2006, approximately 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, an obvious undercount as Jon Wiener pointed out at this blog.

Nonetheless, if the Iraqi population is about 27 million, then even that one-year undercount represents more than 0.1% of it. If, as such figures indicate, total Iraqi deaths since the invasion reached even the low end of the recent Lancet study's estimates -- several hundred thousand dead -- then we are talking about a country that has already lost at least 1% of its population as direct casualties of the President's invasion and occupation.

To take another crude measure of such things, sociologists sometimes claim that an average American knows approximately 200 people by their first names. So think of those 3,000 dead Americans, significantly from rural areas, as known on a first-name basis to 600,000 other people. On the same exceedingly crude basis, those 34,000 dead Iraqi civilians of 2006 alone would have been known by 6,800,000 other Iraqis. If you add in the Iraqi wounded and those who have fled the country or become internal refugees in the roiling civil war, there can essentially be no one in Iraq who has escaped intimate knowledge of the ravages of the American invasion and occupation.

In other words, you have a war launched by a country whose people can, in a personal sense, hardly know that it's going on and fought in a country that has been taken apart and ravaged more or less down to the last citizen.

Or think of it this way: The forgotten rural American dead are the Iraqis of the American War. I leave you to wonder about what the Iraqi dead are.

[Note: The Carsey Institute report by William O'Hare and Bill Bishop, "U.S. Rural Soldiers Account for a Disproportionately High Share of Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan," can be read by clicking here (pdf file).]

Comments (37)

1. Mr Engelhardt,

   I'm not sure that discussions of "rural vs urban" soldiers is truly relevant. After all, a few days or weeks from now we'll get another story about the "growing problem of the urban poor", etc. Maybe the discussion could focus on lack of middle to upper-middle economics among the recruits' backgrounds....but I think you'd get some debate in your own circles over the problems of "rural poverty" versus "urban poverty" (which has been the primary focus of discussions of poverty since the 60s).

   On the lack of the average American feeling the sting of the war on the domestic side...you're right. But consider this, LARGE majorities (60-65% or more) of Americans no longer support the war and definitely don't support "the Surge" (or Bush of course).

   And that's WITHOUT a draft, war taxes, or anything else. Given invasion in 2003 and it's January 2007, compared to Vietnam (Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 to Johnson giving up on running in 1968....it's pretty comparable.

   Posted by Mask at 01/29/2007 @ 10:14am

2. Posted by RIO BRAVO 01/29/2007 @ 10:12am

   Continueing evidence that RIO has slipped loose the tenuous bonds of sanity.

   Posted by Mask at 01/29/2007 @ 10:15am

3. Support the Troops!!

   Unless they come from some no-name hick town that no one cares about.

   Unless that means we have to properly supply them with battle armor.

   Unless we have to do something for them besides sticking a magnet on our car.

   Are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and the upcoming ones in Iran, then Syria...) noble causes worthy of risking your life in? Or are they merely worthy of risking someone else's life in?

   Posted by bjkron at 01/29/2007 @ 10:17am

4. I wonder if Tom Engelhardt has the names of the 3,000 Americans that died in the World Trade Center Attack and the airplane passengers tatooed on his backside?

   Posted by RIO BRAVO 01/29/2007 @ 10:12am

   Do you mean the attack planned and carried out by Saddam Hussein and perpetrated by Iraqi citizens?

   Posted by bjkron at 01/29/2007 @ 10:19am

5. so you live out in armpit holler, freecountry county USA...right down the road from a half million hog pigfarm that makes the entire area smell like pig dookie since pigs create 5 - 10 times the waste product humans do and armpit holler has barely enough sewage capacity to handle the shaved ape population so pa gets that flesh eating bacteria from fishing at pigshit creek which is contaminated by the seepage from the hole in the bottom of the pigshit/piss liner that the mexican shot a hole in to releave the seepage problem which caused a fifty foot geyser of pig shit to kind of put the place on the map for a brief period...(thanks for that image, mr. franken...)

   and since the rural poor are at least as likely to live jerryspringeresque lives as the inner city poor (who get more coverage because they live where all the camaras are) and (especially if more or less caucasian) can expect zero zilch nada nut'in from the gubbubbament in exchange for their tax money except constant hounding from the recruiters of the four major branches of the service and ol' armpit holler is looking pretty bleak...

   time to join the service just like pa, grampa, great-grampa, etc back to the pequot war...and hopefully drift into the city when the war's all over and use the gi bill and disability benefits to get an ejumuhgoddamncation, or just go back to armpit holler, live your jerryspringeresque life and spawn more cannon fodder for the next patriotic feel-good kill party our evil leaders bullshit us into, while they suck the life's blood and tax money out of schmuk nation.

   i swear, its like some kind of swiftian allegory, 21st century style...

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 01/29/2007 @ 10:37am

6. rio, I found you work as a replacement:

   Hector C. Patiño,

   Patiño, 48, who was working for KBR Inc., formerly known as Kellogg, Brown and Root, was en route to collect garbage from the combat support hospital in the Green Zone on Jan. 13. He drove the truck through one checkpoint without incident, but an investigation determined that "Australian and U.S. military guards" at a second checkpoint shared by the Australian Embassy and the hospital "shot and killed Patiño when he failed to respond to commands to stop."

   Posted by crabwalk at 01/29/2007 @ 10:39am

7. Ibble, as a life long resident of rural America, i have to say your stereotyping is only 1/2 accurate. But, that still makes you more accurate than the Rio types around here.

   From a hawk, John Warner:

   "I regret that I was not more outspoken" during the Vietnam War, the former Navy secretary said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. "The Army generals would come in, 'Just send in another five or ten thousand.' You know, month after month. Another ten or fifteen thousand. They thought they could win it. We kept surging in those years. It didn't work."

   (history lesson, which Hollywood starlet did Warner use to get his seat in congress?)

   Posted by crabwalk at 01/29/2007 @ 10:44am

8. The thing is, with NAFTA, CAFTA MFN status for china, ADM and CONAGRA etc, the corporatacracy has removed the ways of earning a living in much of rural America. Add in a disdain for education above 12 grade and you are left with the military career. After all, they always take care of their boys, never shirk the duty to help overcome PTSS.

   Posted by crabwalk at 01/29/2007 @ 10:50am

9. (history lesson, which Hollywood starlet did Warner use to get his seat in congress?)

   Posted by CRABWALK 01/29/2007 @ 10:44am

   Her of the Violet Eyes...Elizabeth Taylor (no, didn't Google it)!

   Posted by Mask at 01/29/2007 @ 10:58am

10. Damn hollyweird librools! Will their insidious machinations of our congress never stop?

    Posted by crabwalk at 01/29/2007 @ 11:10am

11. Posted by RIO BRAVO 01/29/2007 @ 10:12am

    Yes, those killed by Usama, Saudi, Arab Emirate and jordanians!!

    I bet if we look in Iraq we will find them. It should be a cakewalk.

    Posted by crabwalk at 01/29/2007 @ 11:12am

12. I bet if we look in Iraq we will find them. It should be a cakewalk.

    Posted by CRABWALK 01/29/2007 @ 11:12am

    Our troops will need a good supply of Claritin to ward off allergies caused by being inundated with rose petals.

    Posted by bjkron at 01/29/2007 @ 11:16am

13. Blackhawk down!!

    time for the neo-cons to call for withdrawal.

    Posted by crabwalk at 01/29/2007 @ 11:21am

14. Posted by BJKRON 01/29/2007 @ 11:16am

    that's what the chem suits were for.

    Posted by crabwalk at 01/29/2007 @ 11:22am

15. Ridiculious article on a meaningless statistic...did you know that all of the soldiers killed in Iraq ate carrots at one time in their life...therefore, maybe soldiers shouldn't eat carrots?

    Posted by john maasch at 01/29/2007 @ 12:00pm

16. Continueing evidence that RIO has slipped loose the tenuous bonds of sanity.

    Posted by MASK 01/29/2007 @ 10:15am | ignore this person

    I dont see how anyone who advocates a nuclear armed Iran can question anyone else's sanity.

    Posted by CPT at 01/29/2007 @ 12:02pm

17. Posted by BJKRON 01/29/2007 @ 10:17am | ignore this person

    This makes little sense, whose actions are you hoping to inhibit? ours or theirs?

    Now rail against all things American....

    Posted by CPT at 01/29/2007 @ 12:06pm

18. I wish there were less contempt for rural soldiers and more of a wish to understand them. I agree with "Mask" that the rural poor are even more poorly understood than the urban poor.

    Here's my hypothesis. The rural poor disregard higher education for the same reason that they disregard high-paying city jobs: because they know that it costs money to get into either one. The rural poor still maintain that there is a distinction between money and merit. They know that food production is the most important, yet most poorly remunerated work there is. This is why they either cling to farming or try to work near farm communities as long as they can. They draw from the observation that money does not always follow merit the faulty conclusion that merit must never follow money.

    The attitude of the suburban rich toward higher education is not simply one of approbation, either. Certainly they could invest more money in it to make it more affordable to the poor. Why don't they? Could it be because in the value system of the rich, money matters more than labor, and that (consequently) higher education would be inherently less valuable if it were less expensive? Do they fear competition from lower-income people who may actually be brighter than themselves?

    The rural poor can perhaps be compared to the fox that in Aesop's fable disparaged a bunch of tantalizing grapes as sour. Why? Because they were out of reach. This is of course a self-defeating attitude, but I can see how plausibly this attitude exists in a dysfunctionally co-dependent relationship with the attitude of the suburban rich, that those grapes we call higher education are sweet, worthy of a high price, and too good for the underprivileged.

    Perhaps the military appeals to the rural poor because the military hierarchy seems, in comparison to the corporate hierarchy, comparatively meritocratic rather than plutocratic.

    These are the sort of hypotheses that I believe should guide our sociological research, not the self-flattering urban and suburban stereotypes of the rural poor that I see and hear repeated much too often. Thanks to Mr. Engelhardt for a thought-provoking article.

    Posted by JakobFabian at 01/29/2007 @ 12:06pm

19. "While Englehardt's arithmetic and ratioing is laudable in its attempt to bring home a sense of the impact felt in Iraq,"

    So the ends justify the means...glad to hear a mna like ZERO agrees

    Posted by CPT at 01/29/2007 @ 12:08pm

20. Posted by CRABWALK 01/29/2007 @ 10:39am | ignore this person

    He should have stopped when told to...sorry

    Posted by CPT at 01/29/2007 @ 12:12pm

21. Posted by CRABWALK 01/29/2007 @ 10:44am

    yeah..i was inspired (which half was right? hopefully not the geyser of pigshit...lol)

    but seriously, down here in souf cakalaka there are certain "necks of the woods" that easily rival some of the most destitute and crime ridden parts of "the big city"...

    of course there are many mighty fine bucolic paradises also, but recently having dated someone who lived in the sticks...must say i was a bit taken aback at the slumification of some parts of the backwoods...

    got them ak-47 racks in the pickups in some places these days...

    Posted by ibbleblibble at 01/29/2007 @ 12:16pm

22. Posted by CPT 01/29/2007 @ 12:02am

    I don't see how anybody who calls himself HONEST can not say what he REALLY means and what he REALLY is willing to sacrifice in our blood and treasure for "victory"?

    Posted by Mask at 01/29/2007 @ 12:43pm

23. Posted by RIO BRAVO 01/29/2007 @ 12:24am

    Sorry, did I miss your answer on the other thread?

    What IS the Bush Administration going to DO about Iran getting nukes? What's the latest plan?

    Posted by Mask at 01/29/2007 @ 12:43pm

24. I dont see how anyone who advocates a nuclear armed Iran can question anyone else's sanity.

    Posted by CPT 01/29/2007 @ 12:02am

    --------------------------------

    That and the idiocy of those cheering for Irans freedom to develop nukes justifiable by our possession of them! Why not just applaude and lobby for a "nukes for every country U.N. welfare program"?

    Posted by RIO BRAVO 01/29/2007 @ 12:24am

    CPT chickened out of the last thread and is back to smiling and placating Rio Chickenshit Coward on a whole new thread - what a shocker. Chickens of a feather, I guess.

    I've still got questions that you don't have the brains to answer, CPT. They're just one thread back, in "The Winner is... Iran".

    And by the by, when did Mask say that he supports a nuclear-armed Iran? I don't think that he did, but I may have missed it.

    Posted by New Dawn at 01/29/2007 @ 12:46pm

25. Posted by NEW DAWN 01/29/2007 @ 12:46am

    Actually I believe what I said was that, despite CPT's image, they weren't suicidal and would use their nukes when (in about 10 years according to reliable intell) they get them.

    Actually you can take a RIGHT-winger view of how a nuclear Iran uses its nuclear power in the Jerusalem Post here [jpost.com] where it's pointed out that Iran won't even need to detonate a bomb to have influence over the ME....along with their new friend Shiite-controlled Iraq, that we helped to create.

    No, in CPT's world, as soon as Iran gets the Bomb (next week by his calculations I'm sure), they'll immediately give it to Al Queda (Sunnis and Iran's foes, but you know how them Mue'sa'lims are all the same), who'll sneak it into the USA and vaporize Crawford Texas thus crippling the country by killing the ONE MAN who will protect us from them!

    Meanwhile the question STILL becomes for both CPT and RIO....since they're "in the know" on Bush's strategery....what IS the Administration going to do to stop Iran from becoming nuculear on Valentines Day?

    Posted by Mask at 01/29/2007 @ 1:02pm

26. what IS the Administration going to do to stop Iran from becoming nuculear on Valentines Day?

    Posted by MASK 01/29/2007 @ 1:02pm

    send them a valentine card and a dozen roses?

    Posted by ibbleblibble at 01/29/2007 @ 1:06pm

27. (history lesson, which Hollywood starlet did Warner use to get his seat in congress?)

    Posted by CRABWALK 01/29/2007 @ 10:44am

    i'm clueless...

    Posted by ibbleblibble at 01/29/2007 @ 1:20pm

28. Posted by IBBLEBLIBBLE 01/29/2007 @ 1:06pm

    All they can do NOW....can't attack or face a total revolt among REPUBLICANS, plus NO scenario exists which doesn't show an attack on Iran that doesn't end in increased terrorism AND a regional war that pushes oil prices through the roof and gives us (and the Europeans and Asians to a worse degree) a major recession.

    Posted by IBBLEBLIBBLE 01/29/2007 @ 1:20pm

    Posted by MASK 01/29/2007 @ 10:58am---Elizabeth Taylor

    Posted by Mask at 01/29/2007 @ 1:31pm

29. There are some that say "we only "lose" in Iraq if we "cut and run".

    Getting beyond the simplistic nature of that....don't you only "win" when you state your goals, meet them, and then exit?

    Like desert storm....stated goal....liberate Kuwait....goal accomplished....declare victory....go home.

    Iraq in 2003-2007 we've had numerous positive exit points (times when you would have been able to say 'we won') and we didn't take any of them. We assuaged our fears of WMD's, we got Saddam, we installed a democracy, we trained 300,000+ Iraq security forces. Now we can't 'win' because our leadership refuses to quantify what winning actually looks like.

    The whackjobs will later say that the liberal media made us lose, or the Democrats made us lose....but since winning is only meeting your objectives and since our leadership has constantly moved the goalposts on the military (of what the objective is), the leadership is 100% responsible for the loss.

    Posted by freedomplease at 01/29/2007 @ 1:53pm

30. While every death in this senseless, immoral war is tragic, I struggle to find much sympathy for those who voluntarily sign up to participate in this horrific undertaking. If there were no volunteers, there would be no war without a draft. If there were a draft, there would be open resistance of an enormous scale: there would be no war. So yes, blame Cheney and his boy George: but lets stop romaticizing the ignorant rural American youth who volunteer to travel 1/2 way around the world to kill even more innocent people in the name of oil profits

    Posted by dmsteinman at 01/29/2007 @ 7:23pm

31. At least the soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq are fighting and dying for a noble cause. That cause is to teach all the other ignoramuses that inhabit this country that there are no winners in war, only losers. Americans throughout history have been isolated from the carnage that war brings (with the possible exception of the Civil War, but even the impact of that war was concentrated in only a few rural states), so they think that war is just some sort of game. Americans have never been bombed to high-heaven, and they have no idea what it is like to have their homes destroyed in a sea of fire or to have all of their loved ones blown into tiny, unidentifiable pieces. The worst that Americans ever experienced was on 9/11. A mere 3000 died that day, and concentrated in a single city that most have never visited. Yet Americans cried and cried like a bunch of babies about it! Let's be honest about this. Most Americans were in favor of the war in Iraq, when we were told it would be a cakewalk. Now that it's turned sour, all we want to do is run away from it. Oh, you say, that's because it was all George W. Bush' s fault for starting this war and lying about the reasons. Give me a break. No, we are all to blame because we believed his lies even though the evidence was already there to show that his statements were nothing but bald-faced lies. All we had to do was look, listen, and think! But now that the war's gotten hard, we all want out. Well, I'm sorry, but that's the essence of cowardice in my book. We're in Iraq and we're stuck there for a long, long time. Many more Americans and Iraqis will die before this war is over. We all might as well get used to it. And once we do, maybe we'll finally realize that we must share on an equal basis the sacrifices required for this awful, awful mistake. It is simply wrong for the sacrifices for this war to fall on the shoulders of those with the least stake in our society. Among other things, we need to bring back the draft, and this time we must make sure that the rich kids go fight too (no deferments for Jenna or Barbara!). Only then will the ignoramuses in this country learn that war is not a game, and perhaps think twice about starting another meaningless war in some other god-forsaken country for no reason at all. My god, if Americans finally learn this lesson from this war, then I dare say that the soldiers currently dying in Iraq are dying for a noble cause indeed! We should all die such a noble death.

    Posted by wmkostak at 01/29/2007 @ 7:57pm

32. Being from Eastern Kentucky and a veteran, it is disheartening to see so much contempt for rural Americans. I read we have disdain for higher education. On other liberal blogs, I read we get what we deserve for voting for Bush, as if every rural American was running around with an AK racked up in his pickup truck and all of us voted for Bush. It's not only wrong. It pitifully narrow-minded. Further, it's just plain ignorant.

    I see so much anger toward rural America and I wonder how long this simplistic red/blue state mentality will continue. We struggle daily to dispel Little Abner, inbred yokel misperceptions about our people, but I never see a piece like Mr. Engelhardt's go by without one or more progressives jumping in and giving us a little extra kick in the side. You'd be afraid to do the same on a story about African-Americans, or women, but some of you are glad stomp to on someone, as long as they're rural and white.

    It's especially hard to take when so many of us have worked hard for years on civil rights issues, fighting for unions with our fists, voting for progressive candidates, and yes, working in the antiwar movement. When I see the hate some of you have for rural America, it makes me ashamed to be a liberal. There nothing liberal about it. When faced with a new idea, presented by Mr. Engelhardt, you reject it outright, without any investigation.

    Finally, someone you can kick around. Does it feel good?

    I'd recommend going back and rereading Mr. Engelhardt's story and then go to ruralstrategies.org. You might get your eyes opened a bit, and may come away with a better appreciation of our the real dilemma facing our young men and women.

    I remember how we were treated when we came home from Vietnam, and when I look around I wonder if my fellow progressive really support the troops. I know they all say they do, but is that just a way to avoid looking as bad as they did during Vietnam. If you have compassion for these poor soldiers, then do something besides talk about it. I learned a long time ago in Vietnam, compassion is not just a feeling. It's something you act on. If compassion is not followed by action--it's just a word.

    Rural soldiers often do have a tradition of service. Nearly everyone in my family going back to the Revolutionary War have served this country, but these days our rural youth are driven to the recruiter's office under the lash of economic inequity.

    Don't kid yourself, we are not the ignorant warmongers so many of my fellow progressives like to believe we are. We don't have disdain for higher education. We don't have the money for it. Most rural Americans place a high value on education, and like you, we hope our children get a better education, and do better than we have. Our sons and daughters join the Army or join the guard and now they're dying over there for a bit of tuition money.

    Bottom line--if we didn't go over and die--this insane administration would probably fire up the draft, and then maybe your sons and daughters would be dying too. So the next time you see some hillbilly in uniform, you might want go up and thank him. He may really be dying so your kids can have a nice undisturbed college education. We're not red or blue--we're people, doing whatever it takes to get by--just like you.

    Posted by Nick Stump at 01/29/2007 @ 11:17pm

33. "When I see the hate some of you have for rural America, it makes me ashamed to be a liberal." by Mr. Nick Stump. Thank you, Nick, it is about time you felt shame for that. Long overdue, for sure. Other than that, I agree with your discourse entirely. I grew up in a rural west Texass community, I worked 42 years in greater Los Angeles, and now I once again live in a rural community. I see the boys - and now girls - from my very rural western community go off to the war de jour every decade or so and I admire their youthful enthusiasm, though I very much disadmire their blind acceptance of the irrational moral and patriotic drivel that is implanted in their minds in the public schools and churches they have attended since they were old enough to stop crapping in their diapers. So long as we and/or the infamous Muslim zealots teach and preach irrationality as fact (irrationality = morality) then the wars de jour will continue. Oh, yes, and by the way, they will probably also continue after we stop teaching/preaching irrationality. Mankind is what mankind is.

    Posted by malrox at 01/30/2007 @ 9:58pm

34. And, oh by the way, IBBLEBLIBBLE, the only way to stop Iran, or North Korea, or, in 50 more years, Uganda, from going nuclear ( or is it nucular?) is to nuke 'em. and we won't do that. Or anyone else. Maybe Israel will. I hope so. Today the righteous USA (beat breast and wave flag here) can put a 0.35 megaton nuke (W-78) into a carry-on suitcase. Check it out. Tomorrow the Palestinians will be able to do that, or buy that. Maybe for the USA as a whole global warming is the greatest threat; but for Israel; and, say, NYC, global warming is a meaningless occurrence after the apocalypse.

    Posted by malrox at 01/30/2007 @ 10:21pm

35. What if, just once, we stopped making decisions solely on the basis of our collective fear? Could we find something else to guide us? Could that other thing, perhaps, be given the name of 'conscience'? What is it that our conscience would have to say about the many thousands of needless dead?

    Posted by maddox at 02/01/2007 @ 9:11pm

36. Maddox, I think the trouble with consciences is they are not of one opinion. If there is a deity and/or if morality exists on anything other than a molecular level in each individual's brain, it is certainly not manifested to us as a group insofar as I have seen. Perhaps I am wrong. But I think that our collective fears are only a natural tendency of each individual to associate with those of his/her own ilk; and, reinforced by the common disgusts and hatreds of that group, to go forth and purify and enlighten the world. Again, perhaps I am wrong. But the evidence for my being wrong seems to me anyway to be pretty scarce on this planet.

    Posted by malrox at 02/01/2007 @ 9:28pm

37. Bush was trying to drain the swamp, Iraq drew the short stick.

    The real tragedy of all this is a slow but sure awakening by America that wars of liberation or freedom is a mistake. In the last century we allowed to be killed about 1/2 million of our young men fighting wars not of our making. Excluding the war against Japan in the 1940's (they were our enemy, they attacked us), our death rate in Europe was about 1500/WEEK for almost 4 years. And WWI cost us about 90,000 dead in a little over a year, and for what- so the French and British could drink Gin while carving up the Ottoman Empire and in so doing create that very swamp we find ourselves in today!

    I think America should guard is blood and treasure better.

    Posted by robster at 02/03/2007 @ 11:01am