I have a question for you. I want you to try to answer it without Googling or peeking or consulting a newspaper. Ready? Here goes:
How many lives did the war in Iraq claim today?
There. It’s a one-question test. Did you pass?
If you failed, don’t be too hard on yourself. Your failure is not entirely your fault. Here in America, our President long ago forbade the “free press” from televising the arrival of flag-draped coffins, and the “free press” complied without so much as a whimper.
And while the evening news anchors will occasionally report, “Sixteen American soldiers died in Iraq today,” or “Four soldiers died in an explosion,” such stories are incomplete by design. If you don’t believe me, simply pay attention to how such headlines are delivered. While Charlie Gibson may tell you a number, it will be the number of soldiers lost; his tally does not include the number of locals, or even the number of enemy combatants.
No one knows how many lives the war claimed today. No one is even counting.
Now: indulge me in a fantasy. I want you to imagine a very different America with a very different sort of evening news. In this parallel world, Charlie Gibson begins each night with this report:
“Good evening. Today, three American soldiers died when a homemade mine went off near the Green Zone in Baghdad.
“The first was Private Kevin Preston. Kevin was only twenty-two years old, but he was already the father of two beautiful children, Lana and Franklin. Kevin was the first of his family to go to college, making his elderly parents especially proud. His wife, his children, and his entire family are completely devastated by his loss.
“The second was Specialist Bernice Palladino. Bernice dropped out of high school early, experimenting with drugs before finally joining the Army as part of a last-ditch effort to give her life some direction. Leaving her two-year-old son with her mother, Bernice was deployed to Iraq last year. When her tour of duty was involuntarily extended, she took this in stride. In addition to sending money home on a regular basis, Bernice had saved $2,000 she hoped to put toward opening her own catering service when she returned home to Birmingham, AL.
“The third was Sergeant Victor Allen Adnum. Victor was a star pupil in his high school, and in order to pay for his own education, he volunteered for military service. He was particularly gifted with languages and translation, and spoke Farsi so well that native Iraqis expressed surprise upon hearing his accent. He was also a prolific writer, keeping a series of journals filled with poetry and essays. When he died, he was half-finished with a novel about his experiences in the Middle East.”
If the news gave us names instead of numbers — human stories instead of military abstractions — we would not be satisfied when our President substitutes slogans (“Stay the course!”) for strategies.
We would not abide the idea of an open-ended war, with no terms of victory and no plan for closure.
We would demand accountability and responsibility on the part of our leaders. We would insist that any further loss of life be weighed against some measurement of progress, some indicator of success, some assurance that this carnage would eventually come to an end.
How many lives did the war in Iraq claim today?
That number is important.
What may be more important, though, is the answer to this question: why, as Americans, are we willing to condone a government that works so hard to hide that number?
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