Sunday, March 16, 2008

More Americans Care About Domestic Prices Than Iraq Casualties?

Watching the Sunday morning national news programs this morning, as is my habit, I was struck by something mentioned only in passing, that only 28% of Americans knew that nearly 4000 American soldiers have been killed since the Iraq War began, now just 5 years ago this Wednesday the 20th.

It’s true. Reported at CBS News, a recent Pew Poll of Americans finds that the Iraq War has been supplanted by other issues, domestic ones. The economy. The rise in the price of gasoline and the concomitant rise in the prices of the necessities of life.

Now I understand all of that. These things are close to us and affect our lives in the immediate sense. But look, we still have two wars still going on, one of them being fought for no other reason now than the fact that we started it. We have all of this, but the prices of gasoline and food have invaded our conscious sense of urgency.

72% of us are not aware of the fact that as of today, March 17th, nearly 4000 people have been killed in this war. 3988 Americans to be exact. 4296 total coalition lives to be exact. 4296 lives have been lost in Iraq since hostilities began.

And that’s just counting our combatants. Over 89,000 Iraqis have lost their lives in this conflict, including combatants and civilians.

This is good news for the people who started this war. This is good news for the Bush Regime. This is good news that the biggest military blunder in US history is being supplanted by the price of milk.

What we need to realize, I have finally concluded, is that it is all related. These people, these tens of thousands of people, all died because someone lied. They lied and everyone just went along. They created the war, and that created artificialities everywhere. The price of oil has been steadily climbing historically, but in all history there have been nothing like the price increases that have gone on since March 2003.

Since the Iraq War began.

Even in constant dollars, oil is now higher than it has ever been in history.

It’s all related. Some people die, others pay $4 for a gallon of milk or a gallon of gasoline. It’s all related, and the blame for it all goes squarely on the leaders in power right now.

These are the ones that need to be thrown out of office by Americans, voters who have had enough of their lies and deceit. Milk or blood, it makes no difference.

It’s all related.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Reporter Richard Engel on the NBC Evening News said that the troops realize this too. They've come to believe that the only people who care that they're in the line of fire are their families. Yeah, that's gotta be great for morale! Yet that's the War On Terror all over, no sacrifices demanded from the public at large and tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. So why SHOULD we care about a war that we've be led to believe we have absolutely no stake in--unless we have the bad fortune to serve in the military?