U.S. Death Toll Now 4,000 in Iraq: Why We Should Stop Reflecting on Numbers

In 2004, I kissed my new husband goodbye and watched him board a bus. We had only been married two weeks as his mother and I hugged each other, tears streaming down our faces, and watched the bus drive away. The bus would go on to another air station where he would board a plane that would take him overseas and then on to Iraq.

Before he departed, I laughed to keep from crying and told him it wasn't fair. He was spending our honeymoon in exotic places without me. He smiled a loving, worried smile and had hugged me.

He had just left Kuwait only six months before and he was already returning for his second deployment. He had volunteered for this mission, however, and this time, he was terrified. On his last deployment, he had lost his best friend and several other comrades when their helicopter crashed into a canal. He had escorted his friend's body back to the states and home to the family and grieving widow. The worst part of it all was that his friend had a one year-old daughter. My husband walked around with a sadness cloaked over him. Should it have been him instead? Why was this happening? Was all this worth it?

My husband's friend was one of the 4,000 now being reported as casualties. Each one of these 4,000 were men and women of various ages, various points in their lives, but most of them are young and when they are gone, it leaves not only the mark of their passing on their families, but the mark of all the 'what if's and 'what could have been's. It leaves children without fathers and mothers in the wake of a tragedy of unanswered questions.

When I first married my husband, I asked him what he thought of the war in Iraq. At the time, I was in a standpoint of thinking that all war was wrong and had visions of peace and harmony. My mind started changing through the years in seeing what my husband and other Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, etc. have had to say upon returning. My mind changed seeing the media turn to attacking the military and seeing friends that opposed the war rethinking our friendship because my husband was involved. This war has affected every aspect of my life the moment I said, "I do".

The nation sits and watches so some can cry injustice as the death toll rises higher, but those crying the loudest understand the military the least. Every man and woman that joins the armed forces is very aware of the potential costs. I have met some of the most wonderful men and women I have ever had the fortunate experience of meeting while married to the military. These are bright young men and women who truly believe in our country and all it stands for. It is of the greatest insult to assume that a man or woman in uniform is not intelligent enough to know what they are doing when joining the armed forces. Say what you want about the war, but you want to see an example of our nation's finest, meet a young service member. Their lives are important and their deaths are significant and not to be used to be crunched into a statistic, an empty number to push an anti-war agenda.

Before my husband left for Iraq, he told me that if he died over there he wanted me to be very vocal about letting those who wanted to skew his death as an anti-war statistic to know exactly what he thought about their motives. He wanted everyone to know that he went willingly and believed in his mission enough to risk his life and possibly lay down his life for comrades if necessary. He wasn't brainwashed. He wasn't so stupid that he couldn't have gotten a college degree and advanced to run a huge corporation. He believed in his country and he believed in it enough that the only way he knew to support it would be to serve in the military. My husband came back from war, safe and sound, and with stronger convictions than ever after what he'd experienced there.

Several years later, another friend of my husband would be killed in another helicopter crash leaving his friends with a MySpace quote on his profile, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" (Thomas Jefferson).

When my husband and I attended the funeral, I noticed a group of rough-looking bikers standing around the outdoor service with flags. I leaned over to my husband and asked if those were all friends of the deceased. There were so many bikers there it looked like a rally was taking place. They had a cooler full of bottled water and offered it to us as we went into the service with polite, sad smiles.

My husband shook his head in response to my question, "No, those are the Patriot Guard Riders...They go to every military funeral they can make it to and they stand guard to keep protestors away." I had instant respect for this group of wonderful people and disgust that anyone would want to take their anti-war message so far. How can the same people who rage about 4,000 lives lost to war protest at the funerals of those killed with complete and utter disrespect for families?

We have seen the media take great precedence in announcing when the death toll reached every milestone of a thousand more lives, now up to 4,000. With increasing urgency, the media is decrying the unjustice of this war as the death count rises. After announcing the number of deaths, they will move on to talk about Britney Spears' latest fiasco without a second thought about the lives of those lost. Death tolls have just become numbers and nothing but.

The media and American people will begin whipping themselves into a frenzy again. How high is too high? How many lives are too many? When, in reality, our times have changed and our thinking has evolved into a different mindset while some parts of the world have maintained more barbaric standards and ways of living.

We must keep in mind that 4,000 lives lost is a very modest number compared to past wars. 4,000 lives lost in five years isn't near as many as wars such as the Vietnam war (1963-1975) where an average of 4,850 lives were lost a year or the Korean war, where a staggering 12,300 men were lost each year between 1950-1953.

In actuality, what may impact the way people feel about this war as opposed to how others felt about wars in the past may largely have to do with the internet, which is a very self-centric tool of expression for today's youth. "Anti-war" is the "In" thing to be, right now. If you dare to suggest you may support the war or think it's for a justifiable cause, you are not a part of the "In" crowd.

Political candidates throwing their hat into the ring for the presidential nomination have based their whole philosophies on being anti-war while having little other credentials to hold the position of Commander In Chief. It is a frightening prospect in a world where war is a necessity against other nations that hate the very values the anti-war crowd enjoy so freely with so little thought.

In light of the recent announcement of 4,000 lives being lost, protests will probably be renewed, the military will continue to be vilified, and questioning of the President will continue. Political candidates will continue to use the deaths of brave men and women to their own advantage with complete disregard to the cause these men and women believed in fighting for. Even more sadly, many young Americans will buy the propaganda without reading unbiased sources of factual information to form their own opinions.

While you will have a whole legion of people who call themselves "anti-war", you will have very, very few that call themselves "pro-war". Nobody likes war, but many understand the inevitableness of it. Many also understand that the men and women of our armed services are not brainwashed zombies, but real, down-to-earth men and women with hopes and dreams who do their jobs because someone has to do it.

It's perfectly fine to oppose the war for whatever reason, but protesting and targeting our service members is the wrong course of action. Unfortunately, we can only control our environment in the United States and lately it is one that has fallen prey to anger and outrage rather than focusing on our growth and progression as a nation.

Announcing death tolls every time they reach an even numbered thousand is a disrespect to those who believed in what they died for. The media doesn't really care about what each of those numbers mean. They care about pushing an agenda. They don't care that #639 has two children who will never know their father. They don't care that #2, 597 died saving the lives of his friends. They don't care that #3,486 leaves a pregnant wife behind.

Every time someone calls this a losing war, they lower the morale of our troops just a little more and spit on the graves of all those who died for the unselfish reasons all those men and women died for. It is very easy for us, a spoiled nation, to cry about the senselessness of war when we have lived free for hundreds of years. It is very easy to take freedom and happiness for granted. While the future of the war may be in question and while objectives to enter the war are in question, what cannot be doubted are those who fought and who died for the causes they died for.

Not every man or woman who died, died to liberate Iraq. Some were trying to save the lives of their fellow military brothers and sisters. Some died just doing their jobs. Most of them believed in what they were doing, however. It's wrong to lump them together as a single number, though, and use that number to promote a political agenda. They are not one giant number. They are many separate individuals with separate lives, dreams, goals, and legacies left behind. They are not a giant number to be thrown about with carelessness in the reporting of the nightly news. They are people, like you and me, who were proud of what they did and have friends, loved ones, and family who are proud of them that cringe when they see them reported as nameless, faceless statistics.

The next time you hear about the death toll in Iraq, instead of cursing the President, maybe it should be time to think about each of the lives lost and how they believed in what they were fighting for. If we lived under the same circumstances, how might we feel about brothers and sisters of another nation shedding their blood for us? Somewhere along the line, priorities have been skewed. A celebrity dies and there will be hoopla surrounding the incident for months. A soldier dies, and he dies silently.