There is a weekly wrap-up of the war on a certain cable news network where the host talks and acts like a game show host.
His fake earnestness and total lack of humanity sterilizes the war and trivializes the reality of what our government has wrought in Iraq and beyond. In a recent program our perky host actually said "only about 37 U.S. troops killed [last month]". "Only"???! How dare this clown and his heartless network employ such verbiage that casts the deaths of our young men and women in terms of such profound indifference to the feelings of those close to these soldiers. To say the word "only" in this context reveals no insight into how "any" death in this war, be it soldier or civilian is the direct result of a monumentally naïve and misguided foreign policy disaster. These deaths are not just abstract casualties, they are our flesh and blood relatives and friends who have been sacrificed for some indeterminant cause that has never been coherently articulated.
So I humbly submit, no matter what the death count is, be it one or 37, for the sake of civility and respect for those who sacrificed there lives, that more care is given to how these deaths are treated. After all, they are not ball scores!