4,000 means nothing

It means nothing to those who have lost someone. One is the only number that matters. The one brother my friend lost. The one son my patient lost. The one child a nameless Iraqi mother lost.

People say they find solace in God. Bullshit. People say they find solace in heroism and valor. Bull-fucking-shit. Those left behind are still devastated. Lives are left unfinished. Valor could have taken place on a street corner or in a factory.

I'm not going to make friends with this post. I don't know the answers. I don't even know if we should be leaving Iraq soon. What I do know is that puppet-masters in Washington committed an unforgivable sin. They didn't know what they didn't know, and acted on their arrogant ignorance sending kids to kill and die and break. There was ignorance, there was deception. There will be undeserved forgiveness given by people looking for a way, any way, to gain meaning from loss.

4000 means nothing. Each 1 means something. The larger the number, the harder it is for someone to understand, a face lost in a crowd. Each person has a name, and whether it's carved into a tombstone or scribbled onto a waiting list at a VA clinic, someone knows that person, someone is left behind. The ripples spread from each broken body and broken mind.

I'm forgiving no one, for the dead, the living, the broken, the deserted, for the fact that people will hate me for writing these words.

Wars break people.

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/20...ns_nothing.php

Leaving Iraq now is the only chance at any salvation, staying there will continue the outstanding violence and destruction.

I can't believe Bush/Cheney haven't been charged with War crimes yet, this is absurd. Oh yeah that's right, Bush elected in all of his buddies into the uppers of the Supreme Court, it wouldn't matter anyways, would it?...

Last night, I attended a talk by Sherman Alexie, who was hilarious and at times, biting. One of the curious things he noted, though, was that he had said something about the disastrous conduct of the wasteful war in Iraq, and despite this being an audience of collegiate liberals, no one applauded. He noted that this is his common experience — it used to be that voicing your objections to an unjust war got clapped, but nowadays, it's old hat. Even people who once supported the war are backing away from it (although it's rare for them to plainly say "I was wrong"), and the futility of the war has simply lapsed into the status of a given. It has become the background noise of our country. Protest has been ground out of us by the dreary dun of corruption and destruction and the unresponsiveness of our government — we are in a democracy with a large majority opposed to the war, to no effect and with no expectation that our representatives will actually act to end the killing.

So now we have reached the nice round milestone of 4,000 dead in Iraq. 4000 dead American soldiers, that is; it's almost as if the two orders of magnitude greater number of slaughtered Iraqis, the millions of refugees, the destruction of an entire country, simply don't matter and don't count. Americans find it hard to gather outrage over thousands of our own dead, and tens of thousands wounded, and they sure as hell aren't going to get stirred up over hundreds of thousands of dead foreigners.

I don't get it.

As a nation, we stand atop a pedestal of bones and ruined lives. The disruption of families is ongoing, and our honor has been thrown away by the greed and ignorance of our leaders. And yet we carry on as if nothing is happening, nothing is wrong, no action need be taken. We will have an election, and one of the candidates stands for amplifying our involvement in this evil chaos … and he stands a chance of winning. The monsters who have perpetrated this crime will walk away to fat retirement checks and lives of wealth in the service of bloated corporate sponsors, and they will not pay — you will.

We all have blood on our hands, and no one cares.

Once, four dead in Ohio could stir us. Now, four thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, it doesn't matter … we have all become dead inside.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...llion_dead.php

my cousin is over there, please dont scare me =/

Oh by the way Im going on my second Iraq deployment in oh about 1 week.
Yea everyday as I walk down the hallway in the building I work in I see the pictures of soldiers in our company that were killed last deployment. Its saddening and I know if I make it through this deployment the truth is the walk past those pictures is going to be twice as long and painful.

4000 means something to me. It means we have been here in this country for 3999 deaths longer then we should have.

I really feel bad for you. I don't know what would happen if you didn't come back after you were supposed to. I almost lost my godfather to this figgen war. Hate the whole business.

Honestly my mind has been so numbed in the Army I'm not afraid of going back myself like I was afraid when I first went. I am just afraid for my friends that I am going with that have never been before.

4000 really isn't a lot of deaths.

It is. Imagine the city you lived in 4000 people died around you. Now tell me its not alot.

One bomb could kill more than that if strategically set off.

One unnecessary death is a lot of death.

I don't think we should have ever invaded Iraq, but we cannot leave it worse off than we entered it.

I would like to point out that more heros died in the 8 years of BJ Clinton than have died in Iraq in 5 years. 7500

I don't think we should have ever invaded Iraq, but we cannot leave it worse off than we entered it. I would like to point out that more heros died in the 8 years of BJ Clinton than have died in Iraq in 5 years. 7500

So now we have reached the nice round milestone of 4,000 dead in Iraq. 4000 dead American soldiers, that is; it's almost as if the two orders of magnitude greater number of slaughtered Iraqis, the millions of refugees, the destruction of an entire country, simply don't matter and don't count. Americans find it hard to gather outrage over thousands of our own dead, and tens of thousands wounded, and they sure as hell aren't going to get stirred up over hundreds of thousands of dead foreigners.

fuck ww

I don't think we should have ever invaded Iraq, but we cannot leave it worse off than we entered it.

Whever I get a chance to use the net again once I get there I will be sure to tell you all if it seems better or worse then last time.

I don't like the writing style of pieces like this. Seems borderline sensationalist.

One bomb could kill more than that if strategically set off.

You're a kid, for sure.

4000 means something to me. It means we have been here in this country for 3999 deaths longer then we should have.

I'd venture to say 4,000 more than we should have.

Yea even better.

fuck bush and bin laden

I should have kept to myself, sorry about posting in the first place. I realized by the last line in this post that I honestly have no place in discussions like these because my opinion may be a bit too alien.

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I don't see the point in getting angry. The deaths already happened. You can't turn back time. (yet.)

While what has happened is wrong, death has happened on such a massive scale before, and guess what? Each death meant just as much as it means now. This is nothing new in the world, it's even redundant and getting boring.

People(this includes me I'm human), are incredibly selfish when it comes to death. Everyone dies(except Walt Disney), it's just a matter of when.

While I do think this is wrong, and pointless, and even too absurd to believe, I remember that our leaders and those in charge of the world are corrupt to such an extent that it somehow proves just how pointless a death of a citizen under one of these powerful entities is - as long as people still reign dominant over a larger mass of people and govern separate nations, death will occur.

And who really wants peace? Think about that. What would be in the news? Who would we rally against?

Without some form of hatred, people can't be united. 4000 deaths is a small price to pay.

I just want you to know I in no way support a "War on Terrorism". We should declare a "War on Dragons" next in Venezuela to secure every last drop of insufficient energy directly and then jack up the price because of the cost of the war.

I'd like to say I care more than most, but in doing so, I'm faced with my own developed nature to not care because nothing matters.

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I should have kept to myself, sorry about posting in the first place. I realized by the last line in this post that I honestly have no place in discussions like these because my opinion may be a bit too alien. ------------------ I don't see the point in getting angry. The deaths already happened. You can't turn back time. (yet.) While what has happened is wrong, death has happened on such a massive scale before, and guess what? Each death meant just as much as it means now. This is nothing new in the world, it's even redundant and getting boring. People(this includes me I'm human), are incredibly selfish when it comes to death. Everyone dies(except Walt Disney), it's just a matter of when. While I do think this is wrong, and pointless, and even too absurd to believe, I remember that our leaders and those in charge of the world are corrupt to such an extent that it somehow proves just how pointless a death of a citizen under one of these powerful entities is - as long as people still reign dominant over a larger mass of people and govern separate nations, death will occur. And who really wants peace? Think about that. What would be in the news? Who would we rally against? Without some form of hatred, people can't be united. 4000 deaths is a small price to pay. I just want you to know I in no way support a "War on Terrorism". We should declare a "War on Dragons" next in Venezuela to secure every last drop of insufficient energy directly and then jack up the price because of the cost of the war. I'd like to say I care more than most, but in doing so, I'm faced with my own developed nature to not care because nothing matters. ---------------

everything matters to someone somewhere.