Math is a very funny business and sometimes things don’t add up.
Take for instance that war we’re in.
We’ve been told that victory comes with a price tag, but there’s been a clearance on logic. According to a recent New York Times article the price of the war in Iraq has thus far amounted to two, perhaps three, trillion dollars. It’s difficult to be sure, the article says, because of the way spending is done.
More numbers: we’ve been in Iraq for five years.
More numbers: it was recently announced that we have reached the casualty number of 4,000 soldiers, dead.
4,000 divided by 4,000 is one. One person. One poor human being who will no longer eat, breathe, smile, listen, feel, regret, hope, despair, aspire, remember, cherish, pray, care, love, dream, cry, laugh, live.
How many ones do you have to carry until enough people have died?
But the number of dead, we’re made to understand, isn’t what matters, it’s vague victory that does. That makes the situation we’re in a strange one, because anything resembling a definitive victory can’t be seen even on the horizon, even with a pair of really awesome binoculars. 4,001, 4,002, 4,003…
The current tally for the American soldiers wounded in Iraq stands at 29,451. Soldiers who will have shrapnel postcards from Iraq embedded in them for the remainder of their lives. Each day they will wake up with the scars of a battle that cannot be won, not because of some failure of militarial might, or any incapabilities of our soldiers, but simply because not all wars can be won with guns, and this is one of them. 4,004, 4,005…
Or a subdivision of that wounded, the amputees. According to a Time article released in January the number of victims of limblessness is tallied at 500. Five hundred people to never again experience the incredible feeling that is sand between toes, or the sensation of surprise at holding of a cup of coffee that you didn’t know was that hot. 4,006, 4,007, 4,008, 4,009…
According to a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine released in March, approximately one third of the 103,788 soldiers who have returned from the war have been diagnosed with mental illness or a psycho-social disorder. Troubles like homelessness, depression, substance abuse, domestic violence and post-traumatic stress disorder. Furthermore, 56 percent of that number has more than one condition. These soldiers served their country voluntarily, fought their fight and returned home, but some scars run deeper than skin, and now their minds are AWOL. 4,010, 4,011, 4,012…
“They died serving their country.”
Their country was not serving them when it sent them into a potentially lethal situation with no clear goal or reason. 4,013…