American casualties updated
The losses counted
Three thousand, five hundred dead
Broken hopes grieving
My weeping heart tries to sing
"Where have all the Flowers Gone?"
Three thousand, five hundred dead
Broken hopes grieving
My weeping heart tries to sing
"Where have all the Flowers Gone?"
Labels: casualties, Iraq, poetry
posted by Plain Foolish | 10:03 AM
2 Comments:
This is a heart breaking and so very difficult for us to grasp. We must try.
Most people think of fatalities as addition or subtraction - one plus one plus one plus one...
Until you have a field of boots and shoes, or neatly arranged flags, or...
The whole military minus one minus one minus one...
Until you have a military straining under the burden. A nation in denial of the costs of our militarism.
But I see it as multiplication - one soldier times friends, times family, times community, times potential... times 3,500 and counting.
And each non-fatal casualty has its own multiplication attached. How many arms, legs, minds have we spent from otherwise functional bodies? How many drug addictions will the nightmares spawn? How many suicides? What will our homeless population look like in 10 years? If I were willing to cheat you, I'd offer to bet on it.
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