Fourteen Marines died in Haditha yesterday, caught inside their overturned 25-ton amphibious assault vehicle after it was hit by an enormous explosion from a hidden I.E.D. ( improvised explosive device). It was “the worst roadside bombing targeting American forces in the Iraq war”.

The bombing that killed the 14 Marines occurred near Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, along a major infiltration route for foreign fighters entering the country from Syria.

A Marine officer, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said the troops were traveling in an armored amphibious vehicle to assault insurgent positions near the Haditha dam when a thunderous blast flipped the vehicle over and set it afire.

The Marines killed Wednesday were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines based in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park, Ohio, and attached to the Regimental Combat Team-2. Nine of them were from a single smaller unit in Columbus, Ohio.

Re-read that last paragraph. The folks of Columbus are in a great deal of pain. Making it even worse, if that could be possible, is that five Marine snipers from the same battalion had been ambushed and killed on Monday.

As a society, do we support these folk and the sacrifice made by their loved ones, or do we cater to our own fears and narcissistic needs, bending their pain to serve our own ends. In Los Angeles, according to our paper of record, The Los Angeles Times, we’re in the pain bending business. The following quotes are used several times in the article and as a picture caption.

“How much more are we expected to give?” asked Nancy Chase, 47, a schoolteacher who came to place flowers and flags at the entrance of the battalion’s headquarters.

“We are patriotic people. We love our country. But how many lives are enough?”
(…)
Each report of casualties tests the patience of residents, who say the sacrifice that their families and neighbors made to military campaigns has become too painful.

I can’t express this as well as Hugh Hewitt did this AM:

The Chase quote appears again as part of the caption on the lead photograph on page A6, which shows the legs of people holding hands in front of a fence outside the headquarters of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment in Brook Park, Ohio.

I don’t know the political opinions of the reporter, or of Ms. Chase. I do think that the quote selected by the writer is not one that any of the Marines killed would have chosen to include in a story about the grief that accompanied their deaths. I don’t think they would have appreciated the insinuation that they were Marines because they needed a job.

In short, I don’t believe they would have appreciated having their sacrifices pimped by an anti-war paper on the day their deaths were being absorbed by their families, loved ones and friends. [Emph. mine]

The number of our military personnel that have been killed in Iraq since March of 2003 is now 1,825 and counting. Each and every one of those brave men and women were special, will be missed by someone or many someones, served an honorable cause, and died defending the safety and security of their country. Each deserves our respect, and our renewed commitment to finishing the job to which they gave the ultimate sacrifice. Added to these are the over 13,000 wounded in combat, about 50% of which were not able to continue to serve. They also deserve our continued support as they recover from their injuries as best as possible and work to assimilate into civilian life.

Examining three major campaigns from World War II shows historically just how costly war has been in terms of numbers of casualties.

Battle of Normandy:
• 37,000 dead
• 18,000 missing
• 154,000 wounded

Battle of Guadalcanal:
• 1,492 killed
• 4,500 wounded
• 2,000 men lost at sea

Battle of Okinawa:
• 18,900+ killed
• 38,000 wounded
• 33,096 non combat wounded

In only these three campaigns in all of WWII, almost 60,000 Allied dead and over 200,000 Allied wounded! These were all fathers, uncles, cousins, grandfathers, great uncles or third or forth cousins of the several generations of military personnel that are now serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters. They meant the world to someone, too. They died in war, too. Who among us would dare to say that their sacrifice was not “worth it”? Who among us believes that we would be living in the world that we have today if the evils of Nazism and Japanese Imperialism had not been defeated? You know who they are. You see the War Is Not The Answer bumper stickers, you see the groups at the anti-war demonstrations our newspapers and television news outlets love to show us. Shoot, here in Santa Monica I couldn’t spit without hitting at least two or three of them!

Pray for President Bush that he retains the resolve to make the hard decisions.

Pray for the families and loved ones of those that serve.

Pray long and often for those who continue their service in harm’s way!

It’s a real war folks — There are going to be casualties! (db)

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2005 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Focus On Politics, Military Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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