Hooray for Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides at Wired Science for gathering some staggering numbers for us about the war in the wake of our 4,000th casualty. She makes the link between our current financial situation and the Iraq War. Because she relied on official statistics only, she can not report on the number of Iraqi dead (since the US doesn’t keep records on that) or on the extent to which we are in debt because of the war (because many of those numbers are hidden).
At Easter dinner this year, my husband pointed out that, while this war is unpopular, Americans are not sufficiently outraged to cause the war to end because our troops are not dying at an alarming rate. Days later, when we heard the 4,000 number had been crossed, he said he didn’t realize how few Americans had died. 4,000 is a lot, and I am saddened by the number, but it is nowhere near as many as died in Vietnam.
Technological improvements have suppressed American outrage: medical and weapon advances have shifted the troop casualties from death to non-lethal physical and psychological injury, and advances in computer technologies may make it easier (or at least cheaper) for the Fed to continue to hide imperial financing through inflation. We won’t feel the costs of this war financially or morally until it is too late (actually, it’s already too late).
7:36 am on March 29, 2008
