Electric Monkey Pants

The Pentagon revealed today that 2,500 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, along with untold thousands of Iraqi troops and civilians.

In addition, the Pentagon said 18,490 U.S. troops have been wounded in the war, which began in March 2003 with a U.S.-led invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed.

I hope the bloodshed ends soon. Hopefully things will become more stable over there and the violence will recede into memory. But that’s just a fool’s hope; nothing reasonable, based in reality, gives me that hope. Just a wish.

I don’t even know if our continuing occupation of Iraq is best for the Iraqis. Certainly they’re better off without Saddam. But are they better off with us? I think leaving could be the best thing. The occupation itself is probably generating much of the violence. I’d be pissed off too if somebody invaded my country to “liberate” me from the tyranny of George Bush. Yes, I hate Bush and he needs to be impeached, but let me take care of it. I don’t think we need any foreign help to rid ourselves of this menace. I don’t see how we can justify invading Iraq to remove Saddam simply because we don’t like him. If all of the Iraqis, unanimously (or close to it), begged us to come in and shoot their troops and take over the government and set up our own government, then fine. But they didn’t. So why are we there?

Well, that’s a question that Bush needs to answer to the faces of the mothers and fathers of those killed in this conflict, whether American or Iraqi.

Aren’t all human lives valuable? Why do they only report the number of Americans killed? Why do they not even bother to keep track of Iraqi casualties?

Probably because the numbers are so high.