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2400 and Counting
by Steve Young

Apr. 29,2006—HOLLYWOOD (apj.us)—Today, Cindy Sheehan told us she had a
dream that her son Casey, an Iraq war fatality, came to her as a
three-year-old wanting to go outside and play. She is once again
drenched in sorrow. It never gets better. Do you have any idea what that
must feel like?

If you still support this war, you have to try.

In the 30's, Dalton Trumbo wrote "Johnny Got His Gun," which was made
into a film starring Timothy Bottoms, Donald Sutherland and Kathy
(Lander) Fields, and directed by Trumbo himself. The intrinsic message
was that
it was not enough to be willing to die for your country. You had to be
able to say that you would be willing to become a vegetable for your
country. A living, thinking vegetable, maimed so incomprehensibly, that
he would face the rest of his life, unable to even communicate with
another human being. Some might gather that to be an antiwar message. If
it is, it's only because it describes in disturbingly vivid detail the
tragic price of war. It's perfectly fine to speak of the value of a
particular war, but for a government to justify combat, they must also
address in very public terms, the (in)conceivable cost.

This week we mourn the tragic loss of the 2400th US soldier to die in
the Iraqi war. Today we begin the death march to 2500. So many of talk
radio's Lords of Loud would choose to rationalize the 2400 killed as
nominal when compared to the 55,000 killed in Vietnam. While to most,
2400 deaths are 2400 too many, to those who have not suffered
personally, 2400 deaths are also much too easy to cope with.

The Bush Administration continues to work diligently to hide the real
cost of war, and not just through its exclusion from the budget.
Discussions of death are meant only for very private consumption. But
coffins hidden from public view do not keep private a family's
heartache. It insulates the public from the truth, much like listening
to "We're patriotic, you're traitorous!" talk radio. The Lords of Loud
honor the soldier by wrapping themselves in red, white and blue
distortions; President Bush tells you and me that he honors those deaths
by "staying the course until the job is done; neither the President nor
talk radio's superstars pays tribute to those who have fallen. They only
dismiss their deaths as fodder and justification for war, and for more
deaths.

One cannot swathe war into a "right" or "left" issue. It is not a
question of whether invading Iraq was right or wrong. It's an issue that
goes to the heart of war -- real war, and its real consequences. Within
its reality is a means to how we can truly pay tribute to those who have
fallen, how we can sincerely identify with those families who have lost
-- and it is more than an outreach to the suffering. It's an exploration
of one's your own humanity.

Before you can honestly understand war's demands, it is incumbent to
empathize with those who have already lost, and you cannot empathize
with those who have suffered by reflecting on 2000 deaths. You empathize by contemplating a single death...

.. 2400 times.

You have to see each of the 2400, not as a number but as a real person;
someone who had a history, albeit a much too short one; someone who was
once an infant in the arms of a mother and a father. A mother and a
father once filled with joy... hope...dreams. You have to understand
that the man or woman who died was once a child playing with friends,
laughing, crying, absorbing an education...working on building
tomorrows. You have to place yourself inside each one of those human
numbers, entering a battlefield incredibly scared, breathing heavily,
gulping fear, alive, but unaware that in moments you would die.

To comprehend a death in war, you have to acknowledge that every one of
these fatalities began with a horrific split second when fiery hot metal
tore apart human flesh, a moment that slowly drew life from its all too
human target. Let's not forget that we're talking about a kid, too young
to die, but dying just the same. With every death you must acknowledge
there was fear, agony, panic, screams, freaked out buddies
uncontrollably trembling over their wounded and soon to be dead comrade;
youngsters trying to comfort another youngster, yet knowing that their
best lying won't fool their bleeding brother.

Then there's the moment that the soldier passes from life to death. But
you still can't walk away from this hideous nightmare, because the
nightmare doesn't end there. For each death brings endless waves of
tears, vivid nightmares, and horrible news to be relayed to next of kin.
Each death is soon followed by a ringing of a phone, carrying a death
rattle of torturous news that will break, into a million pieces, the
hearts of mothers, fathers, children, wives, husbands, brothers and
sisters, friends and colleagues... news that will never change no matter
how hard they ask God to change it. And they will ask... over and over
and over.

You cannot ignore the implication of the loss; the sudden baptism
another young widow or widower forced to raise children less one parent;
mothers and fathers who will spend the rest of their life arguing with
God that children should not die before a parent; siblings waking up
every single day hoping that the previous day's incomprehensible pain
was just a bad dream but faced with a day choking down the heartbreak,
because this nightmare is much too real.

Now here's the kicker. Each and every one of those 2400 times that you
remind yourself of how hideous each casualty is, you have to think of
that death as that of your own child. Because 2400 times it was some
parent's child who died.

Now... multiply what you feel 2400 times.

You can believe this war is right, that George Bush is the greatest
president we ever had, and every soldier died for a good reason. But
before you truly can say that, you have to make yourself go through each
death as if it were your own baby's blood spilling.

Because, as Dalton Trumbo tried to tell us, and Cindy Sheehan pleads, if
we continue this war, it could be.

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