40. The War Numbers Game

"People say 'time heals all wounds.'  I do not agree.  The wounds remain.  In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens.  But it is never gone.  You just learn to accept the reality."

~A fellow widow

I know I've talked about it before, but it drives me crazy when people try to compare to the loss of a spouse to any other kind of loss, be it the loss of a child, the loss of a parent, or the loss of a friend.  Each loss is awful in its own unique way, and trying to make one kind somehow sound less awful than another doesn't help or provide comfort.  Even worse is when people play the comparative numbers game.  A friend recently posted an article entitled "More Killed in Chicago This Year than Afghanistan."  Um, so what?  It's not a competition.  I'll never understand what the authors of these proclamations are trying to get at.  Numbers are numbers, but each of those numbers (be it in Afghanistan or Chicago) represents a person with a family whose lives are forever changed.  I doubt this was the author's real point, but comparing the numbers comes across to me as "see?  The war isn't that bad because there aren't really THAT many people who have been killed."  In reality, though, it doesn't matter if it's 1 or 1,000 - somewhere, someone will forever be missing and missing and loving that one person.


The only solace I can derive from an article like this is the fact that law-enforcement officers in cities like Chicago continue to fight crime even after personally witnessing their comrades pay the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty.  I think I've said before that people often react with surprise when I tell them I'm still serving in the Army on active duty, yet to me it's really not as surprising as it may seem - I need to feel a continuing sense of community, a sense of support in a familiar context, and I've been told by many of my friends who have since transitioned out of the Army that little things, like the sense of humor and comaraderie associated with military life, are unmatched on the outside.


Furthermore, from an academic perspective, the simple fact is that the current war cannot be compared with the likes of Vietnam, World War II, or even the contemporary American city.  Although ROTC programs and other Army training schools still teach Soldiers basic Vietnam-era battlefield tactics, these lessons are more a test of leadership than an indication of what today's Soldiers should expect to see on the modern battlefield.  Soldiers used to line up shoulder-to-shoulder in a straight line and charge straight towards the enemy, guns ablazing, and many of them would become "cannon fodder" when they were unlucky enough to be in the wrong line at the wrong time.  Today, however, we have incredibly sophisticated equipment that allows us to target specific individuals based only on their body heat from miles away, which, in turn, translates into the individual Soldier occupying a much larger personal space on the battlefield.  If Soldiers were being killed by the tens of thousands in the current war with the all advantages of our weapons systems and advanced technology, we'd be doing something very wrong...and, no doubt, losing the fight to the enemy.  It's true that the total number of Soldiers killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars totals approximately 6,440, a far cry from the 58,209 casualties of the Vietnam War or the 405,399 from World War II.  Yet, any comparison is inherently unfair to every Soldier who has lost their life fighting for what they love and swore to defend.  The times were different, the tools were different, but the result for the Soldier who doesn't come home to see his or her children grow up is just the same. 

Hence why I don't like to play the war numbers game.  Putting all intellectual and academic rationales aside, there is no replacing a human life.  For those families left behind, one is one too many.