Growing Casualties (Cont.)

Howard Zinn argues that the American public should not just look at the sheer number of American fatalities in Iraq, but should also look at the thousands of American casualties and how their lives are affected forever:

George Bush was eager to send young men and women half a world away into the heart of another nation. And even though they had fearsome weapons, they were still vulnerable to guerrilla attacks that have left so many of them blinded and crippled. Is this not the ultimate betrayal of our young by our government?

Their families very often understand this before their sons and daughters do, and remonstrate with them before they go off. Ruth Aitken did so with her son, an Army captain, telling him it was a war for oil, while he insisted he was protecting the country from terrorists. He was killed on April 4, in a battle around Baghdad airport. "He was doing his job," his mother said. "But it makes me mad that this whole war was sold to the American public and to the soldiers as something it wasn't."....

Of course, they and their families are not the only ones betrayed. The Iraqi people, promised freedom from tyranny, saw their country, already devastated by two wars and twelve years of sanctions, attacked by the most powerful military machine in history. The Pentagon proudly announced a campaign of "shock and awe," which left 10,000 or more Iraqi men, women, and children, dead, and many thousands more maimed.

Is Smithers the new Zinn? Probably not yet, he seems more on the fence fearing the day when the cost of the war outweighs its benefit (that is, whatever benefit the govt's propaganda machine is feeding us at that time).