On War and Casualties

Casualties in defense of ones own, or someone else's, freedom. By way of comparison:

US casualties in Libya: 2
US casualties in Grenada: 18
US casualties in Panama: 23
US casualties in 1st Gulf War: 138
US casualties in Beirut: 241
US casualties in Korea 33,600
US casualties in Vietnam: 38,194
US casualties in WWI 50,604

Kicking off Operation Overlord and Operation Neptune; the D-Day landings of 1944 cost America 1,465 dead and another 5,138 wounded or missing on the first day of a campaign that was to eventually cost the Allies 425,000 total killed, wounded & missing. This was the campaign to evict Germany from it's NW Europe occupations.

The British, in an attempt to break the stalemate of WWI trenches in 1916, launched a push in the Somme sector that came to be known as the Battle of the Somme. On 1st July, 1916, British deaths alone were 19,240, with an additional 38,000 wounded. That's one nation, one day, in one battle to retake some French soil. The Somme casualty mill would eventually grind over a million combatants all sides killed & wounded, in that campaign alone.

Thus far the US casualty (KIA) toll in the invasion of Iraq stands somewhere around 2,400. This for the liberation of a Country and the defense of freedom; goals active in one shape or form in nearly every previous US military engagement listed above. The numbers are amazingly low given the progress that has been achieved, ridiculously low in comparison to major land offensives in Vietnam, Korea, WWI and WWII. We should be talking about how FEW deaths we have achieved in relation to our stated objectives. Enough with the death figures on the nightly news already. How about some context with that hyperbole? Compare...contrast...EDUCATE!