Ten Days of War

Ten Days of War

John L. Perry
Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004

Leftist Democrats grow hysterical over Iraq War fatalities – 1,000 in 18 months – but lapse silent when traffic wrecks kill even more Americans in 10 days.

Each and every one of those members of the United States armed forces died for a sacred cause – protecting their fellow countrymen and the country they all loved.

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This in no way demeans the anguish suffered by families of those Americans who died in traffic wrecks. One highway death is too many. One battlefield death is too many. No human life is more precious than another.

Playing Politics With Death

It is John Kerry’s presidential campaign, though, that is trying to make political capital out of the supreme sacrifices of a thousand valiant American troops who gave their lives for their country in Iraq.

Look at the statistics:

In the year and a half since the liberation of Iraq began in March 2003, American forces have suffered 1,000 fatalities.

During those same 18 months, more than 63,000 people were killed in traffic wrecks in the United States.

In other words, Americans were being killed every day on their own roadways at home at a rate 63 times greater than they were being killed in uniform in Iraq.

That averages 3,500 a month on the highways, 55 a month in Iraqi.

1,150 in 10 days at home, 18 in 10 days in Iraq.

808 a week at home, 13 in Iraq.

345 over a three-day weekend at home, fewer than six in Iraq.

115 a day at home, fewer than two in Iraq.

In the eyes of the Kerry campaign, it isn’t even worth mentioning that 63,000 Americans lost their lives while driving around the streets, roads and highways of America in pursuit of everyday activities.

Yet those same politicians want to run President Bush out of office because, during the same period, one sixty-third of that number gave their lives in Iraq in the pursuit of the defense of their country.

The 1,000 Americans who lost their lives in Iraq were seven-tenths of one percent of the 140,000 troops the president sent to liberate that country and defend America.

No War Is Casualty-Free

To put it in even sharper focus, consider the 1,140,192 fatalities in all of America’s previous wars:

4,435 in the Revolutionary War

2,260 in the War of 1812

13,283 in the Mexican War

498,333 on both sides in the Civil War

2,446 in the Spanish-American War

116,708 in World War I

407,316 in World War II

36,919 in the Korean War

58,193 in the Vietnam War

299 in the Persian Gulf War.

The Kerry campaign’s hysteria over the 1,000 Iraq War fatalities is a quantifiable certification of the extent of the leftists’ bitter hatred of George W. Bush.

It is also a true measure of just how little they really do care about the 63,000 other Americans, whose highway deaths over the same period they haven’t yet figured out how to capitalize upon to advance their political agenda.

That is the dubious Massachusetts math of the most far-left member of the U.S. Senate.

Hardly On-the-Job Training

Kerry’s overweening ego leads him to think that his nearly four months in Vietnam under curious circumstances qualify him to be commander in chief.

In his effrontery he would also have Americans believe that nearly four years as commander in chief under unprecedented crises disqualifies the very president he covets to replace.

Where would this nation be today if Kerry’s construct of the use of military power had been subscribed to by presidents such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush?

Election Day Q&A

When you enter the privacy of the voting booth on Nov. 2, you may wish to ask yourself:

If 63,000 American lives are not too many to pay for the American way of life on the highways, since when are 1,000 American lives too many to pay for this country’s protection from enemies that have vowed to destroy this nation and all its citizens?

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

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