Hard to disagree.

A quote from Middle Eastern scholar Bernard Lewis, via Mark Steyn, that makes one feel desolate: "America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend."^[1]

A similar thought surfaced some years back to the effect that there is no benefit to being America's friend and no penalty for being her enemy. Also, many years ago the Colonel met a Chinese gentleman while traveling steerage from Hong Kong to Japan. "Americans are too naive! Too naive!" he said.

Which all raise the question, What planet are Americans living on?

American Daughter, in a preceding post here, cites a figure of about 2,900 U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq so far. Which casualties weigh on the minds of U.S. politicians with the combined weight of several aircraft carriers.

While one casualty is a tragedy for the friends and family members directly affected, what would people who play hardball in the world arena think about the American casualty rate?

One estimate of the deaths resulting from the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) from a "progressive ^[2] source" that we tracked down after a desultory search is 1,000,000, about 342 Iranian and Iraqi deaths per day.

The Soviet Union lost about 20,000,000 over a four-year period in WWII, a daily death rate of 13,700.

U.S. combat death rate since November 1, 2001: approx. 1.5 per day.

Now, if the U.S. does in fact end up cutting and running in the current unpleasantness in Iraq, what would that say about how resolute we are?

The Colonel happens routinely to hold in his mind the bone-smashing ferocity of our forces on Tarawa, Guadacanal, and the Ia Drang Valley. Nor can we forget the insane bravery of the Eighth Air Force in the daylight bombing campaign in Europe. To name a but a few feats of our arms.

We cannot, however, for the life of us, imagine what our present-day vaporous political "leaders" think our armed forces are for or what happens when they are employed effectively.

We served in Vietnam when there were a variety of jimjam, nickel-plated, dumbass bombing pauses and other selp-imposed limitations on our combat power. It still frosts us that American troops fought in Vietnam with a civilian leadership that was insufficiently ferocious. We suffered needless deaths as a result. The deaths we will now incur in Iraq, and have incurred, will be for the same reason.

Insufficient ferocity.

Notes
^[1] "Cry the Beloved Country." Laconic, American Daughter, 12/5/06.
^[2] I.e., ardently commited to class struggle and the denigration of traditional culture; totally indifferent to liberty; and clueless about the dangers of excessive governmental power.