counting and facing the dead in iraq

in light of veteran's day (11/11), i have been thinking about the veterans in my life.  i have always been vehemently anti-war and i continue to uphold this stance.  still, my thoughts on veterans have changed dramatically in the past few years, partly because five years ago, one of my best childhood friends died in the us/iraq war.  i had lost touch with him and we hadn't spoken for probably six years, but i had been trying to get in contact with him.  i didn't know what he was doing and i didn't know that he had become a marine.  there's something about putting a face and a heart to an image that just changes it in every way.

i have had relatives die, but being in another country, i have always lived so far from folks that i've mourned and missed them in a completely different way.  when my grandfathers died, i missed them from a distance, regretting that i never had the chance to spend quality time with them, wishing i could have asked them first-hand about their life stories, about their dreams.

but this was someone i had dreamt with, someone i'd spent a lot of time with, someone i had held hands with and kissed, someone i had joked with, eaten pizza with, stayed up late with.  this was someone i had been in love with.  and i don't think i'll ever get over his death.  everything feels so incomplete and unfinished.  i always thought that we and our group of friends would meet one day as adults.  but i'll never see him again.  i'll never get to introduce him to my husband or listen to music with him or eat pizza with him.  nothing.

in any case, it's become important to me to make a distinction between being anti-war and being pro-troop-support.  i don't agree with war by any means, but i do know that veterans suffer hardcore while they are away and when they come home.  i believe strongly that people are good and i think it's important to show goodness and kindness to people who have lived through war, and to honor those who have lived through war and those who have died in war.

if you're interested in the us/iraq war (or if not. if you: are pro-war, identify as american, don't identify as american but live in the states, are anti-war...), you might be interested to know that more than 4,000 us troops have died in iraq since the war began back in 2003.  click here for an incredible and relatively up-to-date interactive analysis of the american casualties of the us/iraq war: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20061228_3000FACES_TAB1.html

there are three tabs.  if you click the first one, you can look at the actual faces of american military folks who have died in iraq.  if you type in the last name "branning," you can see my childhood friend david who died in fallujah.

in tab two, you can check out the interactive analysis.  this is my favorite part.  within this section, if you click on the link for "second invasion of fallujah," you can see that the first bar represents deaths in the week of nov 7, 2004.  david was one of the 67 deaths in that week.  in that week, 61% of those who died were 18 - 24 years old and 63% of those who died were marines.  69% of the deaths in that week happened in fallujah.  87% of those who died that week were white.  if you click on the link under "location of death," you can switch it over to the "home state" representation, which shows you which u.s. states people who died in that time period were from.

an interesting note: there are little red arrows in the bar graph.  note that the third arrow from the left states that on april 27, 2003, bush announced the end of major combat.  from the start of the war until that arrow, there were 141 deaths.  that means that the majority of deaths happened AFTER he announced the end of major combat.  since april 27, 2003, another 4,156 american military people have died in iraq.  [note also that this does not include non-military americans, ex: journalists; iraqis; civilians; people who are neither american or iraqi; non-US military; journalists from around the globe]

in tab three, you can hear personal stories of those who died.  NYT has chosen to feature the stories of 9 people who died in january 2006.  it's probably an arbitrary selection, but i haven't listened to any of them yet.

i'd love to hear your comments and thoughts on this, so please feel free to respond.