Are They COMPLETELY INSENSITIVE?-AP Asks: Why So Many Upset by Iraq Death Toll?

[kpete]

AP Asks: Why So Many Upset by Iraq Death Toll?

Published: January 01, 2007 10:04 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA The country largely kept the faith during World War II, even as about 400,000 U.S. forces died - 20,000 just in the month long Battle of the Bulge. Before turning against the wars in Korea and Vietnam, Americans tolerated thousands more deaths than in Iraq.

Has something changed? Do Americans somehow place higher value on the lives of their soldiers now? Do they expect success at lower cost? Or do most simply dismiss this particular war as the wrong one - hard to understand and harder to win - and so not worth the losses?

The Associated Press recently posed these questions to scholars, veterans, activists, and other Americans. Their comments suggest that the public does express more pain over the deaths of this war.

A death toll of 3,000 simply sounds higher to Americans in this war than it did in other prolonged conflicts of the past century, for a number of reasons, the interviews suggest.

more at:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003526309

[quiet.american]

1. I hear you, kpete. Hello, AP -- here's one reason: they die for Bush's lies.n/t

[flying_wahini]

2. My understanding is that AP is an insider company - their stuff comes from the administration

this is just sanitized propaganda.

[Demit]

6. Did you bother to read the article? It quotes numerous people.

Who give varying theories on what the American public thinks of this war. Your comment makes no sense relative to the article.

[SteppingRazor]

8. I really have to disagree with that...

The Associated Press is far from a state-run media. It's more guilty than many outlets of toeing conventional wisdom, but I've known many people who work for AP, and they do journalism the same way everyone else does. They don't just wait for the latest fax to come in from the White House or what have you. To say that "their stuff comes from the administration" is a little simplistic. Their "stuff" comes from the administration, from outside the administration, from the opposition party ... from anywhere. It comes from sources, pure and simple. The Associated Press, perhaps more so than any other media organization because it indirectly represents so many of them, is completely unbeholden to any particular administration, simply by virtue of AP's necessity. One couldn't "freeze out" the AP the same way one could a specific newspaper. Additionally, given the AP's unwieldy size and confederated business model, it would be impossible for the entire organization to just mouth one side's political view. To be blunt, this ain't Fox News. As stated, the Associated Press tends to follow conventional wisdom more often than not, but that's more attributable to the incredible deadlines asked of AP reporters than any tendency to toe the party line or support the establishment at large.

[tabasco]

3. Comparing WWII and the Iraq war is a clear tipoff.

It's a piece of right-wing garbage.

[rodeodance]

4. I think they are good questions to ask people.

[babylonsister]

5. Mayberry Machiavelli said it well here:

The biggest problem with this is: in WWII people were willing to sacrifice $ and lives, because they
saw the cause as worthy of it.
Not so in the present case of the Iraq occupation, that's why much a smaller number of casualties are not tolerated well.

So, it's the war itself as well as the casualties that Americans are against.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3022858

[bdamomma]

7. thanks Kpete, I just e-mailed my comment about the article to

to the editor.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Thestatement that the war is "hard to understand"

suggests that there is something substantive to understand about it. There is not. The war has no rationale as a matter of national security or global policy. It was a mistake from start to finish (hah! finish!), and there is nothing to understand about it that people don't already understand: it was launched for political reasons, for personal profit, or from a grievously faulty analysis (at best). It literarily has no distinct purpose from the perspective of national interest, and is - quite obviously - even counterproductive from that perspective.

It's not that people feel the casualties because the war is "hard to understand" (as this writer slips in, rather dishonestly); it is, rather, that people feel the casualties because the war is so fucking EASY to understand: everyone understands that it is a pointless, useless, and counterproductive clusterfuck, and that each death - yes, each one - is in VAIN, and an utter waste. And that's why people are angrier about 3,000 than about 20,000 dead in the Ardennes.

[still_one]

10. Let's analyze this

First of all IT IS MORE THAN 3000 lives. It doesn't even include the Iraqiis killed, or the Americans wounded

I also resent their comparision with WWII. The Iraq war was based on a pack of lies. Iraq was NOT an immeinent threat, did not have WMDs, and had NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11.

We invaded Iraq based on lies which I might add that the media HELPED perpetuate

In fact I point the finger of blame very directly at the MSM, including AP, for their lack of investigative reporting, and how they were the lap dogs for this administration

To answer their insensitive question, is very simple, the American people do not want to turn around one day, and see that 3000 suddenly becomes 60000 or a 100000.

In the beginning of Viet Nam the press also perpetuated the myth of the domino theory, and the Gulf of Tolken resolution, but it was the protests that finally got the press to report about the turth of the Viet Nam war.

[kentuck]

12. These people seem to think...

there is no difference from being violently blown apart and dying in your sleep - either way, you're still dead. If a nuclear bomb was dropped on NYC, they would argue many more people died in the Great Plague.

Don't take into account the hatred generated, the families torn apart, the infrastructure destroyed, and the unnecessity of it all. It is what is created from war that makes it so different from "normal" deaths or accidental deaths. Many innocents are murdered with the possibility of enflaming the entire world in a war. It is insanity to trivialize war in such a manner.

[still_one]

13. Your point about the hatred generated is very well put. That will last for generations

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. Thank you for mentioning the domino theory --

in respect to that, even Vietnam had more justification as the theory held that we were trying to prevent the first domino from toppling, but in Iraq WE are the ones trying to topple that first domino. Well, we toppled it and repressive Arab regimes across the region did NOT suddenly follow suit, as anyone who learned the lessons of Vietnam could have predicted. The domino theory is wrong, no matter from which side of it you approach it.

[genie_weenie]

11. Why do they always ignore the 22,000 wounded?

10,000 of which did not RTD.

I would suggest it is because reporting 13,000 serious casualties/deaths would disrupt their paradigm.

[Marr]

14. Americans won't tolerate high casualties in an *unjust* war. It's very simple.

It's not that we "don't understand" the situation. And frankly, that elitist assumption that the general population is some great, stupid beast is one of the key reasons we're in Iraq to begin with.

[Red Zelda]

15. As always...

you can't spell CRAP without AP.