This is a delayed response, but I think it’s necessary. Due to this story, via Powerline.
I didn’t get the chance to watch Bush’s speech, but I did read the transcript. Given his reports and this good news coming out of Iraq, I think what Bush had to say is bang on. (Link via Instapundit) My thoughts on this are furthered by this survey in which only one in eight Americans apparently favor an immediate pullout of our troops in Iraq.
What this tells me, is that the news media has lost interest in printing the facts and ensuring that those facts are at the fingertips of the public. The people support our men and women who are fighting in Iraq. The people believe that what we are going about our business in Iraq in the correct way. The media doesn’t care. This information can only be found via the blogosphere, or buried twelve layers deep in the pages of a newspaper. These stories should be front page news, but they are not. Also what I consider to be front page news, is the military’s absolutely phenonmenal success at keeping our soldiers alive, compared to conflicts of a similar nature in the past. More men and women died in Vietnam (58,169 deaths) than have died since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom (1,744 Americans, estimates for Iraqi deaths range from 5,000 to 10,000), and this includes American and Iraqi deaths. This is incredible. Our military leaders are amazing and deserve credit for opting for strategies that save lives, rather than take them.
Of course, I do not intend to diminish the lives of the soldiers we have lost, but what I am doing is something that I have not seen anyone else do in the course of this war. I’m looking at what we have accomplished, rather than what we have lost. I’m looking at the immense gains and great strides we have taken to preserve life. That is what this war is about after all, preserving life for Iraqis and ourselves.
Some days, I get very tired of living in an era of negativism.
