WHAT ANNUAL TRAFFIC-DEATHS STATISTICS TELL US ABOUT THE WAR IN IRAQ

WASH POST/AP:

Traffic deaths in the United States fell to their lowest total in five years in 2006, and the rate of deaths per miles traveled dropped to a record low, a federal safety official said Monday.

Highway crashes killed 42,642 people last year, said Nicole Nason, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That compares with the 43,510 who died in 2005, according to the agency's latest figures. ...

The fatality rate of 1.42 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2006 was the lowest rate recorded by the Department of Transportation, she said.

The fatality rate has steadily fallen for many years, except in 2005, when it rose slightly to 1.46 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. But because Americans have been driving more, the total number of traffic deaths has increased in most years since the early 1990s.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH IRAQ!?

SIMPLE:

The Left/Dems/doves have all argued that the cost to the US in troops lost is too high.

Some said we've lost more in Iraq than on 9/11 - as if that meant we've lost too many.

Some said it each time the number of combat deaths reached a round number - as if that was significant.

Some tossed in the money spent - the hundreds of billions, as if that compounded the deaths, and made the war a bigger mistake. As if toppling Saddam and defending Iraq's nascent democracy would have only been morally right if it had cost less. Sheesh. If it's right, then it's right.

But all of these arguments are hollow because they all lack any reasonable context; they neither relate the number of combat deaths to the over-arching cause, or to numbers who served in this theater of combat, or to death rates for previous wars - or during previous administrations EVEN IF THEY DID NOT ENGAGE IN A LAND WAR.

No one has blogged better on this subject than Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit. He has compared the combat deaths in Iraq to Clinton's administration and to all the previous wars the USA has fought in. What this does, is give the number if combat deaths in Iraq CONTEXT.

The comparison shows that the Iraq War has been the most economically well fought in terms of lives lost.

We have lost fewer men in Iraq since 2003 than during an equal length period of time during the Clinton administration.

And the Iraq War has the LOWEST death rate.

CHECK OUT THIS POST FOR DETAILS AND GRAPHS.

Additional context is gained by comparing the losses we are sustaining versus the losses on the enemy we inflict.

This evidence proves we are not losing the war. And that we are not sustaining a degree of loss which we cannot sustain.

Which is CONTEXT. Real context, context not mutable by sensational daily headlines of islamikaze suicide bombings - bombings which can only succeed if we cut & run.

Which brings me back to the HIGHWAY DEATHS.

NOBODY is running for president on a platform which demands we stop driving, even though EACH YEAR we lose 14x more CIVILIANS on the highways than we have lost troops (volunteers, every single one of them!) - since the war began, 4 years.

Put another way: we have lost nearly 180,000 fellow citizens on the highways since the Iraq War began - nearly 60x the number of troops lost in Iraq.

BUT KENNEDY AND KUCINICH AND HILLARY AND OBAMA AND EDWARDS RICHARDSON AND PELOSI AND REID (and the rest of the doves) ARE SILENT.

WHY?!?! WHY ARE THEY SILENT? WHY DON'T THEY DEMAND THE HIGHWAYS BE SHUT?! OR THAT SPEED LIMIT BE LOWERED TO 15MPH; (THINK OF ALL THE GAS WE'D SAVE! THE CO2, "UN-EMITTED"!)

SIMPLE: They are silent because they understand the CONTEXT of the statistics of the highway deaths.

As the article said, "The fatality rate of 1.42 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2006 was the lowest rate recorded by the Department of Transportation, she said."

REPEAT: The fatality rate of 1.42 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2006 was the lowest rate recorded by the Department of Transportation, she said.

ONE MORE TIME:

The fatality rate of 1.42 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2006 was the lowest rate recorded by the Department of Transportation, she said.

This is the context. This is a context we can ALL relate to, too - because we all get in cars and drive on highways, ALL THE TIME.

But not all of us go to war.

Only our best and bravest. Our heros.

They understand the context. That's why they re-enlist in record numbers.

OKAY, THEN... where are we now? Let's see:

The moral and geo-political context is this:

first, we are fighting a noble cause: to defend the spread of democracy and human rights;

and second, to prevent radical Muslims from establishing a base in the oil rich heart of the Middle East.

(ASIDE: Before all you loonies start ranting about "Blood for Oil" may I remind you that the second part of that sentence has been US policy since Jimmy Carter's 1980 State of the Union, and it's still called THE CARTER DOCTRINE.)

The statistical context is this: we are NOT suffering high casualties and we are inflicting high casualties. WE ARE WINNING. OBJECTIVELY, STATISTICALLY, WE ARE WINNING.

NEED MORE PROOF? The Iraqis are now in better control of more of their territory than at any time since the war began. Real progress is being made. FACTS HERE.

IN SUMMARY: we are sustaining a relatively and historically low degree of casualties; we and the nascent Iraqi democracy are controlling more and more territory; the enemy is dying in higher number and in control of less territory. Every jihadi we kill there is one less jihadi. And the world is safer as a result.

BOTTOM-LINE: We should no more abandon Iraq than give up driving on highways.