A little perspective

The Left, with its crocodile tears over American deaths in battle, is in ecstasy of the fact that, after almost three years of war, we're approaching our 2,000th American casuality in Iraq:

It's a grim milestone that no one wants to see come about, but the United States is nearing 2,000 military deaths in Iraq.

Not only is their wallowing in this numbering sheer political opportunism, it also reveals a level of ignorance that I find staggering. Let me go through a few numbers again: Battle of Antietam -- 23,100 dead in one day Gettysburg: 51,000 over three days July 1, 1916 (The Battle of the Somme): 58,000 British and French casualities in one day (and that's not counting German casualties) Agincourt (October 25, 1415): 7,000 - 10,000 French casualities Iwo Jima (mid February to mid March 1945): Almost 7,000 American casualties Please note that all of the above numbers relate to single battles, not whole wars. That is, in three years of war, we've been fortunate enough (and prepared enough, and hi tech enough) to have lost a scant percentage of men lost in some of the major single battles in history. As always, my point with these numbers is not to denigrate those of America's military who gave their lives for our country in this conflict. It is to put the Left's hysteria in perspective.