Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
If you are the parent of an active-duty Marine, the last person you want to see out of the blue on your door step is a Marine officer in dress uniform. He is generally there with bad news. This is true in peace time as well as war.
The same holds true for the other services, but I’m familiar with Marines.
Military folk die even during peace time, and someone is designated to make casualty calls. During a war it gets worse.
According to the Watson Institute, International & Public Affairs of Brown University, more than 7,000 U.S. service members died in the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, beginning in 2001 and ending in 2019.
Eighteen years times 12 months is 216 months. Those 7,000 deaths divided by 216 is 32.4 -- just a little more than one a day.
Naturally some days will be worse than others, but it makes the point.
They died in a host of ways. The causes of death include rocket-propelled grenade fire and the improvised explosive devices that have been responsible for roughly half of all deaths and injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their deaths were also the result of vehicle crashes, electrocutions, heatstroke, friendly fire, and suicides in theater.
Looking back at Vietnam, there are more than 58,000 names on “The Wall.” For our purposes we will use the time frame, 1965 to 1975 – that’s 120 months with 58,000 deaths or 16 every day.
Sixteen killed in action every day. For 10 years.
(My apologies to the Marines who were there in 1963.)
Remember how America reacted when 13 flag- draped Marine coffins came into Dover at the end of Afghanistan?
Let’s look at casualties in Ukraine on one side only. Ukraine has had more than 100,00 KIAs in 19 months. Do the math -- 100,000 deaths divided by 19 months is 5,263 KIAs per month, or 175 per day.
Again: 175 casualties per day.
That’s why I’m concerned about boots on the ground in Ukraine.
Make sure your Congress persons know that if they are a “aye” vote on going in, you want to see them at their local recruiting station, with their children.
Rube Render is a former Clovis city commissioner and former chair of the Curry County Republican Party. Contact him:
