{"id":3501,"date":"2010-01-10T12:22:22","date_gmt":"2010-01-10T17:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertlpeters.com\/news\/?p=3501"},"modified":"2010-01-10T12:22:22","modified_gmt":"2010-01-10T17:22:22","slug":"a-year-in-iraq-and-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/a-year-in-iraq-and-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year in Iraq and Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3502\" title=\"war_deaths_1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.robertlpeters.com\/news2013\/wp-content\/uploads\/war_deaths_1.png\" alt=\"war_deaths_1\" width=\"437\" height=\"682\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3505\" title=\"war_deaths_2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.robertlpeters.com\/news2013\/wp-content\/uploads\/war_deaths_2.png\" alt=\"war_deaths_2\" width=\"437\" height=\"321\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3506\" title=\"war_deaths_3\" src=\"http:\/\/www.robertlpeters.com\/news2013\/wp-content\/uploads\/war_deaths_3.png\" alt=\"war_deaths_3\" width=\"437\" height=\"362\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Source: The New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s <em>Times<\/em> offers this \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/packages\/images\/opinion\/0110OPEDCHART4.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Op-Chart<\/a>\u2019 showing a comparison of American and allied deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan during 2009 by means of a map and legend to illustrate details. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/10\/opinion\/10chart.html?th&amp;emc=th\" target=\"_blank\">Accompanying text<\/a> speaks about the tragedy of the \u201closs of any American life\u201d and explains that\u00a0\u201cthe colors on the chart show the extent to which the Western allies are sharing the deadly burden,\u201d\u2014invisible and unmentioned are the fatalities among either the\u00a0\u201cnon-Western\u201d Iraqi Army or Afghan Army and security personnel, deaths among what the U.S. considers to be \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Enemy_combatant\" target=\"_blank\">enemy combatants<\/a>,\u2019 deaths among civilian populations of either arena, or statistics on the massive numbers of serious injuries (physical and psychological) or refugee displacements that these wars have brought with them.<\/p>\n<p>An aspect of this that I find extremely troublesome is the portrayal of an American or Western life (or death) as somehow being more valuable than that of another human being from a different hemisphere. This is consistent with a disturbing trend appearing in mainstream media over the past few years (the de-humanization of \u201cthe other\u201d), creating further rifts between \u201cthem\u201d and\u00a0\u201cus.\u201d I choose to continue to believe that each life is worth as much as every other life.<\/p>\n<p>Conservative estimates of total human death-tolls to date resulting from U.S.-led wars on\/in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Iraq_War\" target=\"_blank\">Iraq<\/a> (2003-2010\u2026) and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Afghanistan_War\" target=\"_blank\">Afghanistan<\/a> (2001-2010\u2026) are in the hundreds of thousands. Canadian combatants are also engaged in Afghanistan (recent deaths shown in red) much to my chagrin and shame\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: The New York Times Today\u2019s Times offers this \u2018Op-Chart\u2019 showing a comparison of American and allied deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan during 2009 by means of a map and legend to illustrate details. Accompanying text speaks about the tragedy of the \u201closs of any American life\u201d and explains that\u00a0\u201cthe colors on the chart show [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,12,14,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}