patrol

Centcom: A Paratrooper from the 618th Engineer Support Company (Airborne) walks across the dusty, desert terrain pulling security on the outskirts of Siniyah, Iraq. The Paratroopers used bulldozers to construct a berm almost around the entire city to isolate terrorists who operate out of it. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Michael Carden.

In looking over the past year I find myself thinking of numbers. The main stream media seems gleefully obsessed with counting bodies of American Soldiers. A lot of the leftists blogs are keeping track of the numbers of Iraqi dead in what they call ‘Bush’s war of revenge’ among other things.

I’ve read how many people Saddam Hussien killed during his reign as the Butcher of Baghdad. Saddam’s numbers are being compared to Hitler’s numbers. There are calculations of what kinds of numbers we can expect to be killed if Iran gets their nuke program up and running. There are numbers of people coming over our borders legally and illegally, most of the numbers are for those coming here illegally. There are numbers of muslims infilterating society in Europe … and in America. There are numbers identifying how many species are threatened by global warming. Numbers are everywhere.

All these numbers make me think of what Joseph Stalin said about these kinds of numbers …

One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.

The carnage of the Global War on Terrorism; the attack of September 11, 2001, the deaths in Spain, England, Somalia, Indonesia and throughout the world, has been turned into statistics. It’s easy to roll a statistic off our tongues without feeling our hearts sink.

Statistics are impersonal.

What is worth all this? Most of us think in terms of large ideals. Is America worth dying for? Yes! Is freedom worth dying for? Yes! Why are our sons and daughters fighting on the other side of the world? For freedom, America and justice! To protect us from jihadists who would be here if they weren’t fighting them there.

The concepts of freedom, democracy, justice and the American way are also impersonal. They are parts of our lives that we take for granted and rarely contemplate what has been done, and needs to be done, for us to continue to take them for granted.

At the end of one of the many movies about Wyatt Earp, he is being praised for having saved the life of a man years earlier. He asks the boy who is admiring him what happened to the man after that. The man had continued to cause trouble and was eventually killed in a gun battle. The boy says, ‘I guess he wasn’t worth saving after all.’

Which brings me to what has been boiling around in my mind. Am I worth dying for? Me. Little ol’ me.

While the politicians argue over theories, forms of government and play political games, our Soldiers fight the wars and we the people make whatever sacrifices are required and look on with a certain amount of powerlessness. So, for me, I have to bring it down to the bottom line. The only thing the I have control over. The only thing I can really do anything about. I have to ask myself, am I worth dying for?

I start the New Year with these thoughts weighing on my mind. The very least I can do is to strive to be worthy of the sacrifices Our Soldiers are making on my behalf.


Dear Lord, lest I continue in my complacent ways, help me to remember that someone died for me today. And if there be war, help me to remember to ask and to answer “am I worth dying for?”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt