That “Grim Milestone” Horse-Manure Mantra Is Being Revved Up Again

Here we go again — it’s “grim milestone” time at CNN, as total US soldier deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan now exceed the number of people killed in the September 11 attacks.

Jim Wooten at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution anticipated this a couple of days ago, and wrote:

A “grim milestone,” it’s called. And it is. American military losses in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon surpass the death toll in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, and next month combat operations in Iraq will pass the length of time U.S. forces fought in Europe in World War II. The temptation is to ask: And this proves what? World War II veterans of the 4th Marine Division gathered here last weekend. One of their battles was Iwo Jima. Some perspective: 2,972 died on Sept. 11. In Iraq and Afghanistan, 2,941. In less than a month on Iwo Jima, 6,891.

Every soldier’s death in an honorable cause is an awful thing, but an honorable thing. Just this weekend we have received a reminder of how honorable the cause is by being told yet again what the alternative is — “convert or die“; “convert or die.”

So if there is going to be a “grim milestone,” the benchmark should at least be the number of people killed by terrorists since the September 11, 2001 attacks — 6,560 per the detail that follows (see Updates for more info on larger numbers, and even larger numbers of INCIDENTS). It would also be valid to include the deaths in attacks leading up the September 11 (e.g., the USS Cole, Khobar Towers, etc.), and of course against the likely deaths Saddam Hussein would have inflicted upon his people if he had stayed in power (before he was toppled, it was at least several hundred a week), sticking only to terror deaths since 9/11 shows that we’re a long way from anyone’s twisted dream of a comparable “grim milestone”:

(Excuse the hasty posting; the numbers that appear after each date represent the number of deaths, which are repeatd at the left; info is via e-mailer Larwyn with the Jacksonian at Dumb Looks Still Free as the original compiler, but apparently not yet a poster [SEPT 4. UPDATE -- Here is his post, which went up on Sept. 4]. I did cross-check some of the information against a related Wiki entry.)

UPDATE, Sept. 4: Comments around the blogosphere coming from Gateway Pundit (pointing out that it took 5 years to equal the number of lives taken in probably less than an hour on Sept. 11); My Pet Jawa (appropriately widening the scope to include innocent Muslims killed by terrorists, which would make the number go into the tens of thousands); and an MPJ commenter (who said that it was well over 20,000 six months ago).

UPDATE, Sept. 9: A subscription only pre-9/11 piece in The Wall Street Journal says that there have been MORE INCIDENTS of terror that American soldiers killed:

To the surprise of many analysts, there hasn’t been another major terror incident in the U.S. since 9/11. Still, global terrorism is on the rise. In 2005 there were 4,960 terrorist incidents, up from 1,150 in 2000, according to the Terrorism Knowledge Base.