For U.S. troops, this is the quietest November in Iraq

In the Iraq war, November has been one of the more deadly months for U.S. troops. However, this November has been the quietest since the U.S.-led coalition ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

With two days of the month remaining, the number of Americans killed this November in defense of Iraq’s new democracy is 34. That’s about half the U.S. deaths of the previously least violent November.

[Update: The final total for the month appears to be 37, and let’s remember that these numbers represent people, usually young men, whose basic job was to protect the freedom of strangers. That the enemy would kill such selfless people shows all the more clearly why this war must be won.]

Here’s the record on post-invasion Novembers:

U.S. deaths in Iraq war:

November 2003:   82.
November 2004: 137.
November 2005:  84.
November 2006:  70.
November 2007:  34. Update: 37.

Echoes of defeatism. In May of this year, 126 Americans were killed in Iraq as the “surge” was taking shape under U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. For the U.S., it was the third deadliest month of the war. On May 27, as Petraeus urged patience and resolve, and promised a September progress report, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin said:

“Why wait until September? We’ve got men and women dying in Iraq right now. Why not make that change in course right now?”

Of course, Levin’s “change in course” was the cowardly course of retreat and surrender. He wanted to set an arbitrary date and leave. For the selfish haters of the Democratic Party, it was the politically popular course, even if it guaranteed renewed fascism, genocide and war in Iraq.

Sacrifices for freedom. Today, the torch of liberty glows much brighter in Iraq. GIs have risked everything, and thousands have given their lives for democracy and Iraq’s only real chance for a lasting peace. It appears our troops’ bravery and sacrifices have paid off.

Earlier this week, there was no fighting in Falluja, in Iraq’s formerly volatile Anbar Province.

Two days ago, a U.S. Marine lieutenant asked Michael Totten, a Falluja visitor, “How many people got shot at last night in New York City?”

“Probably somebody,” Totten said.

“Yeah, probably somebody did,” 1st Lt. Barry Edwards replied.

That night, no one was shot, and no one was shot at in Falluja.

New kind of calm. The Sunni Arab city still has its tensions and occasional violence, but it is settling into a calm not seen in years. For the first time, its calm is accompanied by liberty, the freedom to voice opinions and choose leaders, the right to due process under law.

The 407 Americans who died in Iraq these last five Novembers, the nearly 4,000 who died these last five years, and their hundreds of thousands of brothers in arms cleared the way for that new democratic atmosphere.

Let’s hope the progress sticks this time. Let’s hope the trend continues. Let’s hope the setbacks are few. It would be wonderful if next year we could see tens of thousands American troops come home victorious, “return on success” as President Bush put it.

Here’s hoping for a November in freedom and peace.

Frank Warner

A note of caution: The death rate of American soldiers at war tells only part of the story. Iraqi deaths are down, too, but they still are dying by the hundreds each month. Further, history reveals that a period of relative calm toward the end of a war doesn’t mean it’s over or won. Remember World War II. It was real quiet before the Battle of the Bulge.

* * *

See: ‘Single Backpack Theory’: What really happened at the Iraq National Museum.

See: Mark Twain’s secret critique of a Medal of Honor winner of the Philippines war.

See: The full story of Ronald Reagan’s Evil Empire Speech.

See: Hillary Clinton proposes new 401(k) accounts. Isn’t this privatizing Social Security?

See: The Dawes Act: Why American Indian reservations are doomed to failure.

See: Proposal: Double the minium wage for illegal immigrants.

See: Noam Chomsky is alive, but he is one sick man.

See: Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson made sure we were 100% wrong on WMDs.

See: When will Waxman reveal how The Washington Post blew the Jessica Lynch story?

Comments

[Adam Sullivan]

Nice to see a fellow pro-liberation liberal out there. Not many of us.

Something to be mindful of in these numbers is that our troops are more exposed this November than any before. The strategy now under "betray-us" (moveon.org will always be remembered for that - deservedly) is to have the forces further forward and more exposed rather than hunkered down in fixed positions.

So the reduction is even more dramatic when such risk taking is factored in.

[Frank Warner]

Good point, Adam. Our troops have done something great. They've won a war so others won't have to fight it all over again.

I'm guessing that, as a liberal, you haven't forgotten, as too many Democrats have, that liberalism is for defending the defenseless and freeing the oppressed.

There is no liberalism without liberty, no peace without freedom.

[adam smith]

...and how many American troops were there in Iraq in the preceding Novembers compared to this one?

[SFC MAC]

Holy crap!!! I'm gonna have to mark this day on my calendar! I came across a liberal I can agree with besides Joe Liebermann!
Good article Frank. Blogs like this usually pick up the slack left by the defeatest MSM.
As a retired Army Sergeant First Class and Iraq War vet, I'm livid with the way the country, military, and President Bush are consistently denigrated and disrespected by the MSM moonbats.
The Afghanistan War is conspicuously absent from most debate, although the Code Pink loonies include that in their "no war" mantra.
Here are the reasons for the invasions in a nutshell:
The invasion of Afghanistan was prompted by its use as the major operating base for al Qaeda.
The invasion of Iraq was instigated by 12 years of nose thumbing on the part of a WMD-wielding terrorist-supporting megalomaniac. U.N. Resolution 1441 gave Hussein an ultimatum and us the specific authority to force compliance, by any necessary means. That included military force.

The "Bush lied" crap propagated by the Left was debunked with all the WMD that were discovered.

We found a substantial amount of hidden WMD along with documents and recordings in which Saddam Hussein emphatically stated his intention to continue WMD development and deception:

1) 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium
In a joint Energy and Defense Department operation, 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and approximately 1000 highly radioactive sources were secured from Iraq’s former nuclear research facility, packaged and then airlifted on June 23, the press statement said.
“This operation was a major achievement for the Bush Administration’s goal to keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists,” Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in the statement. “It also puts this material out of reach for countries that may seek to develop their own nuclear weapons.”

Source: http://www.energy.gov/news/1388.htm

2) 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents
U.S. troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians, military officials said Saturday.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/13/AR2005081300530.html

3) 17 chemical warheads containing cyclosarin (a nerve agent five times more deadly than sarin gas) “Laboratory tests showed the presence in them of cyclosarin, a very toxic gas, five times stronger than sarin and five times more durable,” Bieniek told Poland’s TVN24 at the force’s Camp Babylon headquarters. “If these warheads, which were still usable, were used on a military base like Camp Babylon, they would have caused unforeseeable damage.”

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,124576,00.html

4) Over 1,000 radioactive materials in powdered form meant for dispersal over populated areas: “Along with 1.77 tons of enriched uranium, about 1,000 “highly radioactive sources” were also removed. The material was taken from a former nuclear research facility on 23 June, after being packaged by 20 experts from the US Energy Department’s secret laboratories.”

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3872201.stm

5) Roadside bombs loaded with mustard and “conventional” sarin gas, assembled in binary chemical projectiles for maximum potency

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120137,00.html

And this bombshell:

“Tapes Reveal Hussein’s plans”: An excerpt: “There also exists a quote from the dictator himself, who ordered the tapings to keep a record of his inner-sanctum discussions, that Mr. Tierney (Bill Tierney, a former Army warrant officer and Arabic speaker who was translating for the FBI tapes unearthed in Iraq after the invasion) thinks shows Saddam planned to use a proxy to attack the United States.” “Terrorism is coming … with the Americans,” Saddam said. “With the Americans, two years ago, not a long while ago, with the English I believe, there was a campaign … with one of them, that in the future there would be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction.”

Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060313-123146-7380r.htm

Even after we officially declare victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war against Islamofascism ain’t over by a long shot. It won’t be, until they realize that messing with the “Great Satan” isn’t worth getting their asses kicked, or they’re all dead. It will probably come down to the latter.

Keep up the good work, Frank!

SFC Cheryl McElroy
US ARMY (RET)

[joeseph hill]

Adam--nonsense. are you prepared to go fight in N. Korea,China,Cuba? we are not put on earth to free the world...

[Frank Warner]

The free have a responsibility to do everything within reason to liberate those not yet free.

No free people are required to commit suicide for others. And wherever possible, liberation should be accomplished by peaceful persuasion. And yet, there are tyrants who don't go peacefully.

We may not be "put on earth" to free the world, but every one of us on this planet has a right to be free right now.

If you don't see morality in freeing the oppressed, then look at it for the benefit to you. A world of dictators is dangerous to you. A world of dictators forces a waste of resources to clean up tyranny's inevitable horrors.

A world of democracies would be much safer to you. In fact, since the defeat and democratization of Germany and Japan, and the defeat and semi-democratization (we'll see) of the former Soviet Union, the world already is much safer.

Once the other half of the planet is free, the whole world will be able to focus less of its efforts on protecting itself from tyrants and more of its energies on achieving major breakthroughs in the arts and sciences.

If you can't imagine the suffering of those oppressed, if you can think only selfishly, then imagine what a fully free world will do for you.

[Preevyet]

As long as I get to Iraq before Hillary ends the war, I'll be happy. I've even switched services from AF to Army, to facilitate my tour de Iraq. It would be nice if the Klinton News Network (CNN) would report some of this good news, but that would make Klinton mad and she wouldn't talk to them anymore. When was the last death in Iraq? I couldn't recall so I looked it up and there were 2 on 27 November and one on 28 November, but I honestly don't think I heard these reported. It's all good and eventually we'll see the death toll lower to just a couple per month or 1ess. It's all working and electing a Democrat (or a Republican) won't change the facts.

[jj mollo]

SFC Mac,
The WMD are basically irrelevant. We would have gone anyway, and should have. We had no clear way of knowing what the real WMD status was, and Bush never said that WMD was the reason. He said we could no longer afford to wait until threats were imminent. We have to recognize enemies and treat them accordingly. We don't need to wait on legal niceties or smoking guns. Loose nukes and fanatics make the world too dangerous to wait for certainty.

Joe Hill,
Wars that the US has fought in the past have almost always been partially motivated by the desire to provide or restore liberty to large numbers of people. No, we can't do everything, but we also can't ignore everything. And how do you know we weren't put here to fight for other people's freedom? There are lots of people already striving to bring about freedom and democracy in the places you named. War is not the first choice, but sometimes it's unavoidable. We elect a President to make those judgments. If we believe in democracy, we need to respect the person who makes the judgments.

Preevyet,
Good luck on the Iraq thing. I think you underestimate Hillary, but Petraeus is respected by most Americans and loved by many. He will not be ignored no matter who gets elected.

[jj mollo]

Iraq: What Went Right?