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“America at war” as a phrase it has become so commonplace that no one even bothers to use an exclamation point or capitalize it any longer. “In the news today a car bomb …” the rest is tuned out as we have heard similar stories before. In a general sense, we have tuned out what goes on in the Middle East. It is nothing more than a footnote in our daily lives and to achieve this, a price had to be paid. To nullify it, everything has been reduced down to emotionless facts and figures, nothing but data. “Nothing but a number,” is how some soldiers refer to it now. This did not occur over night though and it can be traced back through our history.
Conflict and warfare are part of human history no matter what section of the world you go back in time and review. One group goes to do battle with another. At that time, technology was simple in combat, whatever could you get your hands on is what you used. Do not be fooled by romantic notions that these fights raged on and on. These were simple times and language was nothing more than a series of grunts. Sheer numbers is what normally won the battles. As a species, we evolved over time and created tools. The knife, spear, bow and arrow, ax, and hammer were tools of the hunter and the warrior. Our social groups evolved as well from small family groups to clans, tribes, villages, towns, city-states, kingdoms, and nation states. The smaller societies knew and felt the impact of warfare on their communities. Larger ones did as well, but the impact was somewhat lessened by its size. One constant held true though, the more bodies you had on your side meant the odds were in your favor to win. Scotland’s folk hero William Wallace was one of the first to engage in combat against a larger force and win. In September of 1297, he used tactics during the Battle of Stirling Bridge (bbc.co.uk); he knew every person was needed for the fight ahead, and every person had a stake in it as well. Emotions ran high amongst the warriors (they were nothing more than farmers and simple ‘country’ nobles) and their families in the towns and villages. Everyone waited for the runner that carried news of the battles that fought. Everyone wanted to hear if a loved one had fallen. At that time, no one was ‘nothing but a number’ and yet they were.
Countries fought each other as empires were being carved out of the world. It has happened in more than one period of our history. As our knowledge of Earth’s size grew, so did the size of our empires. Where at one time runners could spread the news in a sufficient manner, riders on horseback soon replaced them. They in turn were replaced by other means; imagine trying to keep the horses head above water crossing an ocean. The Portuguese caravel, a light sailing ship, was a larger version of the Islamic qârib (nautarch.tamu.edu). It, and other technological advances of the late Middle Ages (1000 to 1500 AD), gave growing European countries the ability to create colonies and empires. The most successful of these was the United Kingdom. By filling ships full of people, they quickly had the largest population in the ‘New World’. These same ships that carried supplies and resources between the colonies and Great Britain also brought news to families separated by the Atlantic Ocean. According to research done by Professor Salvatore Codina, it was the sheer mass of people that enabled “thirteen oh so troublesome, yet profitable, colonies” to succeed economically above the colonies of other nations. To the British monarchy it was a game of ‘nothing but a number’ to keep the money coming in and fill the royal coffers.
Iraq … the word alone can cause different reactions. According to some opinions, oil was the reason to invade. That is not for me to say, nor is it an expression of my own opinion. What I do know is that on January 30, 2009, the Washington Post reported current American troop levels as approximately 155,000. Since 2003 icasualties.org states 4,271 have died, 51 of those in 2009 alone. Those are large and numbing numbers, so view this on another scale. The Army National Guard is has militias in all 50 States and as well as in American territories (NGB.Army.mil). Of those, California has the largest with 20,059 service members. Now stop and think if that number could be higher had 3,273 not died? As American soldiers, we volunteer to serve our country. It is our choice and we make it freely. What we learn during the course of that service is a startling truth. It is a tradition that reaches back to our days as cave dwellers. When the call comes to go overseas, all they care about is how many bodies they can get over there; when we return home, all they want to report to the media is how many made it back, when the general public hears about the dead and wounded they are shocked. Honestly what is all this? What is it to them? What is this truth soldiers learn? It is that we are nothing but a number, for a number has no face.
