"Wonderful Time To Be A Soldier"

The "thank you for your service" extended to Joe Rache goes beyond the profound thanks for putting his life on the line in the war on terror; it's also for writing a stirring op/ed in today's WashTimes. Here's an excerpt, but it's worth reading in its entirety:

Before September 11, a lot of soldiers were happy to just enjoy the benefits. Since that day, those soldiers have left. That is fine and not the disaster that defeatist reports are making it seem. Such soldiers were never the types to want to go on long deployments and face combat. Yes, they were heroes for signing up and being in a job that could go that direction, but they had other priorities that made their service contingent on enjoying the benefits rather than serving in war.

That changed on September 11. Now, just as we are told to expect when joining, we are going to combat and many soldiers are getting injured and killed. This is our job, and it is what we know can happen. I don't know why the media insists on trumpeting the idea that all of us are tired and worn out and just want to stop fighting. I don't, and I am not alone.

The fact is that we are not experiencing casualty rates anywhere near past conflicts, nor for that matter as bad as during peacetime. There were weeks in Vietnam when 350-400 Americans died, and in other wars thousands would die in single battles. Nothing like that is happening now.

From 1983 to 1996, more than 18,000 soldiers died. That averages to more than 1,300 a year, far more than have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan each year. Yes, that was mostly from accidents, drunk driving and other mishaps. Yet, while protesters in Crawford, Texas and elsewhere would have you think that our military can't survive with the low casualty rates of this war, I wonder why they were willing to accept the much higher peacetime casualty rates of the past? We lost around 3,000 innocent people on September 11, and with four years of war and the toppling of two regimes, we haven't lost that many in combat

It's too bad this ran in the WashTimes instead of WaPo the NYT..

h/t Real Clear Politics