let's summarize death, shall we?

“That’s the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there’s also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy.”
— George W. Bush

Only a comma? In the grade level of the history books you’re used to, Mr. President, yes, that’s probably accurate.

Only power-mongers summarize the kind of death that’s happening in Iraq as part of some obligated, transitory state. When we and others have sacrificed, we still try to honor the memory and scales of these sacrifices and not just call them punctuation to a larger sentence of some floundering political agenda. By the way, Stalin was reported to have called mass death only a “statistic.” Not exactly the best company to keep, is it? Was the American Civil War just a comma to us? Was Vietnam a footnote?

This isn’t a party issue, it’s about integrity. History is details. And they will be captured. Yours, too.