Earlier this month, if you knew how many U.S. military personnel had been killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, you were part of a shrinking minority.
According to a survey published March 12 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, just 28 percent of U.S. adults new that the death toll was approaching 4,000. That was down substantially from August, when 54 percent knew that the grim number was around 3,500.
Now that the 4,000-death milestone has been passed, increased news coverage has probably raised Americans' awareness somewhat, but we suspect not by much. In this information-by-sound-bite era, the American attention span seems about as deep as a pizza dish. Besides, why should mainstream Americans pay close attention to a war they've essentially been encouraged to ignore?
It's easy enough to do. Unless you have a loved one or an acquaintance in the military, you probably don't have a direct connection to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. You're not being asked to sacrifice for either effort -- heck, the government's chief request of citizens after the war on terrorism was launched was to help the economy by shopping. The financial cost of the Iraq War, which reportedly will reach $611 billion if Congress approves the Bush administration's latest funding request, is being put on the national credit card for future generations to pay.
And Americans have had enough bad news lately, what with gas prices at record highs and Wall Street's recent mood swings, right? It's just too much to dwell on the deaths of 4,000 Americans in Iraq (82 of whom were from Washington) and God-knows-how-many Iraqi deaths (estimates of the civilian toll range from tens of thousands to around 600,000).
It's fortunate that a presidential campaign is upon us, which by fall will force voters to give real thought to a war that, five years after the U.S.-led invasion, looks as far from resolution as ever. Do we stay essentially with the status quo, as presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain argues, continuing the fight until the divided factions controlling the government learn how to work together? Do we begin a withdrawal, as Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama propose, hoping that radical Islamic factions don't fill the void and create another power base for terrorism?
