GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--Aug. 28, 2003-- More than 2,240 pints of American blood represent our price of freedom for Iraq.  Measured in buckets of blood, that's about 56 buckets of five-gallon size.

      Combat deaths in Iraq from the beginning of the war until July 17 represent 147, and 37 of those have occurred since May 1, when President Bush declared the major combat in Iraq was over.
       Total deaths in Iraq by Americans top out at 224, including 77 accidental and other deaths suffered by the 150,000 U.S. troops deployed in the region.

      The human body contains between 10-12 pints of blood.  At eight pints per gallon, a five-gallon bucket requires four deaths to fill it up.
       Freedom is not cheap.  It's price is blood.
       While many are horrified that an American is killed or dies in Iraq at the rate of approximately one every other day (37 U.S. deaths have been reported since May 1 through July 17), the deaths need perspective.
       In Vietnam, the war I fought in as a U.S. Marine Corps Combat Correspondent, cost America 14,557 buckets of blood.   That's a total of more than 582,290 gallons of U.S. blood spilled in a failed attempt to bring freedom to the people of Vietnam.

       I mean not to discount the price of one drop of American blood in the pursuit of freedom either abroad or at home.
       All drops have equal value, whether the people for whom the blood was spilled were benefactors of freedom or not.
       No one can ever tell me that we wasted American blood in Vietnam.   That would be like telling a championship team that losing one game meant that all the games played were unworthy, failures, and to quit competing.
       If the New York Yankees took a bitter loss and berated themselves over and over for it, they would never play another game.
       American blood spilled in the name of freedom has liberated the most powerful sectors of the world, from Europe to Asia.
       Japan, South Korea, the heart of Europe, and, if you count the victory of the fall of the Berlin Wall as the bloodless end of the Cold War, all of Russia and the former Iron Curtain countries, America has done a heck of a job at providing world series victories for freedom over tyranny.
        This freedom, which I will call Vigilance, has trumped the forces of tyranny, again which I will call Terrorism, at a heavy price.
        That price is blood.
        American blood.
        Imported blood.

       Unlike most nations who conquer others, America doesn't rape, pillage and plunder the lands it liberates.    Instead, it leaves the legacy of freedom in its wake.   It promotes the right of free speech and democracy to peoples who may have never tasted such liberties, but who, once grasping them, run like Olympic champions to the finish line with all the tools of freedom possible in their hands.
     

         Japan, in just a few short decades, became the second most powerful economy in the world.   South Korea and Taiwan became shining symbols of the fruits of freedom---all of those nations were fertilized with thousands upon thousands of buckets of American blood.

        Modern warfare makes a single drop of blood more valuable in a sense.  We flinch when one American dies these days.  In the past, hundreds upon hundreds had to die before the numbness of war wore off and the pain of loss found its way to our sensory organs.
         I recently overhead some young people talking about how terrible it was that Americans were dying in Iraq.  I wanted to sit them down and tell them how proud they should be that Americans are spilling their blood for others.   No greater sacrifice can be offered than for an American to die for someone thousands of miles away who may not then, or ever, appreciate that the gallon of blood he or she spills upon foreign soil is the price he or she is willing to pay for liberation, freedom from tyranny and oppression.

       Anti-war pundits shout and scream about the ugliness of American intentions--blood for oil--and other cheap, undeserved slams against the Principles of Vigilance that have made America the great nation it is.   These critics forget the price of freedom is the willingness to die for one's beliefs.
         Those who believe freedom is the most expensive and most worthy gift one can give anyone in the world, often die for that belief.   Back at home, those who enjoy the freedoms others have spilled buckets of blood to insure they have, call them names, spit upon them, and burn the flag that provides liberty to the world.
          I wanted to remind the kids I overhead that America's power lies in the buckets of blood its citizens have always been willing to spill to spread freedom around the world.    America's power isn't in its commerce or politics or its weapons or military--but in the sinew of those brave and courageous men and women who offer their lives for people in Iraq and Afghanistan, or gave them in Vietnam, Korea, WWII, WWI, or any country where American lives were lost in the pursuit of freedom.
         Blood, the life source, is not spilled for corporations seeking oil, or for American politicians seeking to build empires.    Those who scream and rant and rail against America's involvement in other nations, forget that our duty and legacy is that we are Sentinels of Vigilance.
         No other nation or group of peoples in the history of the world has traveled to so many lands and spilled so much blood to free those people.
         The Roman Empire marched through the lands killing many, but their mission was not liberation but conquest.

        Yet, there are those here and abroad who castigate Americans and our efforts to provide freedom as empire-building attacks on nation's sovereignty.
         The buckets of blood spilled in Iraq, or the ones that may be spilled in Liberia, or perhaps will be in Iran or North Korea, will not fertilize more Terrorism as the critics would have us believe.
          The buckets of Vigilant Blood will fertilize freedom.
           They have in the past.  They will in the future.
          Our hope is our blood will drown the Beast the Terror.
          So, when you hear about the death of the next American in Iraq, and start to moan and groan and flinch and wonder why we are in Iraq, think about Buckets of Vigilant Blood.
           Think of the death of that American dripping into the bucket to fertilize freedom.   Think of the value of a person willing to die for the future freedom of children, fighting to provide a democracy in which your children and the children of that land can live and work in harmony.

         We all should be proud of the Buckets of Vigilant Blood our troops spill.  We should be able to sit down with our children and talk about the price of freedom, and, when we look at the American flag, remember that the red stripes in it represent the blood spilled by Americans to secure liberty.
            The New Yorker recently had a cartoon showing a tableful of military men in a Middle Eastern country carping at a table because America was threatening them with liberation  (see cartoon above).  Most conquering nations threaten other nations with tyranny.

          If the rights Americans embrace are great rights, then the blood spilled in other lands is to give the children of other lands the same rights.
            Tell your children that.
            Make the buckets of blood worthy of respect.  
            Make them Buckets of Vigilance. 

Aug 27--Terrorizing The U.S. Constitution

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