How many female American soldiers have been killed in Iraq? I remember seeing a Budweiser commercial back in February. It showed returning U.S. military personnel and airport patrons applauding them. The camera showed close-ups of the military personnel. Out of seven close-ups, five of them were of the female military personnel. The impression? Women are really putting it on the line over there.
And they are. I quickly scrolled through these lists of casualties: Fox News list of killed. Based on my scrolling, I'm guessing 40-50 female soldiers have been killed in Iraq (if anyone knows of a site that breaks down the demographics, please email it to me; I looked but couldn't find one, so I did a haphazard one).
Thing is, 2,359 soldiers have been killed. If more than 2,300 are men and 40-50 are women, that means approximately 2% of the dead are women.
I don't want to belittle the female's efforts (save your hate mail). They are helping and their body counts are apparently higher than ever before. They also spend a lot of time in non-combat roles that are crucial to military operations, but aren't reflected in body counts.
But the ultimate sacrifice is one's life, and that's being provided by men at a far greater rate.
Yet the press, like that Budweiser commercial, celebrate the female involvement so much? Maybe it's innocent: it's more interesting and more of "a grabber" to show women in combat gear.
Or maybe it's something closely related to my last post (see immediately below).
