Today is “Victory in Europe Day”, better known as VE Day. It is when we celebrate the USA and allies crushing of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German forces.

During WW II 34,362 members of the US Air Force were killed. In total 291,557 of our fighting men were killed and 670,846 were wounded. This is out of a total of 16,112,566 that fought in the war.

When you compare those numbers to what some complain about regarding activity in Iraq (about 2,400 US military lives lost), one has to wonder if America still has a stomach for war? Have we enjoyed freedom to the point of weakness? Is our nation now unable to stand tall in a fight? Looking at the anti-war crowd you would think so.

We lost over 100 times as many in just over 3 years in WW II. Germany had not attacked America, although war was declared against us. The percentage of US military servicemen (that includes women) lost in Iraq is lower than the percentage overall in WW II. If you consider a max of about 160,000 troops have been in Iraq. Due to rotations the number who have actually seen time in Iraq may be higher than that, but using that assumption the rate of unfortunate losses is 1.5%. The rate in WW II was 1.8%. We are fighting with a military force in Iraq that is less 100 times the size of WW II.

Given these numbers one has to realize, that although each loss is a sad one, we really are not facing some major tragedy in Iraq. A new government has been elected. They have picked their leaders. We are won and are still winning. And when we went into WW II things looked a whole lot worse than they do with Iraq.

So Happy VE Day and support our troops who wish to complete their mission in Iraq. They are there now and whether you like it or not, we should support them being victorious. Not to see them pull back and allow the enemy to gain ground.