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February 16, 2007
A soldier here ... a soldier there
The United States has a population of almost 300 million people.
Australia has a population of over 20 million.
The United States has 140,000 troops in Iraq and people over most of the rest of the world seem to hate us.
Australia has 1,400 troops and you can't think of Australia without thinking of (and feeling sad about) Steve Irwin. The Aussies, I believe, are universally loved. (And I'm OK with that. The few I know seem very nice ... not Canadian nice, but still not bad.)
The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard (I'm guessing not the John Howard I went to high school with) has suggested that terrorists should be praying for a Democratic victory the next presidential election as one of our Democratic candidates announced a plan for US troop withdrawal and Howard thinks that is a bad idea. More simply said, if the Democrats win, the terrorists win.
This is a very bold statement for a man halfway around the world to make.
John Howard thinks it is just fine that Australia has a mere 1,400 troops in Iraq -- which is fewer than half the number of American soldiers killed since the war began -- as Australia's population is just 20 million. Fourteen-hundred seems just about right to him.
I'm not sure what type of sliding-scale-troop-deployment math tool he's using, but, if you are to consider that the population of the US is (not quite) 15 times that of Australia, it would seem that Australia should have at least 9,333 troops.
Now, in all fairness, it is my thought that Australia and the rest of the Coalition of the Dragged Along, should have zero troops there, as should we. But until Howard is able to arrange for more Australian troops to be sent over to Iraq, and until he arranges to take the Australian funding of the war to just over $24 billion USD ($30 billion AUD), he needs to STFU. (By June of 2006 the Australian contribution to the war in Iraq was $1.2 billion AUD or $938 million USD.)
It is easy to put a dollar price tag on things like war (The NY Times has a nice article here), but that isn't what my anger is all about. I may have more easily been able to dismiss Howard's comments as those from just another dumbass had it not been for the fact that it was just a few weeks ago one of my coworkers was in tears as her grandson had been injured by some sort of anti-personnel device. He, another American soldier and an Iraqi entered a building and the device exploded; the Iraqi was killed, the other American was more seriously injured, and the coworker's grandson had more minor injuries. Of course, had the guys been standing in a different order he could have just as easily been killed. Hours passed between finding out the grandson had been injured in an explosion and finding out he going to be OK.
[Bush has just asked for 100 billion more dollars (where one billion equals 1000 million) to fight the war which will boost the $366 billion we've spent to $466 billion. Should he get it I'll expect Howard to pony up $31 billion USD ($39.6 billion AUD) before sticking his nose in the Democratic process over here.]
[One more bracketed item. I'm not sure all the math above is correct regarding conversion from USD to AUD and numbers of troops. I'm certain my ratios regarding US participation vs. Australian participation in Iraq are more fair based on population -- which seems to be the yardstick Howard is using -- but I may not be dead on. At the very least I put some thought into what I typed here before shooting my mouth off which is more than I can say about the Australian Prime Minister.]
Posted by delmer at February 16, 2007 5:59 AM
Comments
Spot on Delmer. I came to this belatedly after reading your February 26 post. I've generally voted for Howard's Government but he really shot his mouth off and embarrassed many Australians with those comments.
We've only had one soldier killed in Iraq and that was accidental. The Defence Department sent the wrong body home, which just about sums up the ability of the bureaucrats (not the soldiers).
Posted by: Michael at February 27, 2007 8:30 AM