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| A soldier's funeral via the Washington Post |
As another year comes to a close, the United States Armed Forces issues its yearly report of casualty reports and statistics. Along with a letter from the President, Barack Obama, and a coffin with an American flag draped over it, the family of loved ones and the country gets little other information. I wonder if the government and its defense branch wants to paint the loss of armed forces in a certain way that makes it favorable to them.
In a recent Washington Post article entitled, Faces of the Fallen, there was a montage of images of all of those who lost their lives this year in combat. Below the images is a chart and table depicting many forms of data, such as location, age, home state and cause of death and casualty trends throughout the ongoing War on Terror. While I think having this information open to public is a good thing, some of the information is kind of vague, which leads me to believe that either the information is classified or deemed too gruesome for the public to know. For example, in the cause of death category, the sections are hostile death, IED, non-combat, helicopter accident, vehicle accident, unknown, other-unknown and airplane crash. I don't know about you, but these categories seem pretty elusive to me. Just what is the difference between 'unknown' and 'other-unknown'? I find it hard to believe that all 305 servicepeople (2012) and all 6630 throughout the conflict deaths can be defined in eight categories (Washington Post).
Below is an example of one of the entries. This issue is very delicate, and if I were a family member of a loved one who 'died while supporting combat operations' I would like to know a little bit more about his/her final days.
Cpl. Richard A. Rivera Jr.
Incident
- Aug 10th, 2012: Died while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
- Location: Helmand, Afghanistan
Do you think the military provides enough information in its casualty reports? How could they improve the report for the next year? To what extent do you think the defense department should release classified information?
To find out more about what its like to be a soldier in America, now and throughout American history, you can read two of my past blog posts, linked below.
I don't think the military provides enough information in its casualty reports and I'm not sure how else they could improve the report for next year other than stating exactly why and how the soldier was killed. However, I do think that one of the possible reasons why casualty reports, like you said, are only defined in 8 reasons are because the military doesn't want the military to be viewed as something horrific and something no man should ever join. Serving in the war is bad, but since Afghanistan is halfway around the world, the people living in the U.S don't see the actual fighting happening therefore we don't get a "true feel" of war. If the casualty reports had a very gruesome and detailed description of how the soldier died, I doubt people would want to join the military.
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