Relative to our daily preoccupation with the death-count in Iraq, we focus almost exclusively on the numbers themselves. Understandable as this is, it largely leaves uncounted and regrettably unknown the number of next of kin or close friends of the slain, who now number more than 1,500. And the same ratio applies to the wounded and maimed as well.

		Samuel Hazo is director of the International Poetry Forum and McAnulty Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Duquesne University. He is a former officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served from 1950 to 1957 (samhazo1@earthlink.net).

This attitude is not confined to the present moment. We all remember the 58,000 killed in Vietnam and the thousands who were wounded there. I know one pilot, for example, who lost half his squadron on two separate tours of duty in Vietnam. He flew F105 fighter bombers. On one mission alone seven pilots were shot down. He added wryly that of the 631 F105s that were manufactured for the war in Southeast Asia, 431 were lost.

His silence said that there were men in those planes, and those men had families. This is why it is impossible to understand how Robert McNamara, the chief architect of that war, could belatedly admit in writing and in the documentary about him, "The Fog of War," that the war was basically a "mistake" and let it go at that, as if the national losses in Vietnam were simply part of a problem in arithmetic gone awry.

What about those killed in World War II? On D-Day alone there were 10,000 deaths of American soldiers in the invading force. On Iwo Jima the Marines lost 7,000, and during the 74-hour battle of Tarawa the Marine deaths totaled 1,000. On these three occasions alone, think of the number of those civilians who were in one way or another touched by these deaths. The logic is even more devastating when one turns to the number of soldiers killed during World War I.

Because the United States entered the war late, our losses of 116,506 killed and 320,310 wounded did not equal the losses of the French, for example. Approximately 1,358,000 French soldiers and airmen were killed, and 4,266,000 were wounded. Following the demographic math created by those deaths, it is staggering to think of the number of French families that would survive as sonless, fatherless or husbandless, or how in the post-war period many French women would never have the option of finding a mate because 1,358,000 men of their generation lay buried in cemeteries from Flanders to Verdun.

This preoccupation with numbers not only overwhelms but blurs the meaning of death itself. If we are willing to accept the first death in a war that remains unjustified, then it is only a matter of time before we will accept the deaths of hundreds or thousands simply as part of the inevitable price to be paid. But concentrating on a single death puts a human face on what would otherwise be an abstraction.

In a March 14 New Yorker article, Calvin Trillin focused on the death of 1st Lt. Brian Slavenas, a National Guardsman who was killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq. His entire family was racked with doubt, regret and recrimination.

It was to the lieutenant's mother that the death wound was deepest. Having opposed the war from the start as specious, she wrote the following to President Bush: "My beloved son Brian died for your red herring in the sand. He did not give his life. It was cruelly taken from him by your rush to war." Later she confided to a friend, "All the kindness has gone out of the world." After her letter became public, an Internet site was set up under the heading: "Evil Shrew Loses Hero Son."

Expressions such as those of this lieutenant's mother or of others who see the tragedy behind the death-count are regularly downplayed by those whose idea of civility is "you are with us, or you are against us." For them being right is less important than being righteous. They act tough, but they are tough at somebody else's expense. They rule by pronouncement, not reason, and their dream of re-creating the world is contradicted by what we see and read every single day.

I do not include these facts to devalue the valor of those sent to fight a war that many, many Americans and most Europeans and others find perplexing at the least and tragically futile at the most.

Arguments about "exporting democracy" wear quite thin after blood is spilled. They wear even thinner and are less convincing when weighed against the fact that this selective democratization is being imposed on a country that just happens to be sitting on one of the largest oil reserves on Earth, where three or more permanent American military bases are presently under construction and where the new American Embassy in Baghdad will be the largest American Embassy in the world.

Isn't it curious, to put it mildly, that this democratizing must be accompanied by such grandiose military and political presences and at such human cost? And if we grieve over the loss of lives today, what are our thoughts at the time of the third anniversary of this war, which could be but the first chapter of this administration's vision of perpetual war, when the numbers (and the lives behind the numbers) might well be higher?

Now that the reasons for the war have long since been proved false over and over and over, why aren't more senators, representatives, journalists and ordinary citizens questioning as a matter of conscience where this "new logic" is leading us with all its tragic human consequences?

Why aren't they (why aren't we?) confronting the deferred and exempted architects of this new imperialism on behalf of the men and women who must risk their lives to implement it?

Wouldn't that be worthy of being identified as truly supporting the troops -- and just as importantly supporting their families?