Opinion: It would be a tragedy to forget what the statistics of war represent
By David Von Drehle David Von Drehle Columnist focusing on national affairs and politics Email Bio Follow Columnist May 24 at 4:22 PM “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” This line, as brutal as it is true, is widely ascribed to Joseph Stalin, a man with terrible knowledge of death on every scale, from the single bullet to the brain of some former associate to the millions starved in Ukraine. But the general idea has been around for centuries.
Nearly 7,000 U.S. Marines died in the 36-day battle for the eight square miles of Iwo Jima. The statistician sees that number and calculates an average of nearly 200 per day and nearly 1,000 per square mile; the surviving veteran bears memories of screaming friends and spattered brains, week after week under the relentless sun.
The holiday is not necessarily antiwar, but if it stirs a pro-war feeling in your heart, you might not be doing it right. What Memorial Day asks is that we respect war enough to come to grips with its destructive power and steep price. What Memorial Day understands is that respecting war begins with mourning one life cut short, one tragedy, one grave. From there, we can try to imagine that pain times a million. We can try to transfuse life into the statistics.
If you don’t have a national cemetery or battlefield close by, I suggest you use your computer to visit YouTube or Vimeo. Search for “The Fallen of World War II” by a man named Neil Halloran. This 18-minute “cinematic data visualization” brilliantly takes you from the tragedy of an individual killed in the war to the catastrophe of 60 million individuals gone.
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