December 20, 2004 - CNN keeps a running count of the coalition dead published on its web-site. This morning it counted 1,308 Americans but it was three days behind the calendar. The names of the dead, those that have been released by the Pentagon, are listed in a database that includes the soldier’s home town, the unit the soldier served with, and the date, location and cause of the soldier’s death. For most the database includes a photograph of the soldier. Some are smiling, others more sober. Some are in battle dress, the Marines invariably in their dress blues. The names are added to the database as they are released by the Pentagon and the American names are released after the Secretary of Defense has approved the computer generated and machine signed note of condolence dispatched to their families. In a gesture of sensitivity Secretary Rumsfeld has announced that he will personally sign those notes in the future. Perhaps he now will read one of the two or three that he signs each day. On some days the total imposition on his valuable time may reach 5 minutes as he signs six or seven or eight or nine.

This past weekend the guerrilla civil war in Iraq claimed at least 64 Iraqi lives in Karbala and Najaf. Some were police, some members of the Iraqi National Guard, and many were non-combatants with the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the right time. We don’t keep track of them as we tot up the human cost of war. We don’t count the women and children whose location made of them collateral damage inflicted by car-bombs, air strikes, or allied suppressive fire. We only count and memorialize those who came to their death wearing western uniforms. There are no names, no portraits, no mini biographies, and no database to memorialize their deaths or letters of condolence to their families. We don’t count them as part of the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom. We count only the cash we generously hand out to their families to replace them.

It is the season for generosity, the first day of Christmas Week. It is the season of the year in which Christians the world over celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor, the King of Kings. It is the season when we recall that the Magi came to worship the infant King when they followed the star that they saw rising in the East. It is the season when in the West we celebrate that event by spending money that we don’t have to buy gadgets that nobody needs for people that we don’t really care about because we are supposed to be generous at Christmas.

It is a season when we have lost the message that the angels sang to the shepherds tending their flocks by night two millennia ago: Glory to God in the Highest and on Earth, Peace to Men of Good Will. It is a season when only those counted and uncounted dead know peace for they now reside in the Peaceable Kingdom beyond death; beyond fear; beyond terror; beyond the reach of mankind’s wars.

So now the Secretary of Defense in keeping with the season will now personally take his pen in hand and sign his name to the computer generated notes of condolence to the families of those few he has sent to the Peaceable Kingdom. It is a simple gift of inconvenience, a message that the families don’t need addressed to people the Secretary does not know and who he does not really care about. That is his Christmas message.