All Things Considered, I'd Rather Not Be In Philadelphia

Courtesy of Gateway Pundit comes this statistic, taken from the WaPo:

But one can also find something equivalent to combat conditions on home soil. The death rate for African American men ages 20 to 34 in Philadelphia was 4.37 per 1,000 in 2002, 11 percent higher than among troops in Iraq. Slightly more than half the Philadelphia deaths were homicides.

That doesn't make things in Baghdad hunky-dory. But it provides some perspective.

For one thing, it's foolish to ignore the black crime issue.

For another, whatever Iraq is, it isn't a Vietnam or a Korea, whete the death rates and totals were far higher.

Numbers would be poweerful things, if only we understood them.