I am a numbers geek -I find combinations and permutations even more fun than conjugating French verbs. Therefore, it was a mixed blessing for me when The Post tried to attack a New York Times article on a spate of recent homicides committed by returning Iraqi War veterans on the basis of statistics rather than engage in a meaningful dialogue about war and what it does to the psyches of men and the families they return home to. I could have played the stats to support my own personal view of this war, or patriotism, the “surge “. I could’ve added my rant to the din on a foundation of figures, stretching the #’s to any end. And I might have if PTSS were just another lettered disease for me. You know in the class of those rapidly expanding maladies that the makers of all those versions of Paxil profit from. The six hundred and forty forms of anxiety that used to be called a bad day. No, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Survivor’s Guilt, Shell Shock, the multi-labeled emotional scarring, the spiritual destruction so oft visited on soldiers and victims of violence is a very personal issue for me.

My aunt laid it out with a shattering simplicity “”They pumped them full of amphetamines, threw them out on the beach to kill. How else you gonna get 20 year old boys who’d never seen anything bigger than Staten Island, Nowhereville to run bayonets through other young men. Boys. They were boys screaming and covered with blood. They kept them high on speed. Just to keep them doing it like it was normal like that’s what they’d grown up believing their lives would be shrieking and killing far from home.”

She didn’t say this to me until she was past eighty and my uncle was dead. My uncle who I remember most fondly for swimming out to pull me on me on my rubber raft safely back to shore each perfect summer day… I would drift knowing he’d appear just when my young self needed rescue. I remember his bald head followed by his smile bursting through the waves and then later – at night, his nightmares -how he’d scream for dead buddies all the rest of his life.

My sister worries about getting cancer mostly irrationally as we are a family blessedly free of this disease. I comfort her with my theory of percentages suggesting there are only two which matter- zero and 100 per cent. Either you will or you won’t, you win you lose. It’s yes or no, dead alive.

The Post faulted The Times analysis of the homicide rates among returning Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans. They compared the murder rates among the general population and found them higher than the returning vets. Right away I see that of course the general population contains a huge group of men who would not be admitted into the Armed Services to begin with based on say previous criminal activity or mental illness. There is the unanswerable question of how many of these specific men the ones to begin with volunteer to do things and go places most of us run from these particular men. How many of them would have gone on to commit murder if that wasn’t what they had trained for and experienced wrenchingly first hand? We can never have that answer. We do not have the numbers for what their lives would have been if they were not soldiers first.

One could stretch and bend the numbers to make villains of both left and right. So much of the posturing especially and specifically re: this invasion has been supported by the sexing up of statistics. We’re winning-losing. They’re supporting us not supporting us. There is more violence, less oil, more blood on and on and endless on. Playing with the numbers when it comes to destroyed souls and wrecked bodies seems at the very least inappropriate, if not plain offensive.

What I wish however is to raise some questions to which I admit in advance not having answers to but hope might lead to some discussion. A discussion that would include how these soldiers could be helped to begin with regardless of how many there are or how many there would be if these particular men had not experienced that which we, our talking heads , pundits and bloggers can only theorize about.

I question the help if any these returning soldiers received when they came home .I ask how we can do better and what difference it might make. And aren’t we all responsible for getting it done? At the very least raising our voices to the people and power that might actually make a difference?

I have these questions that have nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with gratitude. For people who are braver than me and less fortunate. These people unknown but appreciated and pained for in addition to one specific marine I count myself so lucky to have been loved by. This ex-marine, my uncle who continues in memory bobbing towards me through the wave reflected sunlight. My sense of safety depending on him without question. Hoping somewhere somehow that his nightmares have ceased.