{"id":41684,"date":"2026-07-20T14:05:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T12:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=41684"},"modified":"2026-07-21T03:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T01:20:18","slug":"9-angriffsnacht-17-tote-mehr-als-430-verwundete-ein-pentagon-das-an-diesem-montag-lieber-schweigt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/9-angriffsnacht-17-tote-mehr-als-430-verwundete-ein-pentagon-das-an-diesem-montag-lieber-schweigt\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 9 of the War, 17 Dead, More Than 430 Wounded - A Pentagon That Would Rather Stay Silent This Monday"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent days, 3 American service members have been killed, 2 in Jordan and 1 in Iraq, bringing the total number of American dead in this war to 17. So far, the Pentagon has released 2 names, which was already more than it had grown accustomed to doing lately. Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, 25, from Hawaii, and Private Isabella Gonzales, 19, from Texas, died Friday when Iranian missiles struck Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. A third service member in Jordan was initially listed as missing, until remains were found and identified as his. The service member in northern Iraq died Saturday after being struck by shrapnel during the controlled detonation of a downed Iranian drone. They are the first American combat deaths since March, and they come in a war that has been raging since February 28, when the United States and Israel began their attacks on Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The number 17 is precise, and that very precision distracts from everything that remains unclear. While the Pentagon names its dead according to fixed rules, only 24 hours after their families have been notified, it continues to conceal what is happening alongside those deaths. In the week before the deadly attack in Jordan, Iran had already struck there 3 more times, according to several American officials. Those attacks wounded dozens of service members and damaged several helicopters. The Pentagon mentioned neither the attacks, nor the wounded, nor the damage. In statements released after its own airstrikes, U.S. Central Command spoke only of retaliation for Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Not a word about the dead on the bases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More than 430 American service members have been wounded in this conflict so far, according to U.S. Central Command itself. Yet the Pentagon has stopped updating even that overall figure after reporting it regularly during the early stages of the war. Why, one military official asked, should the United States hand Iran information that could help it aim its missiles and drones more accurately at bases where thousands of American troops are stationed? For the same reason, the command has also stopped announcing how many targets it strikes inside Iran each day. The last major briefing on the war took place in early May. Since then, after nearly 5 months of war, very little has come out of the department about the American strategy. The Pentagon has also remained silent about its own equipment losses, leaving the only public account to come from the enemy. Tehran claims it destroyed a large number of American Black Hawk helicopters and badly damaged facilities including aircraft hangars. Whether that is true cannot be verified, but the fact that no one is refuting it is itself an answer. When one government stays silent, the other speaks, and the public is left to decide which one it distrusts less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is where the real wound lies, and it does not affect soldiers alone. In his essay Perpetual Peace, Immanuel Kant set out a principle by which governments can be judged. An action whose guiding principle cannot be publicly acknowledged without defeating its own purpose is unjust, because anything that fears the light of public scrutiny thereby reveals that it does not have justice on its side. That is exactly where the official silence fails. A war whose costs the government hides from its own people removes itself from the judgment of those in whose name it is being fought. What is not counted cannot be weighed, and what cannot be weighed escapes responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This silence has predecessors, and it must be measured against them. Under previous administrations, the Pentagon generally waited until families had been notified before releasing the number of wounded service members, but it released those figures nonetheless. During the Biden administration, it routinely disclosed how many troops had been injured in attacks by Iranian-backed militias on bases in Syria and Iraq. The fact that it is no longer even publishing an updated overall total is no longer just a matter of operational security. It is a decision about how much the American people should know about their own war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n