September 11. 9/11. You remember the day. It’s a day Americans remember. 2,975 lives lost — excluding the 19 hijackers. A bloody slap in America’s face. Think back to that day and those that followed and remember how you felt. Now hold onto that feeling. We’ll come back to it.

Now let’s think about another day to remember. April 5, 2009. On a cool Delaware evening, the body of 30-year-old Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers was carried off a military jet at Dover Air Force Base. Myers was killed on April 4 in Afghanistan, when he was hit by an improvised explosive device. The return of his body to the United States was especially notable because for the first time since the 18-year ban on news coverage of the returning war dead was lifted, the media witnessed the arrival of this soldier.

The Pentagon’s new policy, designed in February when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates lifted the ban put in place by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, gives families a choice of whether to allow the press to cover ceremonies at Dover, the U.S. entry point for service personnel killed overseas. Families may still grieve in private if they wish to do so.

The previous policy — in effect as long as I’ve been alive — had been criticized for hiding from Americans the human cost of war.

So now, with families’ permission, the effects of war on American citizens can be seen as people rather than numbers. The lift of the ban is not about the press; it is about honoring those who have fallen serving the United States. It is about reminding us that there is a very real, very human cost to war.

What does it mean to put human names and faces to mass death and destruction? Many already know, having lost loved ones in a war. The rest will soon learn, as best they can, from the media coverage following the lift of the ban.

Yes, we will now be reminded in a very concrete way, of the effects this “War on Terror” has on human life. American human life, that is.

Do you know how many Iraqi civilians have been killed due to violence throughout this war? With no government-official numbers, no one really does. However, the Congressional Research Service provides some credible numbers in Report RS22537: Iraqi Civilian Casualties Estimates. The total number of civilian casualties could be as high as 151,000 between March 2003 and June 2006 — this according to the Iraq Family Health Survey, a collaborative effort of several nations and organizations, including the World Health Organization.

The most conservative estimate comes from the Iraq Body Count (IBC), which bases its estimates on media reports of casualties. The IBC documents each casualty with a media source, and gives up-to-date minimum and maximum estimates. The current minimum estimate, as of April 21?

91,466 Iraqi civilian lives lost.

Let me make this more concrete for you. On 9/11, 2,975 lives were lost in one day. The Iraq War has lasted for 2,226 days and counting (this column falls about one month after the six-year anniversary of the invasion). That’s approximately 41 deaths per day. Not a lot?

It takes 72 days of war for the deaths in Iraq to equal the deaths on 9/11. That’s 10.3 weeks.

Imagine that. Imagine having 9/11 take place every 10 weeks. Having five 9/11’s per year. To date, we have inflicted a 9/11-sized attack on Iraqi civilians almost 31 times.

Remember the mourning and outrage after the 9/11 attacks? Try reliving that every 10 weeks.

But wait. Everything I just told you is based off the assumption that Iraq’s population would be affected by a 9/11-sized attack in the same magnitude that the United States were affected. And that’s not the case. So let’s take a look at a few more numbers.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. population on April 1, 2000 was 281,421,906. To put it in a proportional perspective, the 9/11 attacks killed about one in every 100,000 people in America.

In contrast, the population of Iraq in July 2002 (CIA World Factbook’s most recent estimate before the start of the Iraq War) was 24,001,816. So a 9/11-sized attack — 2,975 deaths — kills about one in every 8,000 people in Iraq.

Just stay with me a little longer here — I promise this is going somewhere important.

To proportionally achieve the same effect in Iraq that the 9/11 attacks had on the American population, 254 Iraqis need to die. Only 254 dead Iraqis, and you have a void proportionally equal to the one 9/11 left in America.

So let’s crunch those numbers from before again.

At this point in the war, 91,466 dead Iraqi civilians — from the most conservative estimate — divided by 254 dead Iraqi civilians to equal an attack proportional to 9/11. That comes out to 360. Proportionally, we have inflicted a 9/11 attack-sized loss on Iraq 360 times over the span of the war, from March 2003 to April 2009. If the war had taken place over the span of one year, that would be a 9/11 almost every day.

But the war hasn’t taken place over the span of a year. It’s been slightly over six years.

So what’s the actual frequency with which the United States is inflicting 9/11-sized attacks upon Iraq?

Once every 6.2 days. That’s more than one per week.

In this war, the United States is giving Iraq an attack proportionally equal to 9/11 more frequently than once a week.

Now imagine how you would deal with that.

How are nations supposed to respond when we inflict this destruction upon them?

How did we respond?

I told you we would come back to those 9/11 feelings. Just think. Think about how wronged you felt. No matter the nation, that outrage you feel? It’s justified.

We have a tangible reminder of the human costs of war in our country. The lift of the ban on media coverage of the returning dead means that we can see the American men and women this war has killed. But what will remind us of the Iraqi lives lost?

Think about all the numbers I just gave you. Now let them be more than numbers. The Iraqi civilians killed in this “War on Terror,” just like the men and women killed in America on Sept. 11, 2001, are not just statistics rattled off on the nightly news. They are human beings — lives lost.

 — Jessica Opoien is a freshman in pre-journalism and mass communication from Marinette, Wis.