Actually, I think it corresponds more strongly to wealth than to an urban-rural divide. New Jersey is, if I remember correctly, the wealthiest state, followed by Connecticut and then most of the rest of the low-burden states.

(Mormons do not hold views of non-violence. However, the low death toll from Utah can be explained related to Mormonism anyway. Young Mormon men are expected to act as missionaries for a year or two, preventing them from joining the military.)

Context, perspective, and proportionality are important when bringing up statistics like these. I recall a post this summer in which you asked, “Why is it that the Canadian and American media never talk about how many Iraqi civilians have died?” Good point. At the very least, it should be noted that the most conservative estimates of Iraqi deaths due to the occupation are between 52,500 and over 58,000; nearly twenty times that of the 3,000 U.S. casualties being focused on here. It’s also important to note that most of those killed in Iraq are civilians and that the number of casualties are probably much higher, maybe even as high as 600,000 as some reports indicate. Whichever numbers you pick, Iraqi casualties are disproportionately higher and disproportionately civilian to such an extreme that no matter how such a topic is framed these facts need to be foregrounded for the sake of perspective and context, in addition to moral reasons that should be obvious. If media reports choose to be ethnocentric in their analyses, they should at least be fair to all sides involved.