More US dead in Iraq/Afghanistan than 9/11

Not much of a peep about this in "the news."

The 9/11 attacks killed 2,973 people, not including the 19 hijackers who crashed four commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. The number of troops and military contractors who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan has now reached 2,974.

Have the deaths of these soldiers made us safer?