I’ll say this: it’s better than my Urdu. And I guess shallow sloganizing *is* an international language of sorts.

The statements here are corroborated in With the Old Breed as well as Stay Off the Skyline. Unfortunately, it’s most certainly true that there were Okinawans who were raped by American marines and soldiers ( — but there doesn’t seem to be significant evidence that this was common practice (I think Skyline includes an interview with a marine who had a couple guys in his platoon or company who did this, although it might have been from Sledge).

Sorry to hear about your son. Hope from here on out he gets all the luck he’s got coming to him.

bkd

A little over a year ago, I calculated what the death toll would be in today’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan if the same death toll during the Southern Independence War to the ratio to the then population was what we were suffering with today’s population. The number I came up with in what was then a four year old war, was a little over 1,000,000 dead per year, which would be more than 19,000 dead per week, which would be more than 2,700 dead per day.

With these numbers, surely even the dumbed down U.S. public would have been screaming “bloody murder” in the first week and the conflict would have been suspended. Since WWII, the American public has no taste for blood, no patience for persevering.

FYI, my youngest son, 29, while on his third deployment, was blown up in Iraq and lost his right arm and right leg back on 20 December 2006. He is still at Walter Reed recovering and going through both physical and mental therapy to prepare him for life after.

Nice to read your follow ups. I did hear on NPR the other day that the Iraq war has been the cause of more brain-related injuries and resulted in more amputees than other wars (on some scale that I’ve completely forgotten since I was probably cursing out some other O.C. driver while listening). That’s the medical care issue. Folks with those types of injuries would’ve died in early 20th century wars.

Isn’t that weird to say? “Early 20th century.” God, I’m old.

1. Sorry, I’m lazy. (Although, FWIW, the casualty figures on the ‘pedia for battles that I’m pretty familiar with — Guadalcanal and Okinawa — cited very reputable sources that I’ve used in my personal research.)

2a. Right. I think my thesis didn’t get expressed clearly enough. People seem to get panicky about the growing death count. But the death count is growing relatively slowly. Ergo, it seems like the wrong thing to get upset about. If the war’s worth fighting, the cost of human life in this one is very minimal relative to past engagements. If the war’s to be criticized, then let’s criticize it for something where its poor qualities are egregious.

2b. I disagree on a couple levels.

2b-1. First off, there have been circa (couldn’t find a good number, if someone else has one, thanks) 300,000 US troops involved in the current Iraq war, out of which 3,973 have died. At the Battle of Antietam, there were 132,000 involved — less than half the number, even though the death counts were similar. And all the deaths at Antietam happened over the course of ONE DAY. The Battle of Okinawa had 548,000 Allied combatants — not quite twice as many as Iraq — yet the death toll was 3x over the course of three months. Understandably, I’m comparing a “mere battle” to an “entire war”, but I’m guessing that if we look exclusively at the Battle of Basra, we’d see similar numbers hold.

2b-2. I strongly disagree, though, that the percentage of *combatants* killed is the important number. The complaint I’m issuing here is in regard to the homefront perception of the degree of tragedy being experienced in the given war. The current Iraq war has brought about the death of 0.001% of the US population. One out of every 75,000 (roughly) Americans has died in this war. So if you personally know 37,500 people, odds are 50-50 you know someone who’s died in Iraq and can claim to have been personally affected. (I have 96 people on my LinkedIn network, so I’m guessing I’m not even close to personally knowing 37,500 people — but then again, I’m a hermit.) In one battle in Europe, the Battle of the Bulge, 0.015% of the US population died, 1 out of 6,847 people. This means that it was 10 TIMES more likely that an American personally knew someone who died in the Battle of the Bulge than it is that an American personally knows someone who’s died in Iraq. In WW2 overall, 416,800 US combatants died — 0.39% of the US population, one out of ever 317 people. I can understand how *that* ratio might throw a nation into a tizzy. Relative to 1-in-317, 1-in-75,000 is a minor blip, statistically speaking.

But even if it *were* about the number of combatants, the numbers still point to Iraq being underwhelming as conflicts go. Heck, Vietnam: 553K US troops sent (not quite 2x the number in Iraq), 58,209 dead — 15x the number in Iraq and over 10% of US participants.

2c. I don’t see where this counters my argument. If FDR had shown the requisite gumption to tell Churchill that Europe could hang themselves while we went and took care of America’s problems (read: the Pacific Theater), we probably would have seen far fewer casualties than we received fighting two simultaneous wars. But he didn’t and we didn’t, therefore 416,800 US servicemen and servicewomen died in the war, completely dwarfing the relative impact of Iraq.

2d. That’s true and, admittedly, the “per-day” rate is a little unfair to consider when comparing a battle like Bull Run I to a protracted engagement like Iraq has turned out to be. Still, the death rate in Iraq has been very minor when compared to the our country’s other protracted engagements (Vietnam, Korea, WW2, etc.).

3. I don’t think the numbers are slanty, although, yes, there are other metrics that could be considered (e.g., I think a comparison of deaths per day against actual benefit of the campaign might be an interesting one where Iraq’s results start looking less hot — although that would lead to a horrifying debate about what the “benefits” of any war under consideration may or may not have been). In terms of total deaths, deaths per day, and deaths as a percentage of the US population, ignoring the value of the war itself, the Iraq War has been relatively very minor. I don’t see how that’s debatable.

4. Heh. Well, I agree 100% — the objectivity-challenged evening news watchers of the world aren’t going to be moved by anything not already being sponsored by Coca-Cola. (That’s a slight hyperbole, yes. And if anyone at Coke wants to advertise on my blog, just let me know what you’d like to see retracted!) But I’m pretty used to cursing the darkness anyway — it seems to be what I was born to do.

Thanks again,

bkd

1) Wikipedia is not considered a legitimate source of information for school research. Just so ya know.

2) My argument against your last paragraph is this:

a) We have much better technology and medicine today than we had during the other “conflicts” you mention which can account for fewer deaths “per day,” as you’ve chosen to list them. Comparison of this technology (medical and otherwise) is almost impossible to account for. If we had the same medical care and weapons they had during Gettysburg, what would the casualty rate be, and vice versa? Think about it, it’s an ugly desert war. It would be an ugly death count.

b) We have a much smaller army (per capita, since you mentioned it) than we’ve had at any other time in our history. Compare the size of the army to the size of its losses to be more fair. That is, calculate PERCENT of personnel lost rather than losses per day.

c) In the current situation, we are in theory only fighting one “enemy” country. If you look at the World Wars, where your totals are highest, we were fighting not only against multiple countries, but traveling through those countries, the weather (winter anyone?), and diseases that can be cured now. We were fighting organized armies with tanks and flanks and lines and fox holes. Can an IED really compare to that kind of artillery?

d) The beginning of the Iraq war was also fought mostly by air. It would be interesting to see how the per-day numbers go up if you start from the first day of the ground-based war. Admittedly, they won’t go up enough to eclipse much of what you’ve listed, but they will indeed go up.

See? Slant happens. Even when you don’t think you’re doing it.

Lastly, do you think that this discussion right here (what you’ve said and what I’ve said) would really be understood or even attended to by the folks who watch the mass media that you’re critiquing? Seriously, they would switch over to American Hotrod in about 5 seconds. Since we have a “news” system that’s based on ratings and advertising, by its very nature it panders to the lowest possible IQ in the name of the almighty god Entertainment. This fact must be accounted for when analyzing how and what the media reports.