The below article argues, quite passionately, that the decision of the U.S. to fight in wars should not be about cost in lives, or fearing to commit troops because it will be assumed to be unpopular with the American public:


Politics, Death, and Morality in US Foreign Policy
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles





I also find the argument bemoaning the "huge military losses" in the current Iraq war to be false.
An argument which is, of course, a liberal distortion of the truth.

The last time I looked, there was a total of 1550 dead American soldiers in Iraq, which doesn't even deduct the number of non-combat deaths from that number, due to car accidents, suicides, etc.
I also hasten to add that the confict in Iraq began on March 20, 2003, over two years ago.

For an occupation force of roughly 130,000 U.S. soldiers for a period of over two years, patrolling a country about the size of California and New Jersey combined, with a native population of roughly 25 million Iraqis, I don't consider 1550 deaths in two years to be overly large.

Especially considering the long-term good for the Iraqis, for the Arab region, and for the world that a democratic Iraq will result in.




As I've argued elsewhere, the losses are not unheard of levels. 1500 out of an average 150,000 troops in Iraq over most of the 2-year occupation of Iraq (recently reduced) comes out to about 0.01, or a 1 % ratio of soldier deaths in Iraq.
And again, that's not even deducting accident and suicide deaths from actual combat deaths.

The two-year total would be equivalent to about 5 to 6 days of combat in WW II (where an average 214 soldiers a day were dying).






Another link to an Editor and Publisher editorial (and their reader responses) to media coverage and attempts to either report or distort (depending on one's perspective) the combat deaths, suicides, accidents, etc. :

http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/03/07/Editor250703.html


One response in particular:

Quote:

Some claim that the "non-combat" death rate is little different than what you find in the usual "peacetime" Army.
I've found Department of Defense statistics ("Mortality Trends Among Active Duty Personnel, 1992-2001," MSMR Volume 09, Number 01, January 2003) which cite a peacetime mortality rate of 57.38 soldiers per 100,000 per year, all services.

Fifty-three percent of all deaths were "attributable to accidents," while twenty percent were suicides, and eighteen percent disease deaths. None were combat-related; this is a peacetime survey.

So, given the Iraq deployment of approximately 150,000 American soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and taking the first two months since Mr. Bush declared the end of major combat operations -- if you do the math you would expect 7.6 fatalities in peacetime [ at the time this reader-reply was posted in 2003. Now, as of today May 4 2005,
it would now statistically be about 120 non-combat fatalities expected].

But the number of stated accidental deaths among American military personnel in Iraq approximates 60 [ again, as of July 2003 ] for that period.

An army at war is much more accident-prone than one at peace these days, but is it more than eight times more so?

Or is reporting "combat deaths" (i.e., deaths directly caused by an enemy combatant) as distinctly different than "accidental deaths" making a facile distinction?

Shouldn't the cause of these deaths be examined and reported more fully, and categorized by the press according to a more subtle, independent standard, and not one that parrots the monochrome one of the Pentagon?
Reports that echo Pentagon pronouncements shaded to encourage Americans to believe that Iraq is a less dangerous place for its troops than it really is, serve an administration that seeks to minimize the cost of this invasion.

As a second matter, today's combat evacuation and care system is the very best, and saves the lives of soldiers who would have surely died from their wounds if they had sustained them in World War II or even Vietnam.

That is an improvement that should be applauded, but it conceals the level of violence in modern American warfare generally, and in Iraq, specifically, when comparing it with past American conflicts. Failing to cite the number of wounded or accidentally injured along with the accidentally and deliberately killed makes Iraq seem safer than it is for American troops. Again, I think this a disservice to the truth and the press should expose it.

Brian Broadus
Charlottesville, Va.



While he clearly opposes the war, he does make the point of the ratio of deaths per 100,000 peacetime troops that normally occur.

And I agree that the deaths should be statistically separated by category to better illustrate which are combat deaths, accidents, suicides, permanently crippled, and which are minor injuries that will fully heal.
Although the quoted reader wants these statistics to show the incompetence of the war, and I wish them to merely demonstrate the true situation.


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