Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Iraq perspective

On Monday, Jessica McBride used casuality figures to give some perspective to our relative success in Iraq. I like that approach, but I did a little tweaking for this attempt to put the Iraq War in perspective. The numbers below represent just Iraq and Vietnam (since that is the war that most opponents want to compare it to), and they are U.S. military death numbers, not casuality numbers. I post them without comment.

U.S. Deaths in Iraq, 2003 to present (30 months):
1873

U.S. Deaths in Vietnam, 1965 only (first full year after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution):
1863

Total U.S. deaths in Vietnam:
58,200

Average number of U.S. Deaths in Iraq per month:
62.43

Number of years of war it would take for the Iraq War to equal the Vietnam War in total deaths:
77 years and 8 months

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One cannot judge wars on deaths or casualities alone, but this is a pretty good indicator that the anti-war types are selling us a bad bill of goods with their Iraq-Vietnam comparisons.

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