The big Iraq war news of the day seems to be that the death toll of American soldiers has reached 4,000. I expect soon to hear from certain quarters how this milestone signifies the devastating nature of the war and how we must withdraw immediately. Here’s a little perspective on just how “horrendous” that casualty figure really is:
We fought for less than two years in World War I and lost 116,708 soldiers
During the four years of our involvement in World War II we lost 416,800 soldiers
We fought in Korea for three years and lost 36,516 brave souls
For the first five years of major combat operations in Vietnam (1964-1969) 35,957 men and women gave their lives.
So the loss of 4,000 soldiers during five years of fighting makes this war the least deadly war we’ve fought in the last 100 years (and a quick look further back reveals that it may be second only to the War of 1812 overall).
UPDATE: As current reports focus on the death toll, I did, as noted in a comment, leave out the wounded figures. To give the more complete perspective, let’s look at those too.
Currently in Iraq, 29,451 Americans have been wounded (more than half of whom returned to duty within three days).
In World War I, 204,002 were wounded.
For World War II, the figure rose to 671,846.
In Korea, 103,284 suffered non-fatal wounds.
I can’t find a year by year breakdown of WIA figures for Vietnam, but averaging out the total number gives us about 85,168 for five years.
So the number of wounded over five years is also significantly less than any major conflict of the past century and the ratio of deaths to wounded is significantly greater (1:7.3 versus the previous high of the Korean war 1:2.8).