American Casualties in Iraq - A Perspective

Since March 20th of 2003 - there have been 1,908 American military casualties in Iraq. That's about an average of 64.5 per month. I know that the math is morbid but what got me thinking about the numbers was this post by The Happy Carpenter - specifically this comment:

The media's breathless tabulation of casualties in Iraq--now, over 1,800 deaths--is generally devoid of context. Here's some context: between 1983 and 1996, 18,006 American military personnel died accidentally in the service of their country. That death rate of 1,286 per year exceeds the rate of combat deaths in Iraq by a ratio of nearly two to one.

People join the military and sometimes these people die. They die in peacetime and they die in times of war. That's the sad truth.

The number of US troops in Iraq is usually reported at between 120,000 and 150,000. Put another way - the fatality rate for a member of the US military in Iraq in 2004 was about 565 fatalities per 100,000 troops. Stay with me on this comparison because I'm coming back to it later:

565 fatalities per 100,000 troops in Iraq in 2004
92.4 fatalities per 100,000 workers in the logging industry in 2004
92.4 fatalities per 100,000 for pilots and flight engineers in 2004
86.4 fatalities per 100,000 fishermen in 2004

(Source for occupational fatality stats)

Another bit of perspective that is often overlooked is the fact that our troop deployment to the Middle East did not happen in a vacuum.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, specifically between 1991 and 2003, the US and our allies had significant troop deployments to enforce the so-called "No-Fly Zones". Some estimates say that the US had over 200 planes, 19 ships and 22,000 military personnel dedicated to enforcing these no-fly zones.

The US flew more missions and fired more missiles enforcing the no-fly zones than we did during the entire Kosovo War. Even though we had all those missions - we did not lose any pilots to enemy fire in the no-fly zones. That means it was statistically safer to be a pilot or flight engineer in these war zones than it was in the US last year.

Now some other numbers to throw out there to kinda tie my whole point together. While we were enforcing the no-fly zones, the country of Iraq, all 26 million, was under the rule of one brutal dictator. This dictator was using money that was supposed to go to food and medicine for "his" people and instead using the money on palaces, military uses and on mass graves. His actions were killing his own people at a rate that doesn't seem to get much mention in the press.

Just about two and a half years ago, Andrew Sullivan wrote the following at his blog (sorry I don't have the link):

Sanctions are inevitably the cornerstone of containment, and in Iraq, sanctions kill. In this case, containment is not an alternative to war. Containment is war: a slow, grinding war in which the only certainty is that hundreds of thousands of civilians will die. The Gulf War killed somewhere between 21,000 and 35,000 Iraqis, of whom between 1,000 and 5,000 were civilians. Based on Iraqi government figures, UNICEF estimates that containment kills roughly 5,000 Iraqi babies (children under 5 years of age) every month, or 60,000 per year. Other estimates are lower, but by any reasonable estimate containment kills about as many people every year as the Gulf War - and almost all the victims of containment are civilian, and two-thirds are children under 5. Each year of containment is a new Gulf War. Saddam Hussein is 65; containing him for another 10 years condemns at least another 360,000 Iraqis to death. Of these, 240,000 will be children under 5.

Think about those numbers for a minute. Think about how many children under 5 have been "saved" by our actions in Iraq. Now look at all the stories about freedom breaking out all around the Middle East.

Consider that the men and women of the US military who are making this all possible are all volunteers. They volunteer to do a job that is statistically about 6-times as dangerous as logging. Their brave actions have given freedom to millions and saved many thousands of lives.

No matter how you do the math - it would be difficult to calculate the debt we owe to our military men and women serving in Iraq for their service. I think that the calculus of just counting how many of them die and judging ther success by this number is about the greatest injustice I have seen in my life.