Sizing Up Sacrifice- Iraq War vs. Major Battles Since WWII
Sizing Up Sacrifice:
Click to Enlarge
Iraq War (5 years)-- 3,990
Batan Death March (one week)-- 10,000
Battle of Guadalcanal (186 days)-- 7,099
Battle of Guam (20 Days)-- 3,000
Operation Market Garden (9 days)-- 3,664
Battle of the Bulge (41 days)-- 19,276
Battle of Iwo Jima (39 days)-- 6,821
Battle of Pusan Perimeter (61 days-Korea)-- 6,706
Numbers from Schiele.us and Iraq Casualty Count
In February 2007 antiwar Democrat John Murtha said:
"This is the most intensive combat I've seen since maybe some of the combat in Iwo Jima or some of those places in World War II."...Far from it.
Another Rovian Conspiracy corrected the Code Pink favorite.
The Iraq War has been no Iwo Jima.
More... You won't hear this at a Hillary Clinton stump speech:
The US military lost more soldiers in the first 5 years of the Clinton Presidency than the US military lost in the first 5 years in Iraq.
(Numbers from CRS report to Congress pdf)
American forces have fought brilliantly in Iraq.
UPDATE: (23:00 PM) Kirk sends this chart which shows that we have suffered fatalities in Iraq at a rate 200 times smaller than the Battle of the Bulge:
Kirk adds-- "The chart itself shows a much more dramatic visual difference; and that's _after_ I took out the Bataan Death March because (a) it was so far off the scale it made most of the other battles look good (i.e. closer to Iraq) by comparison, and (b) it wasn't really a battle, just an atrocity committed against the already-captured."
posted by Gateway Pundit at 3/19/2008 12:02:00 PM
49 Comments:
God has Blessed the American and coalition forces in Iraq - all Glory be unto God.
LOL, I posted some stats as well this morning. They just don't get it.
Great blog.
Clinton is more then willing to trump up the economy during the years of President Bill Clinton, which was out of their control entirely, they just take credit for it anyways, how about they take credit for not responding properly after the attacks on US Embassies, USS Cole, Somalia...I guess that was what America deserved for spreading Freedom.
And Chris' don't forget the first attack on the World Trade Center.
Battle of Okinawa
March 18, 1945–June 23, 1945
12,513 dead or missing,
38,916 wounded,
33,096 non-combat losses,
79 ships sunk and scrapped,
763 aircraft destroyed
Wikipedia includes an intersting quote to ponder for a few minutes:
"There was a hypnotic fascination to the sight so alien to our Western philosophy. We watched each plunging kamikaze with the detached horror of one witnessing a terrible spectacle rather than as the intended victim. We forgot self for the moment as we groped hopelessly for the thought of that other man up there."
Vice Admiral C.R. Brown
Some things never change.
By most accounts, the biggest battle the US was ever involved in was the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest, a largely strategically meaningless campaign to push a salient through part of the Siegfried Line. It has become overshadowed in the public consciousness by the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's last gasp at a counter-offensive. Yet the Hürtgen Forest chewed up corps-sized formations. Both the 4th ID and 9th ID were so badly savaged that they were withdrawn from the front line to re-establish themselves in the rear area before being re-committed.
In total, the US took something like thirty-two thousand casualties, in a series of brutal and sanguinary assaults reminiscent of the carnage that ensued in the same area during the Great War.
And, lest we forget, Allied forces were in action right up until the bitter end. Bomber Command and the USAAF were losing aircraft (and their crews) wholesale even in April 1945. The British, the US, the Canadians, the ANZACs, other Commonwealth forces: all were suffering thousands of casualties a month even as the war drew to a close. We lost people on VE day (and of course Victory over Japan was still months away, with the prospect of years' more appalling losses. What an act of deliverance were Fat Man and Little Boy).
Every casualty we have suffered in the campaign against Iraq and other Muslim fascist states is a tragedy, but a sense of proportion must be maintained.
Just so ya know, I spent six years in the Infantry. I do know what I'm talking about.
\
Don
Tarawa - 1,000 men in THREE days.
WWII - 25,000 dead per day for almost 6 years - day in, day out
Georgian
"Every casualty we have suffered in the campaign against Iraq and other Muslim fascist states is a tragedy, but a sense of proportion must be maintained."
That's exactly what the agitators are trying to prevent. They don't want a rational judgment of the situation, with the number of casualties being one important factor. They want casualties to be the only factor and they want to compare it to zero. They don't really care if the alternative down the road is a number much, much bigger than zero. The only thing that matters is the short-sighted here and now.
Why are you including non-combat related Iraq war deaths? This is the game the media and Democrats always pull by using the general term "killed" in Iraq while including deaths by accidents of all types and illnesses.
Unfair comparison unless those WWII battle figures include those too though they would be very small since battles don't last long and Iraq is years.
This needs to be amended.
Just emailed the author a graph based not on the total numbers but on the average daily fatality rates.
Viewed in this way, the contrast is even more striking--e.g. the Battle of the Bulge killed our soldiers at a rate more than 200 times higher than Iraq, and Iwo Jima and 75 times more fatal on a daily basis. (Interestingly, if you then factor in the size of the forces involved, Iwo Jima and the Bulge pretty much trade places, i.e. Iwo Jima having about 200x the fatalities as Iraq per troop/day.)
Anonymous--Don: My dad was out on a patrol on 12/16/44, was not relieved on schedule, and came back in to the company kitchen at Krinkelt to find it totally destroyed by an 88. Cooks weren't safe even if they did stay their ass in the kitchen. And we lost some damn fine cooks in that one.
Take this not as an admonition, but as a reminder.
I dearly hope that each time numbers are mentioned in terms of casualties, we all are keeping in the forefront of our minds that each and every one of those numbers represent a person who gave the ultimate sacrifice for his country, for us. Each one is also a son or daughter with a family that will never be able to replace what was lost.
Keep that in your hearts and minds and never, ever forget.
What happens when America has conquered every nation? Who do we go to war with then? Does the Military Industrial Complex simply cease to exist from that point forward? Or, will you start using propaganda to convince Americans that we're at war with Martian evil-doers? Just curious. Christopher looks and sounds just like a character out of Idiocracy.
To anymouse @ !0:01
War is never a good thing, nor should it be something we seek. But... sometimes, it is required. As hard as it may be for for you to believe, we don't go around picking fights. The fights come to us.
Before you start screaming "Bush lied, yadda, yadda, yadda."
1. Iraq was the aggressor in the First Gulf War.
2. They lost.
3. As a result, Iraq signed a treaty at the end of the First Gulf War.
4. Iraq was in constant violation of that treaty.
5. Yeah, we're the bully. Not!
hmmm anony 10:01...
last I checked we don't generally conquer anyone, and we also generally pay for damage for a long time thereafter. Does the saying 'those that do not pick up swords can still die on them' ring any bells?
If we rely on the UN for guidence, we get...
Darfur.
where there are reports of 600,000 civilians slaughtered. Count the zeros. Makes everything pale in comparison, eh?
While the Imperial Senate demands proof, and then denies the proof because of proceedures not being followed... oh, wait, that was a movie. You'd think that wouldn't happen in real life. Except it does. in the UN.
Well said, D.
With Star Wars metaphors as an extra added bonus.
I am a supporter of the Iraq war front. My son just returned to the States after 15 months there. Peace time operations and training can be dangerous and the scope is generally unreported by the media. Unpopular wartime deaths aren’t; although the Clinton to Iraq War chart compares only Iraq deaths. See http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/Death_Rates.pdf for all military deaths from all causes 2003 through 2006 – in one year 2003, accidents killed more than in combat. A total of 7099 died from all causes so the comparison to the Clinton years chart has to be placed in context.
But anyway, those that rant about the war causalities seemly care little about the loss of our men and women or they would be doing more to help those who have sacrificed instead of publicly calling them murderers and the like.
I have never seen any figures, but since WWII had no time limit for being in combat or on the front, I have often wondered how many of the Marines that made the first landing and the next and then the next as we island hopped survived. I compare those actions to the brave Union and Confederate soldiers who marched into battle in formation under fire. That type of courageous duty is hard to comprehend in this age of minimal expected sacrifice by an overwhelming number of Americans.
Yes, only 4,000 and and so much to show for it: a sputtering economy, becoming an international bete noir, and 1 million Iraqi casualties. Did I mention the 4,000 dead?
"and so much to show for it..."
Glad you asked:
A final end to the Gulf War of 1990. Those were real missiles being fired at US jets on a daily basis while enforcing the No-fly zones. Just because your latte-sipping wasn't disturbed doesn't mean US pilots weren't being shot at from 1992 to 2003. Saddam will not break another treaty.
US forces no longer quartered in Saudi enforcing the cease-fire - Bin Laden's own justification for the 9/11 attacks.
Khaddafi voluntarily giving up a Nuclear weapons program - whether it was his or somebody else's will never be known.
None are so blind as those unwilling to see.
Douglas said...
Yes, only 4,000 and and so much to show for it: a sputtering economy, becoming an international bete noir, and 1 million Iraqi casualties. Did I mention the 4,000 dead?
Wow Douglas, that is a brilliant argument. The enemies of this country don't stand a chance in hell against such over powering sarcasm . You ARE so smart.
Curt
We were at war for about 45 months during WWII. According to the CRS statistics linked at page 6, there were 405,399 total American deaths, of which roughly three of four were in battle. That's about 9,000 deaths per month for almost four years.
A good friend of our family flew Liberators out of Italy.
His crew drew Rome R&R and spent five days out seeing the sights. When they got back to Foggia, they went back to their squadron billet area to find all the quonset huts empty, with all the mattresses rolled up on the jinky steel frames and the footlockers open and empty at the foot of each.
They thought that the unit might have been jumped onto the mainland and went in search of the field operations officer.
He told them that their squadron had drawn the low group slot in a "no turret" mission to bomb a synthetic fuel plant deep in Germany. That's where they pull out the belly turret to carry more fuel and two more bombs; the fighter escort is increased accordingly. In this case the distance to the target coupled with some confusion on the part of the escort force and a beautiful ruse by the Luftwaffe meant that the escorts pulled off before the the bombers reached the target.
Then, over the target - covered with flak so thick you could walk on it - the lead group bombardier pickled at the IP, and the second group dropped with him. And then those two groups turned for home.
Jack's squadron commander knew they were over open fields and the target was still ahead. They held their bombs, dropped a few thousand feet to try to fox the flak, and pressed on toward the target.
The Luftwaffe showed up and shot down every Lib, from beneath, before they made it to the target. I cannot find my link to the unit diary, but there were around a dozen aircraft lost. Something under a dozen men made it to the ground alive.
One day over southern Germany. Just another day in World War II.
Jack is one of the finest men I know.
Douglas said...
Yes, only 4,000 and and so much to show for it: a sputtering economy, becoming an international bete noir, and 1 million Iraqi casualties. Did I mention the 4,000 dead?
What did we have to show for WWII one month or even one year after the end? We had won, but Europe and Japan were in shambles. WWII ended in 1945 but the Marshal plan did not begin until 1947. In those two years many people lived (and died) in bitter poverty. The Europe and Japan (and South Korea) of today were hard to imagine at the end of those wars. A little perspective on time as well as fatalities is needed.
Don't forget that 500,000 people per month were dying or being killed in 1945 in the lands under Japanese occupation. These were civilian deaths. This according to historian Richard Frank in his award-winning book, "Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire."
Anyone remember how many Iraqis were being killed by Saddam Hussein? I recall it was tens of thousands per year. The 4 million who had fled the country?
USSR averaged 19,014 deaths PER DAY (civilian and military) between 22 June 1941 and 8 May 1945.
This data & chart should be expanded to include the Civil War, which included the 3 day Battle of Gettysburg in which more than 5K Americans (both sides) were killed.
Union soldiers killed: 3,155
Confederate soldiers killed: 2,600-4,500
www.militaryhistoryonline.com/gettysburg/getty4.aspx
JRS
In all fairness to Sen. Murtha, he did say "intensive combat" not "number of fatalities"; the two are not strictly linked, especially across decades.
Very interesting post. I wonder, though, how a straight comparison would look between military deaths in the first five years of the Clinton admin and military deaths during the 5 years of the Iraq war (rather than Iraq war deaths). It seems like the 5 years Clinton to 5 years of Iraq deaths might be a comparison of apples to oranges.
Or is it?
Your numbers are skewed. Yes, over 5000 service personnel died during President Clinton's first five years /from all causes, but according to the report, only one of those deaths was due to hostile activity (I think it was an F-117 pilot). I guess they are listing Somalia as a Terrorist attack, though to me that seems more like a hostile activity. Almost 1/2 (2718) of the 5000+ died from accidents. During President Bush's first 5 years of being President, 2688 were lost to accidents. In fact, during President Bush's first 5 years of his Presidency, almost 8800 American service personnel died. Its all there in black and white in the report you linked, Table 5. In fact, if you look at all of the numbers you could do this: There were more American service personnel killed under President Reagan(293) than President Clinton (76). In fact, according to the government report, the chances of you dying from Hostile action were the least under President Clinton, 1 death the entire Presidency, than any of the other Presidents for the last 27 years. Even if you add those to the listed numbers for Somalia for President Clinton, that only brings the total lost to hostile fire to 30, which is almost 1/2 of that for President Reagan's total of 58, 1/5th that of President Bush the Elder's 147 and about 1/9th that of President Bush the Younger's 2,596 through 2006. Again, who wants to talk about those numbers in that report?
So, are you going to accurately report the facts or continue to spin?
amr- my father in law made eight combat amphibious assault landings in the Pacific during WW2. Eight. Didn't get a scratch, though he saw much heavy combat. But he saw a lot of men die.
Anonymous,
Your comments reminded me of something my history professor said in 1970. At that time, every Democrat President of the 20th century had gotten the US into a war at a total cost of 600,000 American lives and no Republican President had gotten us involved in a war and therefore no American deaths.
Well, things have changed slightly with the Bushes getting us involved in wars costing 4,000 combat loses while the 2 Democratic Presidents have avoided warfare so the score now is about 600,000 to 4,000.
But for me, Clinton's war with Serbia is one of the most reprehensible conflicts that the US has undertaken. The arrogance of fighting ethnic cleansing with aerial bombardment was disgusting. It is ironic that the term "Weapons of Mass destruction" first was used to describe the fasicst bombing in represented in Guernica and that was Clinton's war plan. You may gloat over the lack of US deaths in that war but I am saddened by the countless civilian causalities.
P.S. We are still in Kosovo and the fighting is still going on and Americans are still dying there.
I tend to look at the 3,000 civilian casualties on 9/11 as occurring at the end of Clinton Administration rather than at the beginning of the Bush years. This plot had its genesis in the years preceding Bush and was a profound revelation that we could no longer do business as usual. Add the losses at the Pentagon along with all the passengers on the involved planes. Tojo, Mussolini and Hitler never did that to our mainland. They were war civilian casualties and I cannot blame that on Bush. I might not blame it on Clinton either but I cannot argue the relevance with Sandy Berger since I understand that he has no plans to discuss the evidence he uncovered at the National Archives.
> This data & chart should be expanded to include the Civil War, which included the 3 day Battle of Gettysburg in which more than 5K Americans (both sides) were killed.
And Gettysburg wasn't the worst one. There was a battle in 1863 -- Chickamauga, Tennessee - 9/18-9/21 (from the wiki):
...the Battle of Chickamauga was a costly one. It claimed an estimated 34,624 casualties (16,170 for the Union; 18,454 for the Confederates).
That's in THREE DAYS.
HAY GUISE! ONLY FOUR THOUSAND PPPL HAVE DIED IN A WAR STARTED FOR NO GOOD REASON! LULZ! THATS LESS THAN ERLIER WARZ! THAT MEANS ITS OK! YAY! MORE BOMBS PLZ.
Idiots.
There's a difference: cause.
King George the Retard started it because Iraq "posed an imminent threat" to us.
Where are the WMDs that Saddam absolutely had?
Oh, now we're freeing the Iraqi people?
And where's the guy who's responsible for 9/11? Dead or alive, right Bush?
You people are fucking retards. If you'd stop banging your sister for a second, you might have time to think.
I find this whole line of reasoning - measuring military success by the number of casualties - as terribly disturbing, if not a completely cynical attempt to divorce oneself from reality.
I consider it an exemplary example of how our society has desensitized us all - insulated us - from the human suffering caused by many, many different mitigating factors.
The country is in big trouble, and when the U.S. goes down, the world will follow. God help us all, because we're really going to know about human suffering first-hand.
Fine. How about the battle of Cold Harbor during the Civil War? 7,000 human beings turned into statistics in twenty minutes...
You point to the total number of military deaths under Clinton and act like it is equivalent to combat deaths in Iraq. If you look at Table 5 in the document you posted, you'll see that a majority of those deaths were accidental and there is always a large number of deaths in the military because the military is a large organization. BTW, there were nearly 7,000 military deaths in the first 5 years of G. W. Bush's presidency. Also, military deaths decreased every year of the Clinton presidency and every year had a lower number of deaths than any year of the G. HW. Bush or Reagan presidencies.
... and how many Americans died in traffic accidents in the past year?
... and since the Iraq War started?
While Nero fiddles, Rome burns. Does it burn because he started the fires?
That is still a question that has not been answered definitively.
America is self-destructing while President Bush says we are winning the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The question as to why American forces are there at all has not been answered definitively.
Once, Osama bin Laden was enemy number 1, chased relentlessly to the ends of the earth for killing thousands on 9/11 - Afghanistan was invaded in order to bring him to justice. And now?
Seven years later, he is all but forgotten.
There's something terribly wrong with this picture...
Murtha must be even older than McCain if he fought at Iwo.
Which one will retire first?
The only reason to bring up the casualty comparison is because those who do not believe it takes force to make people free of a tyrant continually point to "the terrible cost and nothing to show for it". The point of comparisons with wars past is not to say that 4,000 dead are nothing, but to show that had success been measured by fewest number dead WW2 would have stopped in April 1942 with a fascist Europe and an Asia ruled by Japanese tyrants.
Yes, only 4,000 and and so much to show for it: a sputtering economy, becoming an international bete noir, and 1 million Iraqi casualties. Did I mention the 4,000 dead?
And it has done nothing to create new ice cream flavors, flying cars, or cure cancer either!!
If you'd like to show evidence that improving the economy was ever a goal of the Iraq war, some of us would be happy to consider your point, but since it has nothing to do with why we're there, we won't. Similarly, if you would like to document the million Iraqi’s killed, we’d like to see that, too. I suspect asking for evidence that our goal was to improve the image of America around the world also requires evidence, but that would be repeating myself.
======
King George the Retard started it because Iraq "posed an imminent threat" to us.
Yes, and that was correct since Saddam had the means to restart his WMD programs, evidence of which was confirmed on entry into Iraq. In addition, he had shown to have a willingness to use them and to support terrorism, ie, that he was paying the families of suicide bombers in Palestine, as well as having used the weapons against his own people. That's what imminent means: That he was a loose cannon, capable of wrecking havoc at any time, and he was wrecking havoc.
Any reasonable person would also accept that shooting at British and American planes who were enforcing the no-fly zone agreement is pretty imminent when the bombs/bullets fly past the airplanes.
Where are the WMDs that Saddam absolutely had?
Strawman. The burden of proof that Saddam did not have weapons was with him, not us. He had been given 12 years under UN inspections to prove that he had destroyed the weapons HE, HIMSELF accounted for in inventories he submitted to the UN. He agreed to the terms of the UN cease fire which was a full accounting of weapon stockpiles and proof of their destruction. He did not do that, IN TWELVE YEARS.
If you say you have 10 biological bombs, and you demonstrate that you've destroyed 9 of them, what happened to the 10th one? If you don't prove that you destroyed it (as agreed to) then any reasonable person will assume you still have it. His other shenanigans with weapons inspectors gave everyone reasonable cause and suspicion to believe that he still had the weapons (and some of them were found). The condition of them was irrelevant because that wasn’t the agreement. The agreement was to account for and prove that all were destroyed.
In addition, there were some of the originally documented weapons that were undestroyed found, and the materials and machinery hidden to rebuild them, once the inspections ended.
Oh, now we're freeing the Iraqi people?
Strawman. That was always the goal of the Iraq war--that we can no longer allow a nation to be the breeding ground for terrorism and to give terrorists and tyranny a place to exist. That has been the foundation of the Bush Doctrine, from inception. It IS the Bush Doctrine, in fact. That terrorism in any place or any form can no longer be allowed to exist unchecked. We can't eliminate all of it, and can't be everywhere at once, but that is the long term goal.
Now if you would like to concede that your facts are wrong, your thesis faulty, then I'm sure that others would be willing to continue discussing these points, but until then, you're not bringing any new (factual) information to the party, and are instead engaging in falsehoods, strawmen, and propaganda.
This post has been removed by the author.
I apologize for monopolizing your comments, Gateway Pundit, but I'd like to share one more point:
Documented civilian deaths from violence in Iraq:
82,476 – 89,996
Last I checked, there was a huge disparity between @90,000 and 1,000,0000.
Unless there is evidence to suggest that the disparity of 910,000 on the reported civilian deaths, we can consider that flase statistic as a lie.
The more battles you include, and the longer back in time you go, the clearer it gets that war is getting safer all the time. Add some pre-WW2 battles and even the very worst days of WW2 look like statistical noise on the average daily death scale, and Iraq completely disappears.
United States Army short dining prayer:
“God Bless the Armed Forces of the United States of America and all those who serve in them.”
Sergeant Michael P. Mauer
United States Army
1984 - 1992
What the author FAILS to realize is that only ONE, yes, ONE person died due to hostile action (AKA WAR) during the Clinton Administration, whereas those who died due to hostile action during Bush's War sky rocketed. So, the comparison is hollow and this author should be fired for making an elementary mistake in journalism.
wow. I stumbled on this webpage and it amazes me how ignorant people still are. I do not mean stupid either, I mean ignorant because you choose to look at bias information and criticize the left side without looking at both sides. Lets not forget that there is no war in Iraq it is a conflict and that we should only be in "conflict" with Afghanistan since they are the source. Now about the twin towers, how deep have you actually questioned without just taking the word of Fox news and other media outlets that are fed by only the right during the time of the incident. Now Lets look at history again. WWI &WWI cause depressions in America that caused major bills to be passed to rebuild the economy. We suffered major losses and still regret sending our troops to Vietnam because of the deficit we built up solely based on that. Now ask yourself again if even one American life is worth the price of a barrel. When it comes down to it I choose to not be biased and to stand there and say how great bush is is baffling to me. His intelligence is definitely not whats holding up his puppet strings. Look at the economy and then look at who is benefitting from people who work hard to keep up with the prices of the pumps and now everything as our economy crashes. Who is benefitting is cheney and bush and their people. Complain about clinton all you want but the economy was not going to into repression during his days in office and employment was at an all time high. Now if thats not enough look around the world and watch how fall we fall down the list of living standards. We used to be 5th, Canada even makes more than our greenback is worth when it only used to be $.68 to our $1.00. the euro is also almost double the greenback. Now finally tell me I am wrong, but please be educated about it not just some good christian or person who was raised to believe the way their parents do. Your parents were probably boomers and their generation is set for life, while they left ours in the shitter.
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