Historical Perspective on the next “Grim Milestone”
The “Grim Milestone” being the next thousand mark, 4,000 in this case, in U. S. casualties in Iraq.
Each and every lost life in Iraq is a tragedy.
But how do those losses (800/year, 4,000 in total) compare to historic loss rates?
Gateway Pundit has an excellent post from March 19th on this subject, in which he shows that our loss rate relative to our major wars and battles is positively miniscule (0.5% of the daily loss rate for the Battle of the Bulge).
I propose we compare our losses in Iraq to our previous counter insurgency of the same scale.
Philippine-American War/Insurrection
1899 - 1913 U. S. Casualties (Dead and Wounded) 5,000
The casualty rate for the Philippine-American War/Insurrection thus works out to about 357/year or about 1 (0.97) per day, as opposed to the 800/year, 2.19/day fatality rate in Iraq.
The difference in rates is easily explained by the differences in the nature of the two insurgencies. The Philippine Archipelago was effectively isolated and was not a densely populated urban environment. Iraq, by contrast, shares two long land borders with nations hostile to the United States, and most of the heavy fighting (and losses) have been in urban areas. The difference in combat conditions are such that most historians would have expected a five to tenfold increase in loss rates for Iraq as opposed to the Philippine Insurrection. Thankfully, the combination of improved tactics, improved body armor, and greatly improved trauma treatment have more than compensated for the operational challenges.
For further reference, it’s worth noting that the first five years of the Iraq War/Insurgency have resulted in less loss of life among the Armed Forces than the first five years of “peacetime operations” in the Clinton Administration (5,199).
