I found this extensive commentary analysis on the current war in Iraq and past wars. Is the analysis correct? Looks like thinks are going quite well.
realclearpolitics.com
November 30, 2004
The Myth of Counting Casualties
By Donald Sensing
Brian Gifford writes in the Washington Post that the "historically light" casualties of American forces in Iraq are deceptive in their import and that they bode much worse than things might seem. But as a research fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at the University of California at Berkeley, he should have been able to do better research.
First his claim, coming at the end of his piece:
The focus on how "light" casualties have been so far rather than on what those casualties signify serves to rationalize the continued conduct of the war and prevents us as a nation from confronting the realities of conditions in Iraq. Even more troubling, daily casualties have almost tripled since before the first attack on Fallujah in April. Conditions are getting worse, not improving. To be sure, American forces are winning the body count. That the insurgency is nonetheless growing more effective in the face of heavier losses makes it difficult to imagine an exit strategy that any reasonable person would recognize as a "victory."
I'll discuss the non-merits of this claim later. First, here are the figures he uses to buttress his claim:
* Gifford writes of American casualties in World War Two and Vietnam (skipping Korea, for some reason):
Compared with the more than 405,000 American personnel killed in World War II and the 58,000 killed in Vietnam, Iraq hardly seems like a war at all.
Gifford's method, though, is deficient. There were indeed approximately 405,000 deaths from all causes among all US troops in WW2, including troops who never left the States. During the years of the Vietnam war American forces lost 47,410 KIA, approximately 10,000 non-battle dead in Vietnam and 32,000 dead elsewhere in the world. Hence, from all causes and in all places, American forces suffered not 58,000 but 90,000 dead during the Vietnam war (cite).
* Gifford next delineates the obvious fact that the ratio of dead to wounded in the Iraq war is the lowest of any of America's wars, but he gets the numbers wrong there, too:
In World War II there were 1.7 wounded for every fatality, and 2.6 in Vietnam; in Iraq the ratio of wounded to killed is 7.6. This means that if our wounded today had the same chances of survival as their fathers did in Vietnam, we would probably now have more than 3,500 deaths in the Iraq war.
The problem is that Gifford computes the ratio of killed to wounded for WW2 based on deaths from all causes anywhere, the ratio for Vietnam based on battle and non-battle dead only in the Vietnam theater, and never explains what raw numbers he uses for Iraq. Because thewhole basis for his argument is the numerical relation of dead to living, these errors are fatal. As well, he misstates the number of living in those wars, too.
Let's compare apples to apples. The ratio of killed to wounded can't sensibly include non-battle dead. It can only meaningfully compare killed in action to wounded in action. Therefore:
*
World War Two's ratio of combat wounded (671,846) to combat deaths (291,557) in WW2 was 2.3:1, not 1.7:1 as Gifford avers.
* The same ratio for Vietnam was 153,303 to 47,410, or 3.28:1, not 2.6 as Gifford claims(see tables).
* According to a DOD fact sheet dated today, in Iraq there have been 9,326 wounded and 981 battle deaths, for a ratio of 9.5:1, not 7.6:1 as Gifford writes.
Another Gifford stat:
During World War II, the United States lost an average of 300 military personnel per day [from all causes, anywhere - DS]. The daily figure in Vietnam was about 15 [it was actually about 23 per day from all causes, anywhere - DS].
The Iraq average is two per day, says Gifford (pretty close, I think, but he doesn't account for non-Iraq deaths). Gifford says that the effect of losing two troops per day is greater than one might think because the total force is so much smaller than earlier wars. During the Vietnam war, he says, America had 3.5 million troops in uniform at its height, compared to 1.4 million today. But the Vietnam war cost only one-fourth more casualties as the Iraq war when measured as a percentage of the total active-duty force, says Gifford.
Again, Gifford can't keep his numbers straight. There weren't 3.5 million troops in uniform during the Vietnam war, there were that many who served there over the war's ten-year period. There were 8.7 million who served somewhere, including Vietnam, during the ten years. Likewise, there are approximately 1.4 million service members overall today, but about 140,000 serving in Iraq.
If we want to do what Gifford tries to do - compute the ratio of KIA to the overall force, by war, then we have to use corresponding numbers for each war:
* During World War Two, 16 million men and women served altogether. Of them, 1.82 percent were killed in battle; 2.53 percent died from all causes.
* During Vietnam, 8,744,000 served altogether. Of them, 0.54 percent were KIA, 1.03 percent died from all causes.
* The Iraq war is not over yet, so any figures are preliminary. The 2004 active-duty end strength authorized for all the services is 1.4 million (it will increase slightly next year). Because the war is only three years old, there hasn't been near the personnel turnover that the other two wars experienced over their periods. Neither has there been a massive expansion of the force. There has been a large callup of the reserve components, though, and these troops are no longer counted against end-strength totals as they were before. So somewhat more than 1.4 million persons have served; I am going to guess about 1.7 million.
Of them, 1,041 (0.06 percent) were KIA (not only in Iraq). I was not able to find the number on non-battle, non-theater deaths since 2001, but did learn that 435 members died accidentally in 2000. Because the overall accident rate since 2001 has been rising, I'll presume that 2002-2004 have claimed the lives of 1,500 members total by accident, including accidental deaths in theaters. That means that of the 1.7 million persons I estimate to have served since 2001, approximately 2,451 have died from all causes, an overall rate of 0.15 percent.
These numbers mean that Gifford is quite wrong. The Vietnam loss rate per the total force was not a mere one-fourth higher than today, it was almost seven times higher than today, and the WW2 rate was almost 17 times higher.
So Gifford has completed a mathematical non-sequitur. His numerical categories are inconsistent from one war to the next. And he concludes that the overall force can't take the strain, over the long haul, of its loss rate of two per day because its effect is greater proportionally than that of earlier wars. But he simply didn't compute correctly. The GWOT's loss rate is many times smaller proportionally than any earlier war.
Then Gifford leaps from incorrect math to conclusions unjustified by any math, correctly computed or not. Gifford says that the Iraq insurgency is "growing more effective" because, as he notes, "daily [American] casualties have almost tripled" since April. But heavier direct combat would naturally result in higher friendly casualties. Gifford simply dismisses the fact that "American forces are winning the body count" because he doesn't understand the saguinary calculus of war.
In the Civil War, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant observed he could lose two soldiers for every one Gen. Lee lost, and still win. An article in the Air Force Association magazine in 2003 discussed casualties in their historical context, including this nugget:
Departing from the more cautious approaches of his predecessors, Grant threw the mass of his Army of the Potomac, again and again, against Robert E. Lee’s retreating Army of Northern Virginia.
Grant’s campaign was marked by the large numbers of killed and wounded. To get the job done, he was willing to accept higher casualties than he inflicted.
In the first month, according to Weigley, the Army of the Potomac “suffered 55,000 casualties, not far from the total strength with which the rival Army of Northern Virginia began the month.” Lee’s army took 32,000 casualties that month, but Lee had more difficulty than Grant did in replenishing his ranks.
Militaries have known for centuries what Mr. Gifford does not: engaging the enemy in intensive combat is more costly in lives than not engaging them. Rising US casualties at the moment are not related to whether we are winning or losing overall. By Gifford's reasoning, we were winning WW2 in 1942 but losing it in 1945. We invaded Guadalcanal in August 1942, for example, losing 1,600 dead and 4,400 wounded securing it. In 1945 we invaded Iwo Jima and secured it only after losing 6,800 dead and 19,200 wounded - more American casualties there than Japanese, in fact.
In fact, the number of American dead and wounded rose every year during World War Two, culminating in the abattoir of Okinawa, where so many Americans died in battle (12,000) that it led directly to President Truman's decision to atom-bomb Japan.
Gifford's says his math supports his contention that "conditions are getting worse, not improving" because "the insurgency is nonetheless growing more effective." Hence, there is no end to the war that "any reasonable person would recognize as a 'victory.'" But this conclusion is an ideological one, not a mathematical one. It is qualitative, not quantitative.
Gifford's mathematical house of cards falls from two fundamental causes: his math is wrong and his conclusions can't be supported by math to begin with. It all just proves that figures lie and, well, you know the rest. |
