A Little Iraqi History
Submitted by tony on Wed, 05/14/2008 - 20:09.
After a discussion of the war today, I decided to do a little informal research into the Iraqi war and casualties to compare it to other armed conflicts.
Here's a few tidbits for you. All numbers are approximate and come from sources such as the Iraqi Body Count project, Wikipedia and other fairly reputable Internet news sources.
Coalition military deaths to date: 4,228
US Portion of coalition deaths: 3,921. That's 3,921 US soldiers killed in combat since we started.
In contrast:
Chinese May 12th, 2008 Earthquake: 60,560 dead, may rise as high as 80,000
Vietnam war casualties: Approximately 60,000 US Soldiers killed or missing.
Iraqi insurgent death estimate (as of August 2007:) 18,832. That's 18,832 clear enemy combatants killed by allied forces. The problem with Iraq is identifying who is a clear enemy combatant when they hide as civilians.
In contrast:
Vietnam war North Vietnamese casualties: over 600,000
Iraqi Civilians killed: around 80,000 since the start of the war. It's estimated that around 20,000 of those were by Allied forces, primary collateral damage from the initial airstrike, collateral damage during combat, or mistaken for combatants. The other 60,000 were killed by their own people.
In contrast:
Vietnamese civilian deaths: 2,000,000 estimated
Oh, and how many people did Saddam Hussein either personally kill or order to be "ethnically cleansed?" Estimated at around 2,000,000. Yeah, the total of Vietnamese civilian deaths over the entire conflict. This includes the 150,000 Shia Muslims he had executed and buried in mass graves.
Do I believe any death is good? No. But to those who claim the Iraqi war is killing Americans left and right and is completely unjustified I say look again at the numbers. Just my opinion.
Thanks to the troops first of all
Personally I believe the Saddam Hussein directed the anthrax attack with the US Mail system. This was his M.O. and there was no one else in the world that has the skill and the means and the hate for such a thing. Don't get me wrong. I have no proof only what I have studied of Saddam Hussein's history. I informed high level offficers to keep looking underground for him just before they found him. That too was one of his oddities. We may never know of his involvement.
Let's not forget the thousands (that is correct) that will die on the highways today, as well as needless heart-attack and cancer deaths. Things like AIDS are 100% preventable but still kill hundreds each day.
a few questions
- Was Saddam Hussein actively adding to this two-million body count so that unseating him stopped an on-going problem or is this a number from what is now really old history?
- Where (what country?) did we borrow the money from for the war?
- How does the financial cost of the war, in terms of dollars, compare to basically anything the US has even done in history? How, for instance, does the cost of one month in Iraq compare to say the cost of all medical research being done in the US?
- Was it worth it?
The people who are opposed to the war now simply because they're tired of it and they're tired of the deaths are the same people who were also in favor of the war for all of the wrong reasons way back when. They didn't understand what was going on then and they're similarly confused now.
I appreciate the fact that you've apparently educated a few people (had you thrown in WWII, you really would have blown minds, I suppose), however I don't think the casualty count alone is really the issue. The real issue is: is the total cost in terms of lives and dollars worth the return? And if the return is simply unseating/killing Saddam Hussein, couldn't that have been done for less than 1.5 trillion dollars and fewer lives.
Oil
Let's not forget it is all just about Oil. FULL STOP
This is the real,
This is the real, "inconvenient" truth about this war. Kudos for a well thought out and well written piece.
Aims of wars
I remember that the original aim of Iraq was "to get rid of the WMDs", which were found not to exist. Only then was the aim modified to be "to free the Iraqi people". The worrying thing is it was "evidence" one of my governments (the British one) came up with.
As Nighteen Eighty-Four said"Eurasia is at war with Eastasia and always has been. (or something like that anyway)"
iraq body count
Although the iraq body count site is a useful resource, it only records deaths that are reported by multiple news agencies. It can only really be considered a lower limit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
has a number of estimates from a number of sources. these range up to "1,033,000 violent deaths as a result of the conflict." There are a few other figures, but they are all high than IBC
It might also be worth comparing the populations of the counties. From the current populations according to wikipedia vietnam has 87million vs iraq 29million.
Actually the IBC site has
Actually the IBC site has raised all their estimates in the past month to compensate for that.
Also, if you really read it does say "violent conflict" however it does not say it's related to the war specifically but internal strife in most cases. Iraqi against Iraqi - not involving Allied troops. They state that it's primarily due to crime.
Wow... objectivity amount hackers
I was surprised to see this (accidentally picked up) on my Maemo feed. So often it starts to feel like 99% of the open source/linux/free software community is empty-headed leftists. Some good, clear thought (that happens to reaffirm what I think of as my own good clear thinking) is good to read from this corner of the net.
thanks!
Why is this being syndicated
Why is this being syndicated on Planet Maemo? You've already been barfing off-topic posts onto the Planet Maemo feed, and now this? Please keep things on topic.
Maemo won't delete my RSS feed
I've actually already asked the Maemo guys to drop my feed - it's not directly attached to my account at maemo.org so I can't do it, and after moving to my new blog software the new feed doesn't limit for just the Maemo related posts.
Perspective
That certainly gives some perspective to the matter that I was missing.
I think based on what people get from the media, if you asked a large sample of Americans which conflict had resulted in more casualties, Iraq or Vietnam, you'd probably get the response that more Americans had died in Iraq than in Vietnam.
But in fact, the difference in casualties is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. I really had no clue.
Mine eyes are opened. I'm not happy about the war, about how things are going, the cost to Americans, as far as money, credibility, political capital, etc, but I'm not inclined to think it's a complete debacle anymore.
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