Evacs

From time to time I've compared raw casualties and medical evacuations from Iraq, Vietnam and other conflicts.  After a really bloody December and now Bush's escalation plan kicking into gear, I thought maybe I should see where we're at.

According to the latest figures there have been a grand total of 47,657 non-mortal casualties over almost 4 years of year, of which 35,704 were Army evacs¹.  During Vietnam over the comparable time (January 1965-October 1968), there were 74,897 Army evacs, or just over twice as many as from Iraq.

With the so-called "surge" in the back of my mind, and all the rhetoric about how goddamned important Iraq is to the survival of humanity and cute puppies, I wondered about relative troops levels².  We've had troop strength of anywhere from 92k to 160k in Iraq (averaging roughly 140k), and 184k to 536k in Vietnam (about 400k on average) up to the equivalent point in the war.  That's almost three times the deployment in the previous war than we have now at this most critical juncture ever in the history of the world.

As usual, I don't have much of a point when I do these stat-heavy things, but the evac data does seem to continue a pattern that shows our casualty rate is relatively higher in Iraq than it was in Vietnam³.  Other more important comparisons, however, might be that this war is similar to the earlier one in that it's dreadfully unpopular, unwinnable, and achieves nothing strategically.  Oh, we're the unwelcome aggressors, too.  That's gotta count for something.

ntodd

1 - only reason I focus on Army is that's the most consistent info I've been able to find across conflicts.  No offense the USMC and Navy.

2 - not that this says anything real about the intensity of fighting or anything, but I thought it might still be instructive to a certain degree.

3 - yeah, you can play games with statistics, particularly relative comparisons, but still...