csua.org/u/aj2 -> www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2111432&MSID=9E5F41A2C01B42428AD4E334CF6C0FCD
Iraq 2004 Looks Like Vietnam 1966 Adjusting body counts for medical and military changes. I t's a military rite of passage for new recruits to hear from old hands t hat everything from boot camp to combat was tougher before they arrived. The late '90s coronation of the "Greatest Generation"which left many K orean War and Vietnam War veterans scratching their headsis only the mo st visible cultural example.
las t July downplayed the intensity of the Iraq war on this basis, arguing t hat "it would take over 73 years for US forces to incur the level of c ombat deaths suffered in the Vietnam war." But a comparative analysis of US casualty statistics from Iraq tells a different story. After factoring in medical, doctrinal, and technologica l improvements, infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as inten se as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966and in some cases more lethal. Even discrete engagements, such as the battle of Hue City in 1968 and t he battles for Fallujah in 2004, tell a similar tale: Today's grunts are patrolling a battlefield every bit as deadly as the crucible their fath ers faced in Southeast Asia.
Economists like to quote statistics in "constant dollars," where they fac tor in historical inflation rates to produce statistics that allow for s ide-by-side comparison. Warfare is more complex than macroeconomics, but it is possible to produce a similar "apples to apples" comparison for c asualties across conflicts.
article for the New England Journal of Medicine, Atul Gawande (a former Slate contributor) concluded that improvements to military medicine since Vietnam have dramatically reduced the rate at which US troops die of wounds sustained in combat.
study that tied improvements in US ci vilian trauma medicine to the nation's declining murder rate. While fire arm assaults in the United States were rising, the murder rate was falli ng, largely because penetration wounds that proved fatal 30 years ago we re now survivable. Thus, today's murder rate was artificially depressed in comparison to the 1960s. Gawande applied the same methodology to US casualty statistics in previ ous wars, arriving at a "lethality of wounds" rate for each conflict. In Korea, Vietnam, an d the first Gulf War, this rate hovered between 24 percent and 25 percen t But due to better medical technology, doctrinal changes that push sur gical teams closer to the front lines, and individual armor protection f or soldiers, this rate has dropped to 10 percent for Operation Iraqi Fre edom for all wounds. For serious wounds that keep a soldier away from du ty for more than 72 hours, the mortality rate is now 16 percent. Simply, a soldier was nearly 15 times more likely to die from his wounds in Vi etnam than in Iraq today. This disparity between the "lethal wound" rates has profound implications . Analogy is a powerful tool for perspective, and Vietnam still reverber ates, but the numbers must reflect the actual risks.
Iraq, and 142 more soldiers died in "non-hostile" mishaps ( 16 percent of the fatalities, similar to Vietnam). Applying Vietnam's le thality rate (25 percent) to the total number of soldiers killed in acti on in Iraq this year, however, brings the 2004 KIA total to 1,131.
Comparing the burden shouldered by individual soldiers in both conflic ts raises the 2004 "constant casualty" figure in Iraq to 3,065 KIA. Furt her, casualties in Iraq fall more heavily on those performing infantry m issions. Riflemenas well as tankers and artillerymen who operate in pro visional infantry units in Iraqbear a much higher proportion of the ris k than they did in Vietnam. In Vietnam, helicopter pilots and their crew s accounted for nearly 5 percent of those killed in action. In Vietnam, jet pilots account ed for nearly 4 percent of US KIAs. In 2004, the United States did not lose a single jet to enemy action in Iraq. When pilots and aircrews are removed from the equation, 4,602 ground-based soldiers died during 1966 in Vietnam, compared to 2,975 in Iraq during 2004. Perhaps a more significant change is the marriage of technology with doct rinal changes. In World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, attrition warfare do minated infantry operations. Today's commanders fight differently, first shaping the battlefield with air power and artillery, then committing g round troops to attack enemies weakened by these barrages or bypassing t hem altogether. But some situations defy the effects of technology and force infantrymen to fight much the way they did 30 years ago. In urban areas, most signif icantly, buildings hide Iraqi insurgents from aerial observation and pro tect them from incoming ordnance. Cities also make it easy for small ban ds of insurgents to hide among the civilians. In Fallujah, the Iraqi ins urgents who burrowed into the city had to be pried out by American infan tryjust as the Marines did when they fought to retake Hue City in 1968. In Hue, three Marine battalions (roug hly 3,000 men) plunged into a vicious house-to-house fight with 12,000 N orth Vietnamese, ultimately routing them after suffering harsh losses. I n April 2004, three Marine battalions attacked several thousand terroris ts in Fallujah and were days away from taking the city when the White Ho use called off the attack. In November, three new Marine battalions join ed two Army mechanized infantry battalions in a sweeping attack to retak e the city. They succeeded, although outbreaks of fighting continue. Whi le the North Vietnamese fought a coordinated defensive battle for Hue Ci ty until they were annihilated, the terrorists in Fallujah fought in sma ll packs, hiding among the tens of thousands of structures in the "city of mosques." In the three-week battle for Hue, 147 Marines were killed a nd 857 wounded. In the twin battles for Fallujah, more than 104 soldiers and Marines have been killed and more than 1,100 wounded in a battle th at will continue to take lives, like the three Marines who encountered y et another pocket of fighters last week. Hue and Fallujah provide one of the best generational comparisons of comb at because both battles unfolded similarly. Without controlling for any of the advances in medical technology, medical evacuation, body armor, o r military technology, US losses in Fallujah almost equal those of Hue . If you factor in the improvements in medical technology alone, then th e fight for Fallujah was just as costly (or maybe more so) as that for H ue, as measured by the number of mortal wounds sustained by US troops. That today's fighting in Iraq, by these calculations, may actually be mor e lethal than the street fighting in Vietnam should not be taken lightly . Vietnam was marked by long periods of well-fought, sustained combat bu t little perceptible gain. Volunteers outnumbered conscripts by a 9-1 ra tio in the units that saw combat during the war's early days in 1966, an d at first they enjoyed the support of a country that believed in their cause. But as the burden widened and deepened, and conscripts did more o f the fighting and dying, the country's faith evaporated.
Camp Pendleton and the 1^st Marine Expeditionary Force, have su ffered tremendous loss during this warnearly one-quarter of US combat dead in 2004 were stationed at Camp Pendleton. Military leaders should be mindful of this fact: To send infantrymen on their third rotations to Iraq this spring is akin to assigning a trooper three tours in Vietnam: harsh in 1966 and a total absurdity by 1968. Critics of the war may use this analysis as one more piece of ammunition to attack the effort; some supporters may continue to refer to casualtie s as "light," noting that typically tens of thousands of Americans must die in war before domestic support crumbles. The ca sualty statistics make clear that our nation is involved in a war whose intensity on the ground matches that of previous American wars. Indeed, the proportional burden on the infantryman is at its highest level since World War I With next year's budget soon to be drafted, it is time for Washington to finally address their needs accordingly.
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