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Iraq War Historical Comparison

by Richard Okelberry

data source: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

March 20th 2007 - Ask most people around the country how they feel the war in Iraq is going and most will tell you it's a disaster. In fact, a recent CNN opinion poll says that 63% of the US adult population opposes the war in Iraq. Likely, most have formed their opinion of how successful the war in Iraq has been by watching their evening news where nightly the number of US troop casualties is updated and huge media events are put on when the totals pass each 1000 mark. What we don't seem to ever get from national media is a comparison to past conflicts as a measuring perspective. In reality, the war in Iraq has been one of the most successful military campaigns in US history. When averaging the number of US combat casualties per day we find that the Iraq war is second only to the Revolutionary war for the lowest number of combat fatalities per day. Even then we must remember that statistics from the Revolutionary war did not include the mercenary or Native American combatants that participated heavily in that war. Furthermore, there were multitudes of militiamen that fought on the side of the American separationists that were never considered actual members of the US military as well as a considerable number of colonists that sided with Great Britain during the conflict. Even when we look at the total

Gulf War	147
Spanish-American War	385
Mexican War	1,733
War of 1812	2,260
Iraq War	3,218
American Revolution	4,435
Korean War	33,741
Vietnam War	47,410
World War I	53,402
World War II	291,557
Civil War	1,190,414

deaths per conflict we find that the Iraq war ranks 5th for least number of casualties with 3,218 lost souls. By comparison, the Vietnam War, which is most often compared to the Iraq War, took the lives of 47,410 servicemen. Of course it's easy to forget when looking at numbers that these are actual lives lost. However, it is even more disturbing when our national media downplays the overwhelming comparative success our service men are having during this conflict.

- Richard Okelberry, Managing Editor

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