Naval History Forums

Here is a good site with up to date information about casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://www.icasualties.org/

Operation Iraqi Freedom
http://www.icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx

Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan
http://www.icasualties.org/OEF/index.aspx

Basically we have the following from José´s links:

1. Afganistan. 9 years of conflict. 1,533 fatalities. (0,47 casualites per day)
2. Iraq. 7 years of conflict. 4,685 fatalities. (1,83 casualties per day)

This is a very high contrast, let´s say, with Vietnam:

1. 14 years from 1959 to 1975.
2. Killed: 59,159 ( 11,58 casualties per day)
3. MIA: 2,000
4. Wounded: 303,635

Regarding all these conflicts as ill concieved operations leading to major defeat while letting public opinion to be a part of military planning I can show the real price of victory, the one the politicians doesn´t want to pay:

NORMANDY, June 6th, 1944. (1 day in WWII Allied Operations)
Result: Decisive and astonishing allied victory

Deaths US: 1,465
Missing US: 5,138

Deaths Britain: 2,700

Deaths Canada: 500

That is: 9,803 in a SINGLE DAY. But the result was victory to later generations

ANTIETAM CREEK

Deaths (total, North and South): 3,645
Wounded: (total, North and South): 17,292

The price of Victory is high and tests the will of nations and their leaders to accept it. Of course, not being one of those sent to die we are not in a right to go and cry "War!" from the cozy of our homes. But the numbers are revealing, as it is the weakness of once strong nations.

Just for the record, we have this:

Casualties of World War II:

GERMANY: 5,533,000 military deaths, 2,800,000 civilians

JAPAN: 2,120,000 military deaths, 580,000 civilians

CHINA: 3,000,000 military deaths, 7,000,000 civilians

UNITED KINGDOM: 382,700 military deaths, 67,100 civilians

SOVIET UNION: 10,700,000 military deaths, 14,154,000 civilians

FRANCE: 217,600 military deaths, 267,000 civilians

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 416,800 military deaths, 1,700 civilians


In order to evaluate why the many cry, nowadays, it is good to have these numbers clear, to have perspective.

Karl Heidenreich wrote:
1. Afganistan. 9 years of conflict. 1,533 fatalities. (0,47 casualites per day)
2. Iraq. 7 years of conflict. 4,685 fatalities. (1,83 casualties per day)

This is a very high contrast, let´s say, with Vietnam:

1. 14 years from 1959 to 1975.
2. Killed: 59,159 ( 11,58 casualties per day)
3. MIA: 2,000
4. Wounded: 303,635


In order to evaluate why the many cry, nowadays, it is good to have these numbers clear, to have perspective.

Yes. Lets get some perspective and include the civilian casualties or do they not matter?

Yes. Lets get some perspective and include the civilian casualties or do they not matter?

I was thinking in the comparison between combatants, with the exception of WWII in which those numbers were incredible huge, specially for the chinese, the russians, germans and japanese. As far as I know there were no official civilian US casualties in Vietnam, but it´s true that the vietnamese civilians suffered, also, huge numbers of casualties.

The idea is to stablish a numerical or statistical comparison between the link posted by José and other contemporary military conflicts.

How about Iraqi and Afghan civilians?
I understand Vietnamese civilian deaths were measured in the millions.
You can not ignore these victims in any form of accounting.

mkenny wrote:

Karl Heidenreich wrote:
1. Afganistan. 9 years of conflict. 1,533 fatalities. (0,47 casualites per day)
2. Iraq. 7 years of conflict. 4,685 fatalities. (1,83 casualties per day)

This is a very high contrast, let´s say, with Vietnam:

1. 14 years from 1959 to 1975.
2. Killed: 59,159 ( 11,58 casualties per day)
3. MIA: 2,000
4. Wounded: 303,635

In order to evaluate why the many cry, nowadays, it is good to have these numbers clear, to have perspective.

Yes. Lets get some perspective and include the civilian casualties or do they not matter?

Well a link off the pages Jose listed civilian casualties from 2005 to date as 46,562. See:
http://www.icasualties.org/Iraq/iraqide ... iod=Nov-09
That's about 2/3 of the British cvilian fatalities in WWII and a lot less thanthe others listed except for the US. Given that there's at least one civil war going on there and various terrorist actions as well as just plain criminal actions included in the list ....

lwd wrote:
Well a link off the pages Jose listed civilian casualties from 2005 to date as 46,562. See:
http://www.icasualties.org/Iraq/iraqide ... iod=Nov-09
That's about 2/3 of the British cvilian fatalities in WWII and a lot less thanthe others listed except for the US. Given that there's at least one civil war going on there and various terrorist actions as well as just plain criminal actions included in the list ....

The link itself has the warning:

"This is not a complete list, nor can we verify these totals. This is simply a compilation of deaths reported by news agencies. Actual totals for Iraqi deaths are much higher than the numbers recorded on this site."

It re-directs you to another site that gives a total of 94,349 – 102,949 and I know even this is disputed.

One thing that you must take into consideration is the number of wounded. In Iraq for example for 4,367 US deaths there have been 31,557 wounded. That's 7.22 wounded for every death. In World War II, I think the proportion was about 3 wounded for 1 death. Body armor saves the lifes of many soldiers but it does not prevent injures in legs and arms and many of those wounded now would have died in Vietnam and many more during World War II.

Often the wounded come home and are unable to function as a civilian. I see them begging on highway interchanges every day.

mkenny wrote: ...It re-directs you to another site that gives a total of 94,349 – 102,949 and I know even this is disputed.

Indeed. It's not even clear how to count the civilian casualties much less do it accurately. Indeed which ones you want to count will depend on just what you are looking at or what you wish to prove. The situation in Iraq is certainly more complicaed than most of WWII (the Balkans may be an exception) and probably more so than Vietnam.

mkenny:

How about Iraqi and Afghan civilians?
I understand Vietnamese civilian deaths were measured in the millions.
You can not ignore these victims in any form of accounting.

I agree with you and I also regard those casualties as both terrible and sad. But when I took José´s links and posted the casualties in Vietnam, WWII or Antietam Creek my intention was not directed for a heads up on the terrible cost of war but in the martial sense of the effort done, which is still the motive of the post.

Best regards,

The Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) was the bloodiest battle in the Civil war, with about 23,000 casualties, so I think Karl's numbers must be off.

Bgile:

I too was confused at the start with those numbers because I was in the understanding that Antietam was the bloodiest day in American History, before D Day, it seems. Now, when we heard of Civil War casualties they also include the wounded, which were a terrible number in those times and I do believe that a great percentage of those died AFTER the battle itself, which raises the tally of wound related infections. But the field dead, recognized, is on the level of those I posted. I have a complete series of books on the Civil War but, as you may be aware by now, I´m not in my country and so I don´t have those sources with me. I relied in internet, which is not the best source whatsoever.

I think that the bloodiest battle ever fought in the American soil is Gettysburg. But here we must also be carefull: in many places (including the movie) they told us that in Gettysburg both enemies received 50,000 casualties. But of those, only about 8,000 really died at the field and the rest were wounded or taken prisioner. Which is why Gettysburg is far behind, in the terrible field of overall fatalities, of Somme (50K dead in one day) or Cannae (50K to 75K dead in one day) which could easily be, any both of them, as the bloodiest days in Human History.

The issue I have with Iraq and Afghanistan is over why Allied forces are still being involved there. WW2 and Vietnam were conflicts fought for a specific, defined purpose. These current conflicts are being conducted, but for what actual strategic purpose?

Iraq: Saddam and his two sons are dead, so no comeback there. The exit strategy isn't clear, so the situation just continues as it is.

Afghanistan: what is the objective? Destruction of Al Qaeda? The forces are not doing a very good job of it.

Casualties are an inevitable consequence of warfare. They have to be justifiable in terms of the military objectives. Here - well what are the objectives? What are we taking casualties for? All I see from Gordon Brown and President Obama is spin. And Vice President Biden, a foreign affairs specialist, is very quiet on this matter.

RF wrote:The issue I have with Iraq and Afghanistan is over why Allied forces are still being involved there. WW2 and Vietnam were conflicts fought for a specific, defined purpose. These current conflicts are being conducted, but for what actual strategic purpose?

To leave behind a reasonably stable government unlikely to align with terrorist. I thought that was obvious.

Iraq: Saddam and his two sons are dead, so no comeback there. The exit strategy isn't clear, so the situation just continues as it is.

The situation has hardlly been just continueing. There has been considerable change over the last few years and at least the US exit strategy is fairly clear. Leave once the (hopefully democratic) government is sufficiently stable.

Afghanistan: what is the objective? Destruction of Al Qaeda? The forces are not doing a very good job of it.
....

Actually Al Qaeda has been taken down quite a few notches over the past several years. To the point that they are in essence only a perifial element in Afghanistan. The issues there are Islamic radicals in the form of the Taliban and drugs along with the fact that Afghanistan could be the classic example of a failed state if it had ever really qualified as a "state".