I was discussing the war in Iraq with someone tonight, and I got to wondering how it measured up to other wars the United States has fought over the years.
In absolute terms of number of troops killed, the war in Iraq comes in at number 12, between the War of 1812 and the Texan War of Independence. I also went to the trouble of comparing the population of the United States at the time of the individual war with the number killed in said war, to extract the rough percentage of the total American population killed in each war. On that scale, the war with Iraq rated 13th, between the Spanish-American War and the Barbary Wars — and it was considerably closer to the latter than to the former. In fact, there are quite a few similarities between the Barbary Wars and the war in Iraq — the most obvious being that both are against terrorist states.
The big question, though: how does Iraq compare to Vietnam? In an absolute comparison, the casualties in Iraq come to less than 3% of the final total for Vietnam. Comparing the percentage of the American population killed in the wars are also informative — in Vietnam the rate was 0.03011%, whereas with Iraq the number is 0.00058% (and my methodology skewed this comparison somewhat; the later years in Vietnam would have had a higher percentage than is indicated).
If the people protesting the war in Iraq realized what these numbers were, do you think they’d use them? Imagine the slogans:
“Iraq — America’s 12th Worst War!”
“Iraq — 92 Mogadishus And Counting” (Check here if you don’t recognize the reference)
“Iraq = 3% of Vietnam!”
(If you’re interested in taking a look at the spreadsheets I used, e-mail me and I’ll upload it or something.)