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Originally Posted by Munchkin03
Yes, there are fewer deaths in the War on Terror than in previous wars, but that's due in part to the fact that there have been major advances in medical treatment. Injuries that may have proven fatal in WWII or even Vietnam are survivable now. Also, the nature of the combat has changed, where the weapons--on both sides--are far more precise in their target than ever before.
Also, for the generations born just after the Vietnam War or who don't live with the shadows of Vietnam, this is our "first war," so it may seem like a lot of people regardless of how you feel about the war.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by VandalSquirrel
You are very correct about injuries and deaths. The two things that changed survival rates the most are helicopters and antibiotics (firstly penicillin). Vietnam was the first US involvement with regular use of helicopters and that changed the survival rate of soldiers immensely, also there are many other advances in technology (medical, transportation, and communications) that increase survival rates of injured soldiers.
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No doubt.
But it's still a low number of injuries or deaths especially considering the length of the US involvement. We don't simply have fewer deaths and an equal number of injuries. We have fewer casualties generally. I'd expect that we'd show that even if we adjusted for the number of people involved, but I'm not eager to do that math. (ETA: The data does have a ratio of deaths vs. injuries in one of the later graphics. What a morbid stat: but it was about 1:1.8 for WWI and it's 1:7.4 for Iraqi Freedom.)
This isn’t attempted commentary on the morality of the war, but quoting the number of injured or dead isn’t a particularly effective anti-war commentary, unless you're just an absolute pacifist.
EATA: it's interesting that the Vietnam survival observation doesn't seem to bear out compared to Korea, unless there were more helicopters in Korea than Vandal Squirrel was thinking. Look at CSR-9
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf.
Maybe that ratio isn't really showing what we're talking about. You'd need some measure of the seriousness of injuries survived, I guess.
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