[NYTr] Military Statistics: Iraq 2004 like Vietnam 1966

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

sent by Dave Muller (southnews) - Dec 28, 2004

Slate - Dec 27, 2004
http://slate.msn.com/id/2111432/

Iraq 2004 Looks Like Vietnam 1966

Adjusting body counts for medical and military changes.

by Phillip Carter and Owen West
Slate Military analysis

Monday, Dec. 27, 2004 - Soldiers have long been subjected to invidious 
generational comparison. It's a military rite of passage for new 
recruits to hear from old hands that everything from boot camp to combat 
was tougher before they arrived. The late '90s coronation of the 
"Greatest Generation"which left many Korean War and Vietnam War 
veterans scratching their headsis only the most visible cultural example.

Generational contrasts are implicit today when casualties in Iraq are 
referred ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11
/10/wirq10.xml ) to as light, either on their own or in comparison to 
Vietnam. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, for 
example, last July downplayed the intensity of the Iraq war on this 
basis, arguing that "it would take over 73 years for US forces to incur 
the level of combat deaths suffered in the Vietnam war."
( http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Archive/B.20040702.IraqViet/
B.20040702.IraqViet.pdf )

But a comparative analysis of U.S. casualty statistics from Iraq tells a 
different story. After factoring in medical, doctrinal, and 
technological improvements, infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out 
just as intense 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 the battles for Fallujah in 2004, tell a similar tale: 
Today's grunts are patrolling a battlefield every bit as deadly as the 
crucible their fathers faced in Southeast Asia.

Economists like to quote statistics in "constant dollars," where they 
factor in historical inflation rates to produce statistics that allow 
for side-by-side comparison. Warfare is more complex than 
macroeconomics, but it is possible to produce a similar "apples to 
apples" comparison for casualties across conflicts. In a recent 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 U.S. troops die of 
wounds sustained in combat ( 
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/351/24/2471 ). The argument 
follows a 2002 study that tied improvements in U.S. civilian trauma 
medicine to the nation's declining murder rate ( 
http://hsx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/6/2/128 ). While firearm 
assaults in the United States were rising, the murder rate was falling, 
largely because penetration wounds that proved fatal 30 years ago were 
now survivable. Thus, today's murder rate was artificially depressed in 
comparison to the 1960s.

Gawande applied the same methodology to U.S. casualty statistics in 
previous wars, arriving at a "lethality of wounds" rate for each 
conflict. In World War II, 30 percent of wounds proved deadly. In Korea, 
Vietnam, and the first Gulf War, this rate hovered between 24 percent 
and 25 percent. But due to better medical technology, doctrinal changes 
that push surgical teams closer to the front lines, and individual armor 
protection for soldiers, this rate has dropped to 10 percent for 
Operation Iraqi Freedom for all wounds. For serious wounds that keep a 
soldier away from duty for more than 72 hours, the mortality rate is now 
16 percent. Simply, a soldier was nearly 1.5 times more likely to die 
from his wounds in Vietnam than in Iraq today.

This disparity between the "lethal wound" rates has profound 
implications. Analogy is a powerful tool for perspective, and Vietnam 
still reverberates, but the numbers must reflect the actual risks. In 
1966, for example, 5,008 U.S. servicemen were killed in action in 
Vietnam ( http://www.vietnamwall.org/ ). Another 1,045 died of 
"non-hostile" wounds (17 percent of the total fatalities). Since Jan. 1, 
2004, 754 U.S. servicemen and -women have been killed in action in Iraq 
( http://icasualties.org/oif/ ), and 142 more soldiers died in 
"non-hostile" mishaps (16 percent of the fatalities, similar to 
Vietnam). Applying Vietnam's lethality rate (25 percent) to the total 
number of soldiers killed in action in Iraq this year, however, brings 
the 2004 KIA total to 1,131.

The scale can be further balanced. In 1966, U.S. troops in Vietnam 
numbered 385,000. In 2004, the figure in Iraq has averaged roughly 
142,000 ( http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat_es.htm
). Comparing the burden shouldered by individual soldiers in both 
conflicts raises the 2004 "constant casualty" figure in Iraq to 3,065 
KIA. Further, casualties in Iraq fall more heavily on those performing 
infantry missions. Riflemenas well as tankers and artillerymen who 
operate in provisional infantry units in Iraqbear a much higher 
proportion of the risk than they did in Vietnam. In Vietnam, helicopter 
pilots and their crews accounted for nearly 5 percent of those killed in 
action. In Iraq in 2004, this figure was less than 3 percent. In 
Vietnam, jet pilots accounted for nearly 4 percent of U.S. 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 
doctrinal changes. In World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, attrition 
warfare dominated infantry operations. Today's commanders fight 
differently, first shaping the battlefield with air power and artillery, 
then committing ground troops to attack enemies weakened by these 
barrages or bypassing them 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 
significantly, buildings hide Iraqi insurgents from aerial observation 
and protect them from incoming ordnance. Cities also make it easy for 
small bands of insurgents to hide among the civilians. In Fallujah, the 
Iraqi insurgents who burrowed into the city had to be pried out by 
American infantryjust as the Marines did when they fought to retake Hue 
City in 1968.

The Hue comparison is illuminating. In Hue, three Marine battalions 
(roughly 3,000 men) plunged into a vicious house-to-house fight with 
12,000 North Vietnamese, ultimately routing them after suffering harsh 
losses. In April 2004, three Marine battalions attacked several thousand 
terrorists in Fallujah and were days away from taking the city when the 
White House called off the attack. In November, three new Marine 
battalions joined two Army mechanized infantry battalions in a sweeping 
attack to retake the city. They succeeded, although outbreaks of 
fighting continue. While the North Vietnamese fought a coordinated 
defensive battle for Hue City until they were annihilated, the 
terrorists in Fallujah fought in small 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 and 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 that will continue to 
take lives, like the three Marines who encountered yet another pocket of 
fighters last week.

Hue and Fallujah provide one of the best generational comparisons of 
combat because both battles unfolded similarly. Without controlling for 
any of the advances in medical technology, medical evacuation, body 
armor, or military technology, U.S. losses in Fallujah almost equal 
those of Hue. If you factor in the improvements in medical technology 
alone, then the fight for Fallujah was just as costly (or maybe more so) 
as that for Hue, as measured by the number of mortal wounds sustained by 
U.S. troops.

That today's fighting in Iraq, by these calculations, may actually be 
more lethal than the street fighting in Vietnam should not be taken 
lightly. Vietnam was marked by long periods of well-fought, sustained 
combat but little perceptible gain. Volunteers outnumbered conscripts by 
nine to one in the units that saw combat during the war's early days in 
1966, and 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 of the fighting and dying, the country's faith evaporated. 
Today's burden is not wide, but it is deep. Communities such as 
Oceanside, Calif., home to Camp Pendleton ( http://www.cpp.usmc.mil/)
and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, have suffered tremendous loss 
during this warnearly one-quarter of U.S. 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 
casualties as "light," noting that typically tens of thousands of 
Americans must die in war before domestic support crumbles. Both miss 
the point. The casualty 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.

[Phillip Carter is an attorney and former Army officer who writes on 
military and legal affairs from Los Angeles. Owen West, a trader for 
Goldman Sachs, served in Operation Iraqi Freedom with the Marines.]