(no subject)

[winterbadger]

I'm reading an article on Arlington Cemetary (which article is quite fascinating, and which I will address itself later), and it mentions just briefly in passing that in in the month of Grant's 1864 offensive that resulted in the battle of the Wilderness and the Battle of Petersburg, the USA and CSA suffered 82,000 casualties.

In one month.

The US has suffered 31,557 wounded and 4.362 dead in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. In Afghanistan, 4,434 US servicemembers have been wounded since 2001 and 918 killed.

In other words, in eight years of war in two countries, the United States has taken roughly the same losses that the US Army alone (setting aside our Confederate brothers) took in ONE MONTH of combat in the Civil War.

Just a reminder: our population today is 304 million. In 1864, it was around 31 million. We have nearly ten times as many people today as we did then.

As always when I am struck by these sorts of numbers, I am not meaning by any means to denigrate the loss of any man or woman serving in our armed forces today. Every life is precious, especially those of people who are willing to go into harm's way for our country.

No, I am more struck by how irresolute and easily cowed I feel as if our country is today.

On D-Day alone, over 6,600 US personnel were killed or wounded. In the Second Battle of the Marne in 1917, in three weeks, the American Expeditionary Force took over 12,000 casualties. Recently the news media were wringing their hands because the US lost (I think it was) 14 soldiers and airmen in one week, repeating over and over again that it was the most grievous loss we had suffered in that campaign. Yes, that's true. It's also infinitesimal compared to actual losses we have taken in real wars. Those are 14 deaths that are tragic, 14 lives that can never be lived out and fully shared with their families and friends. But there's also a sense of proportion that I feel has been lost, a sense of understanding that I think seems to have passed.

We are at war. We are fighting enemies that, quite seriously, wish our destruction and will do everything in their considerable, if asymmetric power, to carry it out. Why do we think this will be cheap and easy? Why are we so willing to shrink from a loss that, devastating as it is individually, is so little compared to what we have withstood in other causes when we were, arguably, less threatened?

Comments

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Because it's drawn out, because victory in such wars is hard to photograph, and because the casualty reports come in daily.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I think that for many Americans, the situation has always been that if the US itself isn't being attacked (as it was in 2001) there is no immediate threat and war carried on somewhere else is just an elective exercise in military imperialism. I hope it's obvious that I don't subscribe to this, but I've heard it often enough in my 55 years to know it's an idea that runs deep in the collective American unconscious.

[ticktockmary.livejournal.com]

I find those numbers overwhelming too. Of course, many of those deaths were due to disease or infection; we simply have better medical care now. But still.

[winterbadger]

Yes, the Second Boer War in 1899-1902 was the first war where more men died from combat than from disease. :-(

But those 82,000 in 1864 were all combat casualties.

As were the 33,000 Americans killed or wounded in the battle of the Hurtgen Forest, between September 1944 and February 1945.

It's a wonderful thing that our wars have become so less consuming of the bodies of the men and women who fight them. But it's a bad thing (IMO) if the result is we can be cowed into abandoning our resolve by suffering a (relatively) small number of losses.

[shy-kat.livejournal.com]

abandoning our resolve

I think this may be the big hole in your argument. Many of us (including me) didn't *have* resolve about invading these countries. I thought it was a lousy idea without a sufficient plan to start with. So why should i be okay with throwing away lives. (Has anyone EVER won fighting against the locals in the Afghan hills?)

[shy-kat.livejournal.com]

Also, some of us are just opposed to war except as a very last resort--and would have been in the past as well.

[winterbadger]

I realise that many people haven't been in favour of these wars to begin with, but they're not the people whose reaction concerns me.

I'm concerned with the people who do or did think these wars are worth fighting, but who are dismayed at our losses and faltering as a result. I'm saying that I think we have become oversentised, as a nation, to loss, in a way that makes it very easy for our enemies to manipulate us. Whether we fight in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or in the US itself, if we are going to regard what are, historically, very light casualties as an unacceptable loss and contemplate giving up when we have suffered what other generations would regard as a pinprick, then they people we are fighting will know just how to break us completely.

[winterbadger]

(Has anyone EVER won fighting against the locals in the Afghan hills?)

The answer depends entirely on what war one is fighting, how, and for what reason.

Alexander fought a war of conquest in the region and successfully defeated everyone who stood against him. The British and Russians failed doing the same.

The British conducted what in modern terms would be called low intensity conflict or counterinsurgency in what is now Pakistan and along what is now the Af-Pak border for decades, very successfully.

The Taliban fought a pol-mil civil war across the whole of Afghanistan and subordinated the entire country fairly easily.

We fought a war of (effectively) conquest in 1991 and were brilliantly successful.

Since then we have been trying to fight a guerrilla war without using effective counterinsurgency techniques and without anything close to sufficient forces, and we've been able to achieve a stalemate for the most part, but only barely.

If we're going to stay, we need to conduct an effective counterinsurgency campaign, we need to give the theatre commander the forces he needs to do that, and we're going to need to face the fact that we will lose lots more men and women in doing that. I wish the president wasn't taking so long to make up his mind, but I respect him for wanting to consider all the possibilities and make sure he isn't committing the nation to something without being sure we can actually carry it out.

[schizokitty.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I would never minimize the losses we have sustained, especially as I don't think we should be there anyway and could have saved those lives and those of THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS by not going in at all, but I feel like the US is just a little kid going whining home to mommy. And about those civilians? Just looking at Iraq, I think that wringing our hands over ~5000 dead soldiers (who KNOW that death is a very real option in their line of work) is a grotesque insult to the Iraqi civilians who are losing family members, so many of them non-combatants, daily, who are living without reliable electricity or water service, who never know if going out of the house in the morning will see them returning in the evening. Gods!

Argh. Don't get me started...I have to go write fiction... >:-(