On 6 June 44 we killed 900 Americans on the D-day invasion beaches in three hours of imprecise bombing. We killed 700 in a training accident 10 days before (drowned in the North Sea).
Our WWII combat veterans would marvel at our soldiers' good fortune today.
Very good point. It is only people with no historical perspective who are screaming about our casualties in Iraq as being more than they can bear. None of us revel in war or a single American G.I. being harmed and we grieve for their loss. But did we REALLY expect the war on terror would be won on the cheap? I really thought by now we'd have lost 10,000 dead military men and women in the war on terror. If you had told me after 9-11 that 3 years into the war on terror we'd have suffered fewer than 1500 dead in Afghanistan and wherever else the war took us, I'd have said you are nuts! As you say, we've been quite fortune, as sad as the losses we have endured have been.