bttt
Beautiful. Thanks for posting. I says it all, doesn’t it?
Total servicemembers (Conf.) 1,050,000
Battle deaths (Conf.) 74,524 (7.1% death rate)
World War II (1940–1945)3
Total servicemembers 16,112,566
Battle deaths 291,557 (1.8% death rate)
Korean War (1950–1953)
Total servicemembers 5,720,000
Serving in-theater 1,789,000
Battle deaths 33,741 (1.9% death rate)
Vietnam War (1964–1975)
Total servicemembers 8,744,000
Serving in-theater 3,403,000
Battle deaths 47,424 (1.4% death rate)
Global War on Terror (as of Sept. 30, 2006)5
Total Servicemembers (Worldwide) 1,384,968
Deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan 165,000
Battle Deaths 2,333 (1.4% death rate)
Historically the WOT is a very low casualty rate.
Thanks for posting. Steyn really does put the hand-wringing, left wing ninnies in proper perspective. God Bless America and all who have fought and given their lives for her.
But that's the difference between then and now: the loss of proportion. They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren't a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screw-ups worth re-examining, but they weren't a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else. They had hellish setbacks but they didn't lose sight of the forest in order to obsess week after week on one tiny twig of one weedy little tree.
"retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville"
Steyn is one of the only writers who can turn a phrase and hit the nail at the same time, like a boxer with a great left/right combo.
Outstanding! When and how did such a glorious, victorious nation morph into the modern weenie state?
I would would wager that if Mark Steyn, Tom Sowell, and Victor Davis Hanson were the columnists that Americans read instead of the current crop of ultra-lefties, the percentage of Americans who support the war would be in the seventies.
Great post! THANKS!