Is Iraq getting worse than Vietnam?

[cynatnite]

More than 20,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in combat in the Iraq war, and about half have returned to duty. While much media reporting has focused on the more than 2,700 killed, military experts say the number of wounded is a more accurate gauge of the fierceness of fighting because advances in armor and medical care today allow many service members to survive who would have perished in past wars. The ratio of wounded to killed among U.S. forces in Iraq is about 8 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 in Vietnam.

"These days, wounded are a much better measure of the intensity of the operations than killed," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The surge in wounded comes as U.S. commanders issue increasingly dire warnings about the threat of civil war in Iraq, all but ruling out cuts in the current contingent of more than 140,000 U.S. troops before the spring of 2007. Last month Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top commander in the Middle East, said "sectarian tensions, if left unchecked, could be fatal to Iraq," making it imperative that the U.S. military now focus its "main effort" squarely on Baghdad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. It is much worse. Screwing up Iraq is the blunder of all blunders.

[BlueIris]

25. Yup.

No words.

[MadMaddie]

2. Only our Vietnam soldiers can answer that for us?

They were there and only they can make the true comparison.....

[TomInTib]

8. Two different programs. See my reply #6.

Different tmes and different people.

Our 18-22 year old kids of today and those of my generation are really different.

I feel so sad for the Grand Theft Auto generation and I fear the consequences are gonna be really ugly.

[Mountainman]

10. Being a Vietnam vet, I wouldn't trade my experience for a tour in Iraq for

anything.

The thing that gets me is that in Vietnam we knew when our tour was up. It gave you hope the closer the day came. These troops in Iraq don't know if they will ever get to go home and stay home. Plus in Vietnam we didn't have the civilians fighting each other in the towns and villages. Vietnam was not going to become a civil war while we stood around watching it happen helplessly.

[hsher]

3. Let me put it in movie terms

Vietnam was an absolute slaughter, and our men were poorly prepared for it. The VC were extremely skilled guerrilla-style fighters fighting on their own turf, and blew up ambushes on American soldiers like nothing we'd ever seen before or have since. Iraq isn't quite that bad yet, but I'm sure it will get there by summer 2007 if we entrench any deeper, and Iran and Syria get into it.

Iraq = typical cowboys and Indians movie gunfight scene
Vietnam = scene in "Aliens" where Gorman's and Apone's crew first meet the aliens

*Big* difference


www.yourmorningleibowitz.blogspot.com
The Daily Show as a comic strip

[Kagemusha]

4. Vietnam had a higher total population and more enemy troops

So it's not all the same. To do their damage, Iraqi insurgents need a lot of IED's and so forth, though the VC certainly did plenty of similar things too. There's no jungle for cover. Having said that, consider the time that's passed; the insurgency has been strengthening for three and a half solid years now and the bad guys have lots of lessons learned that they can draw on.

I don't think you can say *worse* than Vietnam. It's apples and oranges. You can say Iraq is getting bad. Very bad. That's a completely fair statement. It was getting pretty bad last year. Now it's just a nightmare - and not even as bad as it could get.

[wtmusic]

5. No.

Not even close.

But the potential is there.

[TomInTib]

6. What we are overlooking here is that apart from the known casualties

(which were approximately 780 last month)

is that these guys are fighting in mostly urban conditions.

There will be hell to pay when they start re-deploying into the general population of the USA.

[dicknbush]

7. I think it is worse for reasons that have nothing to do with the deaths..

In Vietnam you had a cohesive determined enemy with an objective that was more then just about get the US out of Vietnam...They had a pride of country. They wanted to unite thier country. I do not see this happening in Iraq even if we did everything we said..install democracy help them stnad up so we can stand down blah blah blah. There is no group that I am aware of in Iraq that has a strong desire to create a strong and proud Iraq. You have a mish mash of neighborhoods if you will that have blood feuds. In a way it is like the bloods and the crips and they have been at each others throats for thirty years or more and that is what we have helped create in Iraq. Sadam Hussein as bad as he was was basically a Tito. He was feared but he was a cohesive force that held Iraq together. Of course that is not to say that what is happening now in Iraq would not have happened anyway if Saddam had died orr been killed but at the least we would have no dog in the fight and we America would have the luxery of sitting back and waiting for the victor to emerge and then try to deal with them especially as it regards the oil factor Any way I think Iraq is not as bad as Vietnam in the realm of American lives lost (at least not yet) but as it regrds the resolution of the fighting......this fight will be going on long after we have left I am afraid and in the words of Gahandi " Yes leave. In then end General Yes you will simply leave"

[wtmusic]

11. Iraqis have intense pride in their country

"There is no group that I am aware of in Iraq that has a strong desire to create a strong and proud Iraq"?? Why wouldn't ALL Iraqis want that? This "mish-mash" of neighborhoods, and the implication that all Iraqis are fighting a gang turf war is nonsense. There are 24 million Iraqis and a proud culture behind them, and the violence you see there would pale by what you would see in America if law and order were taken away.

[Selatius]

22. I haven't seen very much evidence of that.

From my view, Iraqis owe more allegiance to their clans and their beloved clerics than they do to any notion of a central state authority. Iraq's culture bares no resemblance to anything seen in the industrialized world. Their culture is far more tribal in nature, not secular, and certainly not nationalistic in nature.

Iraq has never successfully held itself together without the iron rule of a dictatorship or a one-party oligarchy (the Ba'athists). Not since the British partitioned Iraq when they were defeated and driven out by the resistance has there been a stable democratically elected government ruling the entirety of that piece of land for any significant period of time.

[wtmusic]

40. A major reason Iraq has never "held itself together" in modern times

is plundering by Great Britain and the US. When your country is being repeatedly invaded, partitioned, and pillaged there is little possibility of a national identity developing. Yet many Iraqis (I'm basing on interviews before the war that I've read, and blogs like Riverbend) were optimistic about Iraq post-Saddam, and even about reforms under Saddam. They were acutely aware of their history as the cradle of civilization, and considered themselves more cosmopolitan and educated than their Arab neighbors.

For three out of four centuries of Ottoman rule the three chief vilayets (Mosul, Baghdad and Basra) of Iraq were administered from Baghdad, and the region was relatively stable. So I have a hard time accepting that Iraqis as a people are any less capable of self-government than Americans. The 23 million or so Iraqis who are not currently involved in sectarian violence are involved in a far less sectarian struggle for day to day existence, which isn't considered particularly newsworthy.

The best chance Iraq had for democracy was reform. That opportunity is gone.

[TomInTib]

15. Actually, dicknbush, the non-urban Vietnamese were...

a pretty fractured society (if you could call it that).

They had been fighting one another and the French when we stuck our d**k into the blender.

And they still kicked our asses.

The difference was that in Vietnam we focused on the rural regions and in Iraq it is mostly about the cities.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

9. Vietnam - 1961 to 1964

KIA 1,864
WIA 7,337
MIA 18
Total - 9219

Iraq. 2003 to present
KIA As of Saturday, Oct. 7, 2006, at least 2,739
WIA more than 20,600 troops have been wounded in action
MIA 0
Total - 23369

[hsher]

13. I stand corrected

Viva, you just schooled *my* not-knowing ass. Thanks for the stats.
OK, it IS worse than Vietnam.
It IS time for the Revolution. Right now!


www.yourmorningleibowitz.blogspot.com
The Daily Show as a comic strip

[cynatnite]

14. And that's not counting the dead civilians either...

It certainly puts both in a different perspective. I'm leaning towards it's starting to look worse than Vietnam.

[TahitiNut]

23. Until mid-1965, it was mostly MACV.

USARV wasn't formed until July 1965 ... and that's when the KIA/WIA counts soared. From February 1962 until July 1965, it was MACV's war. Prior to that time, the "advisory" role (MAAG) was far more strictly adhered to. MACV adsorbed MAAG in May 1964. USARV and MACV ceased to exist in March 1973.

[onenote]

31. absurd and misleading use of statistics

Yes, from 1961 to 1964 the number of American troops were killed, wounded or missing in action in Vietnam was smaller than the number kia, wia and mia in iraq from 2003 to 2006.

BUT: THERE WERE RELATIVELY FEW US TROOPS IN VIETNAM FROM 1961 TO 1964.
There were only 3200 US troops in Vietnam in 1961, increasing gradually to around 23,000 in 1964. In comparison, from 2003- 2006, the US has had over 130,000 troops in iraq. In 1965, the number of troops in Vietnam increased to over 180,000 -- and the number of deaths in that one year was nearly 2000.

http://members.aol.com/warlibrary/vwatl.htm

[Viva_La_Revolution]

41. I didn't think about that, sorry, it was late

I was just comparing the first years of each.

[Vidar]

32. Interesting stats. Thank you.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

12. Oh God Not By A Long Shot. It Ain't Even Close.

we lost more than 58,000 soldiers in Nam and over 153,000 wounded. Not to mention the 2-5 million casualties the other sides faced. Put that all together and ya got a current war that isn't even close to being that deadly, though it is simply that wrong.

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. No: 300,000 wounded in Vietnam..major combat 1965-1972

We are in Iraq 3 1/2 years with 20,000 wounded. That's 1968+.

It's not even fucking close. If we stay in another 4 years, we might get to 50,000 wounded, or 1/6th Vietnam.

We have 2700 dead. By this time, from the deployment of "official" ground troops in Vietnam in March 1965 through October 1968 = 15838, or almost 6 times as many. In both wounded and dead, it seems that Iraq is about 6 times less dangerous than Vietnam.

It's not even close to Vietnam. The comparison is laughable, and stupid.

[cynatnite]

17. I don't think the comparison is stupid...

just on the numbers alone sure it's lopsided. The Vietnam war was a long time ago. How we fight, the weapons we use and the medical care is far different. We're more advanced in those areas.

As the article showed, the intensity of the fighting has increased. The ratio of wounded to killed is far higher in Iraq than in Vietnam. Just this week it's been reported there are 700-800 weekly attacks. What was the volume of attacks in Vietnam?

When I read that article I saw enough to make me wonder...is this war going to wind up eclipsing Vietnam?

This is a legitimate question that needs asked.

[alcibiades_mystery]

21. You must be from western Pennsylvania.."needs asked"?

Oy, gewalt. Does the floor need washed, too?

The "ratio" of wounded to dead, for those of us who pause to think before we spout off at the lip, says absolutely nothing about the intensity of the combat. Rather, it says something about the medical technoclogy, and that's it. If the "ratio of wounded to dead" is 2:1, with 2700 killed, that would mean that 5400 would be wounded. If it was 8:1 with 675 killed, that would be 5400 wounded. So what. The ratio of wounded to dead tells you nothing comparitively between conflicts, except the different ratio of wounded to dead. It is the absolute numbers in each conflict that tell you whether one is more intense than the other. In three and a half years in Vietnam,, over 15,000 Americans were killed and close to 170,000 wounded. In 3 and a half years in Iraq, 2740 Americans were killed and close to 20,000 wounded. That's it. there's your evidence. Comparisons are stupid given such numbers. The ratio of wounded to dead is completely inconmsequentlial, except as a demonstration of improved battlefield medical attention and medical dust-off.

Point being, you have no point at all, or no capacity to read data critically.

[cynatnite]

26. Insults aside...

which I was not doing and you seem to enjoy in order to feel superior, the fact remains experts in these areas cite better technology in warfare and in medicine is why the casualty rate remains lower than Vietnam.

I think it's safe to say these men know what they are talking about. They are the ones making the comparisons. Even my feeble mind can read English. They are the military experts and using ratios and the frequency of attacks do help gage intensity.

Also, this isn't my evidence. This is what is in the article I cited. With that small data provided I asked the question. It's not stupid and it's something we should begin asking. It's easy to dismiss on the surface which you have apparently done by throwing out numbers.

Vietnam was not in a civil war while the US was there. Vietnam wasn't stuck in the middle of a powder keg like Iraq is. Vietnam doesn't have fighters coming in from all sides just so they can kill Americans and martyr themselves in the process. Vietnam also didn't have Rumsfeld.

BTW, using insults in order to make a point severely weakens any argument you make.

[oblivious]

28. I agree. The insults were completely unwarranted. Weird!

[alcibiades_mystery]

29. It does seem to be a problem with reading

The technology results in fewer deaths than Vietnam relative to wounded. That is, a higher rate of wounded to dead.

I'm not sure why you can't get your head around this simple point: in Vietnam, many more US troops got shot.

If you shoot 3000 people in one country (Country A), and 300 people in another (Country B), the fact that the RATE of wounded to dead in country B is higher only tells you about the rate of wounded to dead. It doesn't tell you which place is more dangerous.

Now, you say "Vietnam was not a civil war while the US was there." OK. What is obvious is that you don't know a damn thing about the history of the Vietnam War. That is an utterly absurd statement. "Vietnam didn't have fighters from all sides coming in..." Uh, yes it did. And they were better armed and trained than the jihadis. "Vietnam didn't have Rumsfeld." No, Vietnam had MacNamara, an idiot of as great a magnitude as Rumsfeld, and Kissinger/Nixon, two additional bloodletters.

[nguoihue]

30. Viet Nam not a civil war?

It was a civil war, among other things including a war of national liberation on one side. ARVN's / RF's / PF's, when motivated to do so, were fighting their own countrymen ... VC / NVA.

[Rex]

18. In ways yes, the amount of depleted uranium we've used must be vast

I won't post the pictures of the kids partially born from Iraqis or Gulf War I vets. You can go google it or someone else can.

It is horrible! Much much worse than the M$M admits.

[Selatius]

19. Iraq will have WORSE CONSEQUENCES if the war is lost than Vietnam

When the US withdrew from Vietnam, the consequences of the war were largely localized.

However, with Iraq, the consequences will have international implications, and it could very easily cause a shift in the world balance of power. The US could be destroyed as a world power; it is that serious.

[TahitiNut]

20. Can't be compared from the outside.

There are just too may differences in the geopolitical and strategic considerations to even come close to listing them. While Viet Nam was wrong-headed and ultimately catastrophic, it wasn't a blatant crime against peace like the invasion and occupation of Iraq, imho. While we actually had an enemy state we fought against, we were prohibited from invading and defeating it. There were so many levels of such insanity, it's almost beyond ken.

The inner experience of those who lived and fought in a combat zone, however, while unique for each person, is probably common in all wars.

With one exception.

For most of us in the Army, we got sent to Viet Nam alone, had to find and build a support group, and then got sent home alone. I don't think there's any way to describe how that feels. It was, as far as I know, the only war were the troops where treated that way as a matter of course. Anyone who'd trivialize this or ignore this really doesn't have an opinion worth considering, imho.

[saigon68]

24. we got sent to Viet Nam alone,

Still struggle with it every day

That's why I'm such a "trouble maker" here

LOL As In

"Bring Em On---ETC ETC

[leftchick]

34. we love your kind of 'trouble making' saigon!

keep it up.

[cynatnite]

27. My apologies, TahitiNut...

I was in no way attempting to trivialize Vietnam or anyone's experience there. If that's how my post came across, I am sorry.

When I saw the numbers and thought about how precarious of a situation Iraq is, it seemed to me that if Iraq hadn't eclipsed Vietnam, it soon could. Rather than jump to a conclusion I thought this was a good question to ask DUer's...most especially those who had been in Vietnam and could draw on their own experience.

[onenote]

33. in terms of U.S. casualties, it is unlikely that iraq will 'eclipse" NAM

Its not even close.

[TahitiNut]

36. None needed. I wasn't being testy toward you ... just in general.

I don't speak for all VNV, but I almost get the impression that nearly the only people who compare Iraq/Afghanistan to Viet Nam are people who weren't in either place - and have no direct experience. While one can compare casualty rates and the kinds of injuries (IEDs vs punji pits), I get pretty antsy when I hear "another Viet Nam" as thought it was a common American experience that everyone understands. It wasn't and it isn't. Especially not the latter, imho. What I find of interest from an amateur anthropological/sociological perspective is the fact that it has become iconic - so there's a presumption of a common symbolism that we use to identify ourselves as 'Americans.' In other words, it's tribal. In that sense it's like a mime's tightrope - agreed to exist but not there in reality, and no real danger in falling off.

You see, when I think of Nam I think mostly of betrayal, Jody, the beauty of Viet Nam and the Vietnamese, privilege, social necrophilia, and the abject political hypocrisy of 'service to one's nation' - used and abused. Even the iconic events at Kent State are darkly ironic - a confrontation between two social classes of young people defined by their differing kinds of draft deferments. When I think of Iraq/Afghanistan, I think of political necrophilia and the moral cowardice of an entire nation - a moral cowardice that includes torture and the wholesale abandonment of respect for human rights. During Viet Nam, this nation abandoned and betrayed those who weren't "smart enough" to avoid being drafted. During Iraq/Afghanistan, we're abandoning our national costume of moral rectitude. But it's OK, we tell ourselves, because we "Support the Troops." (Am I cynical? D'oh.)

[nguoihue]

35. Not a blatant crime?

Take a minute to think about those we bombed, not only in Viet Nam but also in neighboring Cambodia and Laos.

We bombed, strafed, shelled, napalmed and shot up villages, their inhabitants and their farm animals. We burned their villages and poisoned their wells and declared their ancestral lands to be free-fire zones. We defoliated their forests and poisoned their streams with Agent Orange.

In my view these were blatant war crimes.

[TahitiNut]

38. Please pay attention to the 'term of art' that I used.

"Crime Against Peace." I don't, for even a second, ignore the acts of this country in Viet Nam. We could argue interminably about the scope of that war and whether the pursuit of NVA into Laos and Cambodia where they used the Ho Chi Minh Trail was warranted or 'legal.' The scale of the violations of International Law are wildly divergent, imho.

When I consider the post-WW2 geopolitical 'realities' of Korea, French Indochina, and Germany - all split by the "victors" into hegemonistic fiefdoms (transition from Empires to neocolonialsm) - I have to still wonder which will be regarded as most atrocious in the long term. I'm betting on Korea.

[nguoihue]

39. Not talking "pursuit" into Laos and Cambodia

I'm speaking of bombing. I have walked on the HCM Trail in Laos. I had thought the Trail was for the most part "jungle". I was surprised to find that much of it is through areas of small villages, towns (Xepone - bombed to rubble) and farmland.

You might be correct about Korea but I think Laos still stands as the most bombed country in the world.

[Toots]

37. In Vietnam we were engaged against the third largest army in the world

We fought battles against NVA regulars with modern armament. We controlled the air space but they controlled the jungles. Yet Vietnam was only a "Conflict" not a "war". The President did not claim to be a "Unitary Executive" with total control over America. In Iraq we are up against a rag tag bunch of "civilians" that commit murder on a daily basis. Iraq is not a "War" we are not engaged against any true force. The people of Iraq don't want us there and they support the insurgents before they support our troops. I feel very sorry for our troops there as they are not doing what they are trained to do and are being asked to do things they are not trained to do. This "War" is being run and planned by those that have never known nor experienced any type of Combat so they have unrealistic goals. They know John Wayne would have defeated them "terrorists" by now and can't figure out why we haven't. The leadership in this country is completely clueless. At least in Vietnam we fought against a uniformed enemy and had a mutual respect for them in battle. Respect is a major ingredient the Republicans lack.

[saigon68]

42. Which is why this won't end soon

It will go on and on.

It is a blood feud of global proportions