Comments for Next time an anti-war protestor confronts you...

Next time an anti-war protestor confronts you...

2008-02-01T16:53:06Z

...and tells you they're only concerned for the troops.

Ask them where they were during the Clinton Administration?

• During the Clinton presidency total military deaths from all causes were 13,417 whereas during the Bush presidency total military deaths through 2006 from all causes were 9.016.

Emphasis mine - that includes combat deaths.

That disparity is as much a condemnation of the Service's leaders at all levels and their safety record and the off-duty discipline of the soldiers as it is an indictment of either President.

But it's instructive. Ask them, when the war winds down/ends, if they'll be anywhere near as interested in the dead soldiery then.

I'm guessing not. Just keep 'em honest.

Source? Congressional Research Service (link via FAS.org)... neither group are known as shills for the Administration.

Comment from Justthisguy on 2008-02-04

2008-02-04T07:47:50Z

Ah, is there a Godwin's Law equivalent for Joe Stalin? No? Ok, then; "The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million men is a statistic." -Joseph Stalin. .

Comment from SangerM on 2008-02-03

2008-02-04T02:25:07Z

ummm... I didn't hit the button twice, it burped. Honest. Really. really

Comment from SangerM on 2008-02-03

2008-02-04T02:19:10Z

Of course, any discussion like this about numbers like these is wrong anyway. I understand the original point (that people need to take a look at all the historical data, not just the data that makes G.W. Bush look bad), but comparatives miss the point. Some people died meaningless deaths, some didn't. Some died because a President made stupid decisions (Desert One-Carter) or because the President (or someone) didn't make the right decisions or was given bad advice (Vietnam-Kennedy/Johnson, Somalia-Clinton, Khobar Towers-Clinton), and some died because a tough job had to be done and they were the ones who were doing it (Afghanistan, Iraq-Bush) etc. To me the question should not be "Which President?" but "Why?" The meaningless deaths of a few dozen soldiers that result from poor leadership is more "wrong" by orders of magnitude than the deaths of thousands who die doing what soldiers are supposed to do, for good, sound reasons. The people who died at Khobar Towers and in Somalia died because leadership did not pay enough attention to the warnings of subordinates or because leadership was doing dumb things for political reasons. The people who've died in war since 9/11 were doing what they volunteered to do, for reasons they felt strongly about. How can anyone compare the deaths under G.W. Bush to the deaths under Carter or Clinton!?! As far as I'm concerned, both of those men (and Kennedy too for that matter), deserve far more tarring than Bush. Had either Carter or Clinton done their jobs properly, we would likely not today be dealing with either a terrorist nightmare or a nuclear Iran run by Muslim zealots. Bush didn't start this war, he is just fighting it the way he deems best, and whether we agree with him or not doesn't mean squat. As far as I'm concerned, if people are going to compare military deaths attributed to Presidential decisions as an indication of character or worth, then Lincoln, Wilson, & Roosevelt would be near the top of the list. But I defy anyone to claim those men did anything wrong (in this, at least). More to the point, I wouldn't care if 50,000 American soldiers had died since 2001, nothing done by our current President to date will ever equal in my mind the wrongs of Carter, Clinton, and Kennedy. Who cares how many died when? The real question is why, and as I see it, Truman was the last Democrat who didn’t have anything to apologize for on that score! And finally, I have to say that it just really puts me off that people make such a big deal about numbers as small as what we're talking about here. Yeah, yeah, I know: every life is important, and every death is painful to someone (I do know that, trust me), but some folks seem to have no sense of perspective. Tens of thousands of people have died in Bhopal India as a result of a leak at a Union Carbide plant in 1984. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers (North and South) died in the American Civil War; millions of people died in the battles between Germany and Russia, with over 1.5 million casualties at the Battle of Stalingrad alone; and over 6M people are estimated to have been killed or died of famine during the Chinese Civil war from 1945-1949. All told, more then 72 million people are estimated to have been killed or died between 1939 and 1945 as a result of WWII and another 8M or so in post-war China and the Soviet Union; yet, we find people arguing today about which President was responsible for how many of the fewer than 10,000 American deaths in all the conflicts since Vietnam! What happened to everyone's perspective? Is this really worth the argument? V/R

Comment from Soldiers Dad on 2008-02-03

2008-02-03T17:39:28Z

John, Sorry...but this dog don't hunt. To get to the 13714 one needs to include the Bush Sr years of 89 thru 92. Somewhere in DOD they have a dyslexic doing the statistics. If one follows the weekly wounded numbers closely, the WIA and WIA-RTD numbers are frequently reversed. Which make comparing the weekly reports interesting...lets see ...this week we had 600 additional WIA, but but minus 550 WIA-RTD... DOD isn't very good about posting "Last weeks report was wrong again...this is a corrected version". I emailed Jack at OSD one time...a day later he e-mailed back "The Numbers look fine to me"...and sure enough...the online report had been corrected.

Comment from Casey Tompkins on 2008-02-02

2008-02-02T09:11:57Z

Well, gee, Ledger, I'm so sorry that I took the actual, honest-to-gosh statistics from the Department of Defense, added them up, and got a round number. Too bad the result isn't a multiple of 666; you'd have a rock-solid argument, then! Sorry, John, I know I'm skating close against Da Rulez here, but Ledger's argument is just plain silly. What's next, argument by numerology? Ledger, if you can produce evidence that data provided by Department of Defense is suspect, knock yourself out. I got the numbers from the links provided, all of which are straight government-issue. You did follow the links, didn't you? John: sorry if I cause some number-crunching down there; I guess you need something to do while waiting for local Ice Age to thaw. (ducking and running for cover) We are, BTW, currently experiencing some occasional flurries in southwest Ohio. :) I didn't cross-check every single table, but the tables quoted in the CRS study seemed to match quite nicely with the tables I found with the above-linked site. I repeat: I would dearly love to see how they found 13,417 deaths from the provided data. I made a point of checking the Reagan administration numbers, and they come out to 17k and some change, so it shouldn't be a case of swapped "eras." This seems to be spreading thru the blogosphere as I recently encountered what seemed to be the same meme over at Blackfive.

Comment from Ledger on 2008-02-01

2008-02-02T04:22:44Z

It very opportune that if you add up the deaths for years 1993-2000 you get exactly 7,500. It is not 7498 or 7501 it is 7500 on the dot. When auditors see round numbers like that their eyes narrow and they dig deeper.

Comment from Antimedia on 2008-02-01

2008-02-02T04:04:26Z

It's false.

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2008-02-01

2008-02-01T22:43:08Z

Carp, Casey - I got this from a trusted source, and now yer gonna make me go do the math.

Comment from Karla (threadbndr) on 2008-02-01

2008-02-01T21:39:49Z

My son went into the USMC in 2004. The SDI at his Boot Camp grad told us to keep an eye on the boys on leave. At that point, there was some pretty good fighting going on in Fallujah and elsewhere and the Corps STILL was loosing more young (1st enlistment) Marines to fatal traffic accidents than to the enemy.

Comment from Casey Tompkins on 2008-02-01

2008-02-01T19:18:01Z

I'd like to see how they got that 13,417 number. The linked PDF contains the same data which may be found on this site, more specifically in this table titled U.S. Active Duty Military Deaths 1980 through 2006. Then scan across to the column labled Total Deaths, and add up the years 1993-2000. You'll get 7,500. That's precisely the same number I get from the CRS document. So where did that 13k number come from? Jack, the site in my first link contains all sorts of data, if you are of the mind to do some crunching. For example, the death rates PDF I linked includes service numbers by year. There is a chart for death rates by 100,000 serving. Oddly enough, the chart doesn't include total per 100k numbers, but only by category. For example if one adds up the various numbers for 1993, you get 65.6 per 100k. Compare this to 110.7 for the year 1980, 49.5 for 2000, and 144.6 for 2005. The three biggest factors are accidental deaths, deaths due to hostile action, and deaths due to illness. Deaths due to hostile action were essentially non-existent during Clinton's administration, which also enjoyed the lowest accident and illness rates. Lowest was 26/100k for 2000, compared to 2005's 38.7. Average accidental death rate for the Clinton administration was 30.1625/100k. Note that the first year of the Bush administration showed an accidental death rate of 28/100k, comparable to the late Clinton era. According to the data -including preliminary data through 2006- there have been 9,747 active military deaths under the Bush administration. Still, John's main point stands. 7,500 dead is not inconsiderable. Compare this to the mindlessly chanted "over three. thousand. dead!" So where were the Professionally Concerned back then?

Comment from Adam on 2008-02-01

2008-02-01T18:58:40Z

Interesting that the numbers dropped each year under Clinton. I know that there was a big drawdown in 1995 as I was affected; I was assigned to 25th ID(L) in Hawaii that went from three to two brigades on island. Also, We lost a good number in Somalia, not too many in Haiti, so the op tempt probably kept the number of deaths down. I would have expected a spike at the time of the The Balkans, even if from accidents due to the strenuous nature of the operation, but we didn't lose anyone to enemy contact until 2001. I think that most telling is that the number of self inflicted and homicides went down once we went to war. Soldiers don't do well with too little to do. "Support the troops! Keep them busy!" Great post, interesting numbers.

Comment from AFSister on 2008-02-01

2008-02-01T18:55:23Z

that's brilliant, John... thanks for linking it!

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2008-02-01

2008-02-01T17:32:30Z

Jack - only have numbers for the Army, but they are the biggest component. 1993, 572,000 1995, 513.000 1996, 493,000 1998, 479,000 1999, 468,000 2000, 472,000 2004, 492,000 And the numbers vary up and down, of course, and the wartime year numbers do *not* account for activated Guard and Reserve personnel, while their casualties while are included in the totals. My point still stands, regarding the antis, and my point regarding the Services and their leadership (of whom I was one during the Clinton administration) still stands, given the level and intensity of combat operations during the Bush administration. But it would be an interesting exercise, if you could get compatible data sets to run the numbers to answer your question. I don't have time to do it right now, though. And Jack - back up and open a new comment window to see if your stuff posted - don't keep posting! 8^ D

Comment from Jack on 2008-02-01

2008-02-01T17:16:01Z

Just curious, John, what is that number written in # of deaths per 1000 solders? If I recall correctly, the military was significantly larger during at least the first years of the Clinton administration, so just reciting raw numbers could be a bit misleading.