500 dead Americansin Iraq = # of dead in 1st three years in Vietnam

[bobbieinok]

Is this true?

found at http://www.needlenose.com/pMachineFree2.2.1/weblog.php


The hourglass of corpses
A common fallacy of the Jingoists is to deny any similarity between America's failed guerrilla war in Vietnam and America's failing war in Iraq. When war opponents point out that one or two American soldiers fall victim to daily ambushes, the warmongers respond: "That's nothing! In Vietnam, several hundred troops died daily! The wars have nothing in common!" The fallacy, of course, lies in comparing the casualties incurred by American troops towards the end of a 30 year guerrilla war with those incurred in a ten-month old war.

I first made this argument back in May 2003. I was sad to read in today's San Francisco Chronicle how the U.S. death toll in Iraq has reached the 500 mark; in ten months of fighting, we've lost as many soldiers as in the first three years in Vietnam.

In fact, this does seem to pinpoint one of the key differences between the two wars - the Iraqi conflict seems infinitely more compressed, going through all the stages in about a year; possibly even culminating in a sort of parody of Nixon's 'peace with honor' as our troops withdraw leaving an unstable puppet government in a country in the midst of a civil war.

[Toots]

1. Actually it was over four years before Vietnam GI deaths reached

500. Give Iraq another four years and see where we are.