| Original article. |
The WaPo article correctly notes that some occupations in the military are more at risk than others in terms of combat death. A Marine lance corporal in a regular unit has the highest risk of dying, whereas the risk for Air Force personnel is very low. That's not always been the case: in World War II, one high risk occupation was as a crew member in a B-17 or B-24 bomber wing.
The Belmont Club notes further that the risk of dying in Iraq is significantly less than the historical norm. How much less? To look at that, I collected combat death data presented in the post and compared it to civilian population data from this Wikipedia article. I used the closest decile, good enough for our purposes, for each of the twelve major US wars in our history. The graph embedded in this article demonstrates clearly that the three most recent US wars -- the Gulf War, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War -- have among the lowest risk of dying in combat, relative to our total population.
The wars with the highest risk of combat death compared to the total population are the three total wars we have fought: the Civil War, World War II, and the Revolutionary War. Not coincidentially, all three had elements fought on our own soil; while both the Civil War and the Revolutionary War involved virtually our entire population.
Part of the reason why our recent wars have such a low death rate is that our total population has bloomed substantially: from less than 3 million for the 13 colonies to nearly 300 million today. We send many times fewer young men, relative to our total population, to war today compared to 100 and 200 years ago.
The demographers will sniff: the graph doesn't exclude women; even though we have women in the military today the risk of a woman being killed in combat is substantially lower than that of men (18% of that of men in Iraq, and much lower than that in past wars). The total population includes children, the elderly and the unfit as well as miliary-age, combat-eligible men. A better analysis, if one is interested in the risk of combat-eligible men of dying in combat, would account for this.
I suggest the graph does serve a purpose: it reminds us of the terrible cost we've paid in the past to secure and preserve freedom. While the number of combat deaths today is very low, each is important to us. We honor them all, and we're thankful that our way of making war today means far fewer of our young men and women will die in combat.