Quote:
Originally Posted by TheLastBoyScout
Well, I think it's apples and oranges really....
In Vietnam, American forces were confronted with a much larger enemy than in Iraq:
- The NVA and VC numbered in the hundreds of thousands whereas the number of actual of Iraqi insurgents is not known but assumed to be exponentially less.
- The North Vietnamese employed both conventional attacks and guerrilla warfare whereas the Iraqi insurgents and terrorists have used guerrilla warfare exclusively.
- The American Bombing campaigns in Vietnam were much more numerous and much more in discriminant, inflicting many more casualties than we have seen in Iraq.
So 2 factors are at play. One is that the number of enemy is much fewer in Iraq and the other is that has been no large scale conventional battles (no, not even Fallujah really qualifies in comparison of scale)
So, I think the raw casualty numbers are misleading because it's an entirely different scale and nature of conflict.
One disturbing parallel I can draw between Vietnam and Iraq is that a large proportion of the casualties of U.S. soldiers happened while they were in transit or on patrol in vulnerable vehicles.... Helicopters in Vietnam.... Humvees in Iraq.
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Yes, all good and factual points. When your enemy holds a specific territory, inflicting casualties on them is more efficient.
As for the enemy casualty lists, I would definitely include the military units destroyed driving them out of Kuwait and the units destroyed in the final invasion to the other side of the list, not just cherry pick counts and make specious assertions of opinion as fact.
If it were my decision, I would never have bothered with an occupation; just sealed off the urban areas and let them slaughter each other. They could surrender at any time, if they so chose to. That way they could murder each other to their heart's content.