12:01AM
Chart of the day: America's "longest war"
Monday, June 7, 2010 at 12:01AM 
USA Today cover story.
When you do the division, you get this for frequencies:
- 13,000 or so deaths a month, or 400 a day for the Civil War (where both sides are counted in the total);
- 9200 deaths a month, or 300 a day for WWII;
- 565 deaths a month, or 19 a day for Vietnam;
- 308 deaths a month, or 10 a day for the Revolutionary War;
- 51 deaths a month, or 1-2 a day for Iraq; and
- 9-10 deaths a month, or one every three days for Afghanistan.
America has only about 31m people during the Civil War, so the percentage of the population is stunning at 1 in every 50 Americans dead.
The same ratio for WWII (132m population) is 1 in every 325 Americans.
For Vietnam (200m), it's 1 in every 3,450 Americans.
For Afghanistan/Iraq combined (300m), it's 1 in every 56,000 Americans.
A sense of the burden relative to the population and over time.
If we count Afghanistan as a war, I believe it's fair to argue that it's still shorter than our counterinsurgency effort in the Philippines from 1899 to 1913, or roughly 175 months. We lost 4,200 troops there (24 a month or almost one a day, on average).
Reader Comments (1)
I thought about my family as I read this. Almost every male served in WWII. Three were in the service during the Korean war. Two were in the military during Vietnam but did not see combat. Now...not one is in the military. I don't see it as even a remote possibility for any of the generation coming along.
I don't like to see this disconnect. The "Draft" had it's problems but it gave lots of Americans a "taste" of the military. Just enough to make them more informed...better voters...if you will.