Small Potatoes

Trey Smith

Over the weekend, the 2,000th American died in combat in Afghanistan. While any death in war is a shame and causes repercussions for the family and friends of the deceased, two thousand dead over a span of nearly 11 years is small potatoes. I'm often amazed how many people consider such figures to be significant, particularly when tens (or hundreds) of thousands of Afghans or Iraqis have lost their lives due to these American forays.

In many ways, the low death toll explains why most Americans don't spend too much time thinking about Afghanistan at all. In so many other armed conflicts that the US has participated in, combat deaths seem to touch almost every community. While no one in your family may have died in combat, you know someone who has lost a member of their family to war.

From a statistical standpoint, 2,000 total deaths over 11 years equates to an average of 181.8 per year or about 0.5 deaths per day. Far more Americans die each day from automobile accidents or cancer.

According to this entry at Wikipedia, there were 416 American deaths per day in World War II. That works out to approximately 12,480 per month or 6 times the number of combat deaths during our 11 years in Afghanistan.

During the Civil War, the average death toll was 599 individuals per day or approximately 17,970 per month (almost 9 times the American death toll in Afghanistan) every month for 4 years.

It is because the American death toll in Afghanistan is so statistically insignificant that thoughts of Afghanistan are fleeting, at best. If significantly more soldiers (and contractors) were coming home in body bags, there would be massive protests all over the nation and Afghanistan would be THE issue of this year's presidential campaigns.

Sadly, Afghanistan warrants hardly a mention.