Neu Leonstein
25-10-2006, 08:05
"Somewhere above 3,000 dead. That's much less than in any war before."
That's the sort of line you hear sometimes when people talk about the number of US soldiers who get killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What seems to get neglected a lot is the advancements in medicine that kept this number so low...and especially the people who get saved with horrible injuries who would have died only a decade or two ago.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443754,00.html
THE POLYTRAUMA OF WAR
[...]
The novelty of the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq is that more and more soldiers like Hicks are now surviving their injuries. The survival rate for US soldiers was never as high in any previous military operation. The reasons include the new state-of-the-art, bullet-proof vests that soldiers are equipped with and the fact that mobile army field hospitals are equipped with the best technology available. As of early October 2006, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan was 3,094; the number of injured soldiers was 21,649. That's seven injured soldiers for every dead one. During the Vietnam War, the ratio was only two or three to one.
[...]
Many of these soldiers may still be alive, but they're disabled for the rest of their lives. In some cases one might wonder whether it's even worth living like that, especially since these soldiers are young guys, many barely older than myself.
I saw this article and thought it might be a good thing to talk about. It makes me think of this song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7TXBuVUQJw).
That's the sort of line you hear sometimes when people talk about the number of US soldiers who get killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What seems to get neglected a lot is the advancements in medicine that kept this number so low...and especially the people who get saved with horrible injuries who would have died only a decade or two ago.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443754,00.html
THE POLYTRAUMA OF WAR
[...]
The novelty of the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq is that more and more soldiers like Hicks are now surviving their injuries. The survival rate for US soldiers was never as high in any previous military operation. The reasons include the new state-of-the-art, bullet-proof vests that soldiers are equipped with and the fact that mobile army field hospitals are equipped with the best technology available. As of early October 2006, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan was 3,094; the number of injured soldiers was 21,649. That's seven injured soldiers for every dead one. During the Vietnam War, the ratio was only two or three to one.
[...]
Many of these soldiers may still be alive, but they're disabled for the rest of their lives. In some cases one might wonder whether it's even worth living like that, especially since these soldiers are young guys, many barely older than myself.
I saw this article and thought it might be a good thing to talk about. It makes me think of this song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7TXBuVUQJw).