We’re going to hear a lot about “bloody Afghanistan” in the talk of the coming days. But some perspective is useful. The United States military has averaged one fatality from enemy action every four and a half days since the war in Afghanistan began.

When you include non-hostile action deaths – accidents and the like – the number is one fatality every 3.2 days. By comparison, the U.S. suffered 416 deaths per day in World War Two, 279 deaths per day in World War One, 45 deaths per day in Korea, and 26 deaths per day in Vietnam.

The AP reports:

As of Monday, Nov. 30, 2009, at least 849 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Monday at 10 a.m. EST.
Of those, the military reports 659 were killed by hostile action.
Outside the Afghan region, the Defense Department reports 71 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, four were the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen.
There were also four CIA officer deaths and two military civilian deaths.

Combat operations in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, or 2,978 days in the 8 years, 1 month, and 25 days since the first military strikes on Khandahar, Kabul, and Jalalabad.

Every death on the battlefield hits home for families and friends of our men and women in uniform. But if two deaths per week is too much for the American people to bear, then we will never send a significant number of troops to a battlefield ever again.