Despite U.S. reports of progress on the battlefield, American troops were killed in the first half of this year at the same pace as in 2010 — an indication that the war's toll on U.S. forces has not eased as the Obama administration moves to shift the burden to the Afghans.
Let's ignore the fact that our casualties--a function of enemy resistance and our aggressiveness in using our troops to go into enemy strongholds--is also affected by the number of troops we have on the ground fighting.
Remember that this year we've had close to 100,000 troops in battle for the full 6 months. Last year, the surge was just beginning in January 2010 after being ordered by President Obama in the autumn of 2009, and wasn't completed until the end of the summer in 2010. So our troop strength went from about 68,000 in January 2010 to somewhere significantly short of 100,000 by July 2010.
So perhaps our average for the entire first 6 months of 2010 was perhaps 80 thousand troops in combat. So the rate of deaths is actually lower despite the overall tally remaining the same since more troops endured about the same number of casualties this year as last year.
Not that I'm arguing that the metric of US troops dying in combat measures winning or losing the war. But as long as reporters want to judge using this statistic, let's get it right.
