Is it actually bad that fewer Americans have died in war because this allegedly makes Americans not care about the deaths in war?
First of all, does the author not remember the scale of anti-war protests and political opposition in the first decade of this century?
The author has a point that medical advances reduce American casualties in war.
[Measuring] bloodshed gives an increasingly skewed picture of the actual costs of war. This is because modern military medicine has spared many of the lives that would have been lost in any other war in history—undoubtedly a virtuous outcome, but one that has also largely shielded Americans from the grief, suffering, and ugly realities of war. In this very specific way, military medicine has numbed the American conscience.
But so what? Acting like this is bad is just bizarre. Even after the rote, of course lower casualties are good preamble. The point of the article is the opposite. Somehow we should worry that the wounded-to-killed in action ratio is 9:1 or so (if memory serves me).
Why are Korea and the Vietnam War--when the wounded-to-killed ratio was 3:1--the point of reference for "normal" war death rates? Why isn't the Civil War? Or the Revolutionary War? Why isn't it when any wound was a death sentence?
Is it bad that non-battle deaths, which once would eventually destroy an army even if it never fought, are much lower than battle deaths, too?
As for Americans not caring about fewer battle deaths, huh?
Were Americans numbed to casualties in the Vietnam War when casualties were more "normal" but news arrived at 6:00 on the evening news and also in your daily paper or weekly/monthly news magazine? Or now when every fewer casualty is news immediately and in any detail the news wants to provide?
Deaths in general are socially unacceptable and not a part of life now. Just look at our response to the Xi Jinping Flu! No risk of death is acceptable, apparently.
Not to push this too far off track, but how good are statistics? Every wound the last two decades was likely counted. One hundred years ago, if someone lost just a toe and survived, going back into the fight, would that wound even be recorded?
Further, it isn't just medical care for battlefield wounds that has lowered the rate of dying in combat. In the last couple decades, American troops aren't getting hit as much as they did in prior wars.
Training, body armor, and transportation lower casualties, too. As well as the lower quality of enemies lately.
More noteworthy to me is that 8,000 contractors hired by America died in Iraq and Afghanistan while 7,000 American troops died. But that's of historical interest.
One issue that worries me is that concerns like this may lead to higher casualties in the long run. We may try to reduce the number of killed or even wounded to avoid "bad" daily statistics rather than try to win the war quickly. That's false compassion.
The "good" news for those worried about this "problem" is that in a conventional war the scale of casualties will likely reduce the wounded:killed ratio down to that undefined ideal that doesn't "numb" us to casualties.
Maybe Putin's Winter War of 2022 will provide those "comforting" statistics.
NOTE: War coverage continues with updates in this post.
