body counts for that other perpetual war
inspired by my own post on iraqi civilian deaths, i thought i’d scratch a little deeper and see what i could find.
two years in iraq (march 2003-march 2005)
iraqi civilian deaths: 24,865 (source)
coalition deaths: 1712 (source)
kill ratio: 14.52 (24,865/1712)
four and a half years in israel (september 2000-april 2005)
palestinian deaths: 3596 (source)
israeli deaths: 953 (source)
kill ratio: 3.77 (3596/953)
i realize this isn’t entirely fair – since there’s lots of room for interpretation in the concept of “civilian” and i’m quite confident that the definition is never going to be the same twice, but… i thought a moment of reflection on the “us vs. them” (and “them vs. us”) was worth a few words.