US had been at war for 90pc of its history

LAHORE: Between 1980 and 2010, the trigger-happy American armed forces had lost 48,834 of their soldiers during military and counter-insurgency operations abroad, or averagely 1,628 troops per annum, reveals a research undertaken by “Jang Group and Geo Television Network” by taking into account the figures disclosed by the US Defence Casualty Analysis System and an April 26, 2017 US Congressional Research Service report titled “American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics”.

The US Congressional Research Service document had given the break-up of casualties registered during all these 30 years under review, besides giving military deaths estimates during armed combats, accidents and terrorism activities both at home and abroad.

Having been at war for more than 90 percent of the time since its birth in July 1776, the United States of America has only been at peace for less than 20 years, losing close to 1.4 million of its soldiers at armed conflicts both at home and abroad, research thus shows.

The figure of around 1.4 million American military casualties has also been calculated from the US Defence Department estimates, the US Defence Casualty Analysis System, CIA calculations, leading American and British media houses, various books authored by war historians and cited as references by innumerable websites.

The history of American military deaths dates back to country’s revolutionary war, lasting over eight years between 1775 and 1783, when 8,000 of the country’s soldiers had perished. The highest number of American military deaths was recorded during World War II (1941-45), when 291,557 deaths were registered. This was followed by 214,938 deaths during the American Civil War (1861-65), 53,402 during World War I (1914-18), 47,434 during the Vietnam War (1955-75), 33,686 during Korean War (1950-53), 8,000 plus during American Revolutionary War (1775-83), 4,424 during the 2003-11 Iraq war, 2,260 during the 1812-15 war, 2,312 during the still ongoing Afghan war, and 1,733 during the Mexican-American war (1846-49).

It is pertinent to note that the American history of overt and covert foreign interventions dates back to 1811, when it had invaded Chile, just a year after this South American country had gained independence from Spain. Hence, the United States has been at war for about 226 of the 245 years since its independence in 1776. While the number of US foreign military interventions had stood at 188 till 2017, the world superpower was found involved in 117 “partisan electoral interventions” between 1946 and 2000 or around one of every nine ballot exercises held since Second World War. In one of its November 23, 2017 reports, a known British media house “Channel 4 News” had carried a research undertaken by the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University, a private research university based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania state. The researcher had calculated the vast scale of election interventions by both the US and Russia. The media outlet had stated: “According to its research, there were 117 “partisan electoral interventions” between 1946 and 2000. That’s around one of every nine competitive elections held since Second World War. The majority of these – almost 70 percent – were cases of US interference. And these are not all from the Cold War era; 21 such interventions took place between 1990 and 2000, of which 18 were by the United States, and 60 different independent countries have been the targets of such interventions”. “The National Interest”, an American bimonthly international affairs magazine, had carried a report in 2017, which had held: “The United States engaged in 46 military interventions from 1948–1991. From 1992–2017, this number had increased four-fold to 188”. According to the prestigious “Washington Post,” till December 2016, the United States had tried to change other countries’ governments 72 times during the Cold War.