The tragedy last week at Fort Hood, Texas, where an Army psychiatrist anticipating active duty has been blamed for killing 13 people and wounding 29 others in a shooting rampage, has sharpened the nation's focus not just on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also on another casualty of war: soldiers' mental health. Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar Campwala
How hard is it to look up the average age of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and compare it to that of soldiers who served in Vietnam? Not very. A quick Google search of these statistics doesn't pull up any immediately reliable results, but the average age of troop deaths is readily available and probably gives us an idea. According to the National Archives website, more than half of the soldiers who died in Vietnam were between 19 and 21. The non-profit research group ProCon shows that the ages are more spread out in Iraq—as of May 2008 about half of the troops killed in Iraq were between 22 and 30. About 30 percent were younger than 22. So what this article indicates is correct, but it needs these kinds of figures to make a coherent, compelling point. We shouldn't have to do the reporting ourselves.
