sirenianshores

Some historical comparisons:

Iraq is becoming less dangerous for British troops - and the IRA killed twice as many soldiers in one year as Iraqi insurgents have killed in three.

Compared with earlier British military interventions, the number of British casualties in Iraq remains relatively low. During the Falklands War of 1982, which lasted for three months, 255 Britons were killed by enemy action compared with 54 killed by enemy action in Iraq.

During the conflict in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1997, between the British Army and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), 763 British military personnel died. On top of that, over 300 of the British Army’s allies in Northern Ireland - the Royal Ulster Constabulary police force - were killed.

In the space of one year - 1972, at the height of ‘the Troubles’ - the IRA killed more than twice the number of British military and police personnel as Iraqis have killed over three years. The IRA killed 103 British Army personnel, as well as 43 of Britain’s local allied forces in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Ulster Defence Regiment and Royal Irish Regiment. That makes a total of 146 military or police personnel killed by enemy action in one year in Northern Ireland compared with 54 killed by enemy action in Iraq in more than three years.

And yet, most British ministers and much of the media refused even to call the conflict in Northern Ireland a war. Certainly there were few demands among opposition politicians and journalists for the troops to be withdrawn from Northern Ireland, and military families did not petition or visit Downing Street demanding that the engagement in Northern Ireland be brought to an end.

Of course it has to be remembered that the British have had to contend with the mostly Shia southern part of Iraq which tends to be a good deal less dangerous than the parts of Iraq the Americans control, like the Sunni Triangle.

The Iraq war’s yearly statistics would compare far less favourably with the later years in Northern Ireland, where the British army’s casualty rate dropped dramatically. By the end of the 1970’s, the IRA had bedded down for a long war of attrition by dropping their strategy of costly all out ambushes in favour of stand off attacks with bombs and booby traps. Those tactics were less effective, but more sustainable to the IRA in the long run in term. Then there’s all the advances in British army’s training and equipment to be considered as well.
Money quote:

This shows that the impact of casualty figures on the public consciousness is shaped more by moral and political factors than by the real facts and figures of war. So a higher number of fatalities in Northern Ireland in 1972 had a less demoralising effect on military families and the British public than has a relatively small number of deaths in Iraq over a period of three years. The truth seems to be that, for British soldiers, Iraq today, rather than being a peculiarly deadly war, is like a less dangerous version of Northern Ireland.

What it all boils down to is whether or not the public thinks a war is worth the price in blood. Right now, it appears the British public doesn’t. Realistically speaking, pulling out of Northern Ireland was never really an option for the British back then. You don’t give into terrorists/insurgents on your own doorstep, whatever about a country like Iraq thousands of miles away. It will be interesting to see their reaction to the casualties from the British army’s upcoming deployment in Afghanistan.