The Longest War by the Numbers

This week marks a special milestone in the war in Afghanistan. Surpassing Vietnam and the American Revolution, the war in Afghanistan has now become the longest war the United States has ever participated in.*

Rather than talk about whether we should be there or what could have been done to leave sooner, let's just look at the numbers.

Item	Numbers	Comparison
Casualties (civilian)	~9,000 - 29,000	Somewhere in the range of the population of cities the size of Cheviot (~9,000) up to the city of Florence, KY (~28,000) have been killed.
Casualties (US + Coalition Forces)	1811	If the bodies were laid end to end they could stretch nearly 2 miles from Fountain Square to UC. (calculation assumes ~11% of soldiers were female)
Cost in $ (at the time of writing)	$276, 320,000,000	Enough to send over 2.7 million Americans to a private university for four years or 9.8 million Americans to a public university for four years.
Total Troops Currently Deployed (US)	~59,000	Enough people to fill 9/10 of Paul Brown Stadium, to fill 1.4 Great American Ball Parks, fill, 3.5 US Bank Arenas, or fill Music Hall 16.7 times and the Arnoff 21.7 times.
Length of the War	>104 months	An estimated 35 million children have been born in the united states since the start of the war.

*(Note there is disagreement on when Vietnam started. The first US Combat troops arrived in March 1965 but the "Gulf of Ton-kin Resolution" was passed in August 7 1964. The longest war claim refers to when US combat troops arrived on the ground in Vietnam.)