Jews and Military Service: The United States Military in the Vietnam War
Now we have established something of a precedent of the lack of involvement/service of jews in non-jewish militaries using the British and German Armed Force in the First World War as an example. (1)
Lets work through another significant example we can point to an interesting lack of jewish participation - or at the very least deaths - which is the United States' military campaign in Vietnam between 1964 and 1975. Now although we have very good records about the number and religion of those who died: the records about the wounded do not stratify down to religion.
Further there is no accepted estimate for just how many jews served (although 30,000 has been suggested by Rausch) or were wounded in Vietnam, but we do know they were grossly underrepresented compared to their population in the United States from the scholarly literature on the Vietnam war. (2)
That said I would point out that we may reasonably assume - in this unfortunate situation - a similar relation between the number of total wounded when compared the total dead. This means that for our purposes the number of jewish wounded could reasonably be estimated to be three times the amount of jewish dead. (3)
The number of jews who died in the Vietnam war is held by the National Archives to be 270 individuals out of a total of some 58,220 American dead. (4) Now we can already see - without the aid of a percentage - that this is a very low figure and that it already seems to conform with what I have explained in relation to the statistics around the British Armed Forces and the German Armed Forces in the First World War. The actual percentage is a measly 0.46% of all the American personnel who died in the Vietnam war.
The sceptic at this point might be keen to assert that this means nothing until we understand the percentage of jews in the United States when compared to its total population. For the sake of balance I have taken the figure of 5.5 million as it is an approximate median figure for the official jewish population statistics in 1970 as well as in the upper end of the range for the jewish population in 1960. (5)
If we then take this figure of 5.5 million jews and work out the percentage of the population of the United States - as of 1970 - (6) that it represents then we get some 2.7% of the population. Now this should already be ringing alarm bells for us given that if this is correct then the jews were subject to a percentage death rate in Vietnam of less than 20% of their relative numbers in the United States population.
This would suggest that jews were disproportionately under-represented among the American dead in Vietnam on a truly gigantic scale, but further that they were very unlikely to be serving (when they were present) in front-line units precisely because the percentage death rate of the American troops sent into Vietnam was 2.2%, which is disproportionately higher.
If we then look at our estimate as to the number of jewish wounded we get some 810 [270 multiplied by 3] individuals when compared to 153,303 total American wounded. (7) This jewish percentage wound rate reflects 0.05% of the total, which is an even smaller proportion in relation to the relative percentage of the jewish population of the United States.
Again if we work out the percentage wound rate of the American troops sent into Vietnam we get 5.9%.
We can thus see the amount of jews killed and - from what we can reasonably estimate - wounded is a minuscule fraction of the total number as well as disproportionately low in relative terms.
The irony in all this is that the jews are very fond of claiming they were overwhelming for the Vietnam war, (8) but yet have also realised that there is a yawning chasm between this claim - which to be fair seems to be accurate - and the fact that in spite of this the amount of jews who died in it was absolutely tiny both in absolute and relative terms.
The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle - for example - published an article in 2011 by Seth Gitell about one of the few known jewish soldiers who fought in Vietnam: Colonel Jack Jacobs. (9) In his article Gitell seeks to imply that large numbers of jews fought for the United States in Vietnam in direct response to Vietnam historian Michael Lind: who (correctly) pointed out that jews simply weren't around to do the dying. In spite of his rhetorical pouting and use of two cases (of his father and Jack Jacobs) Gitell provides no countering facts or figures to what Lind asserted. Gitell in essence tells us that he doesn't like the statistics so they therefore aren't true.
I am sure Gitell will forgive us - although perhaps he won't and merely attempt to wish us out of existence - if we don't believe his apparent pearls of wisdom as opposed to the statistical data. Or to put it in manner that Gitell might understand: say it ain't so Seth!
Lind in essence argued that jews were represented disproportionately among those using university studies as a way to dodge the Vietnam draft, which is quite reasonable given what we can easily ascertain about the numbers of jews who began entering the expanding university network at about this time. It further generally corresponds to the fall of so-called 'barriers of prejudice' and the quota system among American universities, which had previously prevented all but the crème de la crème of the jewish population of the United States pursuing university studies domestically. Although this should not be taken to mean that jews were not able to pursue such studies internationally as this was often the case before the fall of the quota system. (10)
A more reasoned attempt to deflect from the obvious problem of the lack of jewish front-line involvement in the military can be found in Rachel Soussan's 2011 article 'Jews in the Military'. (11)
Soussan commits the common fallacy of most jewish authors on this subject and promptly avoids the statistics when they don't suit her. Instead she makes the normal loud claims about specific instances of individual jewish bravery and demands that these be thus understood to represent total jewish involvement with the United States military.
Soussan's argument comes down to the contradiction in terms: that because the United States military doesn't keep accurate records of how many jews it has in its ranks (in fact it does keep religious statistics but these are both voluntary and sampled) (12) which therefore - in her argument - means that there 'must' be lots of jews in the military. While at the same time when the statistics seem to support her argument (she uses Second World War jewish involvement which can be ascribed easily enough as an outlier and she doesn't cite jewish casualty rates relative to the totals either) she readily cites them as 'hard fact'.
Thus Soussan is trying to have her kosher cheesecake and eat it at the same time as you cannot have the statistics as at once unreliable and unrepresentative, but yet reliable and representative when they suit you.
The issue of jews not self-describing as jewish when entering the United States military is the currently en vogue argument among proponents of Soussan's belief system (i.e., jews aren't under-represented in the United States military) and is demonstrated when she claims an anecdotal figure of 30-40% of jews not specifying their religion when entering the military. (13)
That's all well and good, but again it contradicts Soussan's premise about the religious statistics being unreliable given that if the United States military doesn't know then it seems rather unlikely that a random rabbi in the United States military would be able to make an accurate guess.
Thus we can see that not only is Soussan's argument weak: it is about as flimsy as a sodden wet paper bag.
We should further point out that in the San Francisco Jewish Weekly a jew then Major Rob Levinson who served in the United States Airforce had this to say in 2001 about the number of jews in the United States military:
'Unfortunately, while Jews in the United States are over-represented in virtually every profession from law to medicine to science, they are few and far between in the armed forces of our country. Truth be told, nice Jewish boys and girls aren't raised to grow up and be soldiers, except of course in Israel. Throughout my career in the Air Force, I can't recall a single time that I didn't have trouble finding a minyan at any base I have been to.' (14)
I can well image the immediate counter-argument offered by Soussan and those like her, which would be along the lines that Levinson is here referring to jews as a purely religious group because of his reference to the lack of jews to create a minyan. A minyan is the minimum number of ten jews necessary to make a quorum and allow formal worship to take place in Judaism. Thus Soussan and her ilk might well try to suggest that Levinson's statement supports their claim.
The problem for Soussan is that the members of a minyan do not have to be religious jews per se, but rather simply have to be classified as Israelites (or of the priestly class) in Judaism in order to make up the number. Further once a boy has performed his bar mitzvah at the age of 13: he is judged an adult and can be one of those used to make the necessary quorum.
Once we understand this we can begin to see that Soussan's presumable argument falls apart given that if Levinson is telling us that he had difficulty finding enough jews (both serving and members of male families above the age of 13) for a minyan on United States military bases around the world then it wasn't from so much due to a lack of religious jews - as Soussan would presumably argue - but rather from a simple lack of jews of any description to begin with!
However for the sake of argument lets assume that with the Vietnam war jewish dead and our estimate of the jewish wounded that these only represent 60% of the jews who died or were wounded.
That would give us figures of 450 jews killed and 1350 jews wounded in the Vietnam war. This thus gives us the following statistics:
Jewish percentage death rate: 0.8%
Jewish percentage wound rate: 0.8%
When we compare this to the jews as a percentage of the population as being 2.7% in addition to the total percentage death rate being 2.2% and the total percentage wound rate being 5.9%.
We can quickly see that - even taking the best case scenario claimed by the unnamed jewish rabbi cited in Soussan's article - the jews are still to be found in very significantly less absolute and relative numbers than they should be.
To round off this issue we should come back to the suggestion from David Rausch (15) that 30,000 jews served in Vietnam. If we again calculate this as a percentage of the American population of the time - as outlined above - then we get a representation of 1.2% of all those who served, which is less than half of the relative percentage of the jewish population of the United States (2.7%).
Again if we take the figure of the official death toll of 270 jews and put that into the statistical context of Rausch's 30,000 figure: this only amounts to a percentage death rate of 0.9%, which is still disproportionately low considering the total percentage death rate of 2.2%.
Even if we use Soussan's inflated figure of 40% more jews due to their being unrecorded then we only manage to get up to a percentage death rate of 1.5%!
If we then look at the wounded and take the 810 jews I have proposed then we get a percentage wound rate of 2.7%, which is still disproportionately low compared to the total percentage wound rate of 5.9%
Even using Soussan's 40% inflated figure the jews still only manage a percentage wound rate of 4.5%, which - like the jewish percentage death rate - is still disproportionately low when compared to the total.
This my dear reader is the brutal truth of the situation: the jews were overwhelming for war with North Vietnam, but didn't want to send their sons to fight and die in it. Those who did disproportionately more of the fighting and dying were non-jews while being egged on from the side-lines by jews while other - left-wing - jews lead the anti-war camp against the pro-war American government. (16)
There is just no getting around that: no matter how much jews and their apologists might try to kvetch.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-military-service-britain
(2) Michael Lind, 1999, ‘Vietnam: The Necessary War’, 1st Edition, The Free Press: New York, pp. 107-110
(3) http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf
(4) http://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html#category
(5) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usjewpop1.html
(6) http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/decennial/1970cenpopv1.html
(7) http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf
(8) http://www.jewishchronicle.org/article.php?article_id=11362
(9) Ibid.; also see Winch, Op. Cit., pp.185-190
(10) For example see tables 6:3, 6:4 and 6:5 in Kenneth Collins, 1988, 'Go and Learn: The International Story of Jews and Medicine in Scotland', 1st Edition, Aberdeen University Press: Aberdeen, pp. 109-110; Lucy Dawidowicz, 1982, 'On Equal Terms: Jews in America 1881-1981', 1st Edition, Holt, Rinehart and Winston: New York, pp. 156-158; Nathan Perlmutter, Ruth Ann Perlmutter, 1982, 'The Real Anti-Semitism in America', 1st Edition, Arbor House: New York, p. 287; Stephen Isaacs, 1974, 'Jews and American Politics', 1st Edition, Doubleday: New York, pp. 100-105
(11) http://www.algemeiner.com/2011/07/18/jews-in-the-military/
(12) The problem of 'who is a jew' raises its head here, but as we no data on the number of jews in the US military who don't describe themselves as jewish: we must stick with religious self-description.
(13) http://www.algemeiner.com/2011/07/18/jews-in-the-military/
(14) http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/16640/attention-where-are-the-jews-in-the-u-s-military/
(15) n. 42 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Jewish_Americans#Korean_and_Vietnam_Wars
(16) http://www.jewishchronicle.org/article.php?article_id=11362; also see Winch, Op. Cit., pp.185-190