War Dead

Hamas Chairman Ismail Haniyeh (left) meets with Syrian President Bashar Assad 
(AP Photo/Sana)

Richard Fernandez has a post up talking about siege warfare and how it applies to Gaza. Not particularly edifying, but it does contain this bit of information:

The standard metric for estimating collateral damage is the civilian casualty ratio, defined as the ratio of civilian to combatant casualties. For WWI, it was 3:5, WWII 1:2, Korea 2:1, Vietnam 1:1, Chechen Wars 7:1, Afghanistan 2:5, Iraq War 1:2, WOT [War On Terror] drone strikes brought the number as low as 1:50, Israeli airstrikes Gaza dipped to 1:30. But in Israel’s last incursion into Gaza in 2014, it rose again between 1:1 to 5:2, depending on whose figures are cited.