I agree with the overall point of your post but one should count contractor deaths. My understanding is that the U.S. military is much more reliant on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than in Vietnam.

Even including contractors there was still an order of magnitude more casualties in Vietnam.

Do you have numbers on contractor deaths? I’ve not seen them. I’m not disputing that Vietnam involved many times more deaths for Americans. Just stating that one should include contractor deaths since the U.S. military decided to contract out so much of its war effort.

Low hundreds if you only consider American citizens. There is some info on Wikipedia but it hasn’t been updated in a few years.

Thing is there were also a lot of contractors in Vietnam just not the Blackwater type that gets a lot of the press in this era.