How many units were completely wiped or suffered enormous casualties?

Well, I don't know about any other military, but I found comparative US statistics:
[link]

For WWII, it lists there being 16 million+ US soldiers, with a 6.6% casualty (2.5% death) rate over 44 months. Combined Civil War statistics note just under 4 million soldiers, with a 25.1% casualty (14.4% death) rate over 48 months. So overall casualties in raw numbers? Only 100,000 more in WWII than in the Civil War. Whoa. Who doesn't love (a) helmets, (b) penicillin, and (c) getting driven to your battlefield instead of having to walk there?

Soldiers who retired from WW2 and other big conflicts were the exceptionally lucky ones.

Well, for the US soldiers (and this averages out all of the high- and low-risk occupations), you had a 94.4% chance of coming home with no official casualty. Clearly, they don't calculate post-war stress casualties, but we're talking about slayers, who don't have a post-war period, so I'm okay with that.

a more assertive woman might see the Slayer as an attactive option.

If it were an option, maybe. It's not -- it seems to be compulsory. They let Buffy take her time off, when she demanded it; but they didn't let Faith "retire" until after they'd tried automatic weapons on her.

I think, if I weren't allowed to quit my job on pain of automatic weapons, I would have severe issues with my job, even if it were Greenpeace or the Saintliest Orphanage And Soup Kitchen In the World.

Wow, really

Absolutely, really.

And whew. I was feeling like a big weirdo for getting all gushy there for a second. Because I don't post in the fic threads and I don't ever send feedback on any fic I read (Is that awful? Is it bad form? I just don't know what to say other than "boy that was fun" or "you're 14 aren't you?").

I think that's what f/b is, other than the times when I felt really bad about myself and I would correct somebody's grammar at ff. net and sign it "A Sympathetic Friend" or something. Then, it was bitchy and possibly hostile...I'm not sure.

And clearly not a slacker.

HAHAHA!

No, I'm a total slacker, I just don't sleep.

Okay, let's talk numbers.

Let's say the Watcher's Council and its predecessors all the way back to the Shadow Men are directly or indirectly responsible for killing a girl every four years for the past four thousand years. That's a thousand girls.

How many guys died in the Normandy invasion again, allied troops? Is that 6% for the US still looking like such a good bargain?

Let's consider how many innocents were saved from vampires by Slayers during all that time. Let's consider how many apocalypti were averted. Those are the kinds of decisions that generals and councils charged with defending us in wars, secret, dirty, overt, otherwise, have to make. They don't always make fair or just or smart decisions, but they were the ones in the hot seat when someone said, "it's your call." And they have to carry the burden of those decisions.

Let's say Quentin Travers was personally responsible for say, 20 girls? How does that stack up against the innocents who were saved by the Slayer soldiers under his watch? Is he an evil man? We don't like him and we aren't supposed to like him, he represents the patriarchy after all. And he's mean to Giles, who we admire and adore. What does Giles look for when Buffy has the upper hand? Vengeance?

Nope, reinstatement.

I think the key difference between the Slayers and drafted soldiers is that, by the standards of the present day, the Slayers are children and draftees are not. (One could argue that last point, but legally one is almost completely adult at 18.)

Let's say the Watcher's Council and its predecessors all the way back to the Shadow Men are directly or indirectly responsible for killing a girl every four years for the past four thousand years. That's a thousand girls.

How many guys died in the Normandy invasion again, allied troops? Is that 6% for the US still looking like such a good bargain?

You're looking at this so differently than I would, that I think the conversation is going to die a natural death. I am looking at rates. 100% of slayers were drafted, and 100% of slayers had to stay slayers until their deaths. As far as we know, until Buffy-Kendra and Buffy-Faith, and then finally, Chosen, 100% of slayers were the only person in the world who could be slayer, while they were slayer.

I am not denigrating real life soldiers. I come from a long line of them. My maternal grandfather got a testicle shot off (although was still able to erm... be a father). My father lost the better part of his hearing. But comparing an army, some of whom joined up, some of whom drafted, and all of whom can look forward to being released from service someday, assuming they survive is apples to the oranges of 1 girl, in all the world, with the weight of the world solely on her shoulders, who has to stay a slayer (even if she chooses not to fight, she retains the strength, and so the guilt) until the day she dies.

You're looking at this so differently than I would, that I think the conversation is going to die a natural death.

Yup, I think we've both said our piece. I'm comfortable with that. One of the things that I think is great about Buffy is that people with such diverse perspectives and backgrounds in tv watching (and life, really) have been brought together where we can passionately discuss our reaction to the show (and its successor and other issues). I have found it fascinating to discover that some folks are watching a very different show than I am. While at times in the past, I have found it frustrating, I'm most often grateful for the chance to see the show through some very different eyes.

Let's say the Watcher's Council and its predecessors all the way back to the Shadow Men are directly or indirectly responsible for killing a girl every four years for the past four thousand years. That's a thousand girls. How many guys died in the Normandy invasion again, allied troops? Is that 6% for the US still looking like such a good bargain?

As Cindy suggests, I think John is thinking on a different track from the reason I assembled those statistics. It isn't "1,078,000 casualties" and it's not "6.6% of 16 million casualties". It's an individual having a 93.4% (overall) chance of going home unscathed. Slayers? Have a 0% chance of going home unscathed, because they never "go home". They fight until they die, not in one battle or one campaign, but sequentially until failure.

I'm specifically thinking about the individual, not the aggregate. I don't want to inflict that large-scale hopelessness on one person, much less on 4,000. (It's that classic ethics experiment, right? You can save a whole town from suffering, if you're willing to personally inflict suffering on one person. Me, I spread the suffering around. Why should one person be singled out?)

Actually, beyond the personal concerns, slayerdom is a terrible, inefficient way of fighting evil. One girl (at a time) in all the world? She can't be everywhere at once, and she's it even if she goes to jail or runs away to Los Angeles, and (as demonstrated) it's physically impossible for one person to fight a whole army. The Operant Conditioning Militia could do a better job, if they weren't, you know, corrupt to the core.

Let's say Quentin Travers was personally responsible for say, 20 girls? How does that stack up against the innocents who were saved by the Slayer soldiers under his watch?

(1) I don't think he gets any credit for the slayers "under his watch" saving people; we've not seen him ever offer any useful advice or guidance to a slayer. (2) Say we do give him credit and 200 people have been saved. Doesn't that mean we have to count against him the 20,000 people who weren't saved? The victims in The Harvest, Jenny Calendar, Uncle Enyos, the poor dumb cluck in the teaser of WTTH? Buffy can't be everywhere at once, and what general in his right mind asks a platoon of 20 to win a battle that a whole brigade would find difficult? If it's really a war, why isn't Travers recruiting more soldiers? Why the secrecy?

If Travers -- who didn't invent slayerdom, only exploits it -- is guilty of anything, it is of perpetuating his domain of power at the expense of (a) slayers and (b) the people the slayer can't save. If he had had any vision or creativity, he would long since have been trying to come up with a way to do what Willow did in Chosen. Or at least warning people, for crying out loud.

Nutty speaks for me, with better spelling and grammar.

(1) I don't think he gets any credit for the slayers "under his watch" saving people; we've not seen him ever offer any useful advice or guidance to a slayer. (2) Say we do give him credit and 200 people have been saved. Doesn't that mean we have to count against him the 20,000 people who weren't saved? The victims in The Harvest, Jenny Calendar, Uncle Enyos, the poor dumb cluck in the teaser of WTTH? Buffy can't be everywhere at once, and what general in his right mind asks a platoon of 20 to win a battle that a whole brigade would find difficult? If it's really a war, why isn't Travers recruiting more soldiers? Why the secrecy?

Let's include another example. Let's think about the people who were brain-sucked by Glory, while the CoW used the information that Glory was a god (!!!), in their power play.

I don't think their methods worked for the best. Why keep the existence of monsters, etc., a secret at all. Wouldn't the public-at-large be better served to know such things roamed their world, to know you don't invite cool, pale-skinned strangers into your house, to know it's a good idea to have a wooden stake and some holy water on hand?

The isolation enforced upon the slayer (whether you believe Kendra's experience was typical, ideal, whatever) did it ever really serve the slayer, or serve the cause to which slayers and watchers gave their lives? Didn't Buffy's experience with Willow and Xander show that slayers probably would have been more effective if the slayer hadn't been essentially cloistered? Didn't Buffy's experience/Giles adaptable treatment of her show us that if you let the slayer be a human woman, let her have ties to this world, that she would have been more successful, better off, and later dead? Isn't that what we've been hearing since School Hard, when Spike told us the brochure failed to mention a slayer with family and friends?