Malika Ahmadi, two, died in a U.S. drone strike on Kabul today, her family says. Has the war of 20 years cost us the ability to care?
The war on Afghanistan and the war on Iraq that it was a means of helping start, and all the other spin-off wars leave (if you count only bombing from above as leaving) millions dead, millions injured, millions traumatized, millions homeless, the rule of law eroded, the natural environment devastated, government secrecy and surveillance and authoritarianism increased worldwide, terrorism increased worldwide, weapons sales increased worldwide, racism and bigotry spread far and wide, many trillions of dollars wasted that could have done a world of good, a culture corroded, a drug epidemic generated, a disease pandemic made easier to spread, the right to protest constrained, wealth transfered upward to a handful of profiteers, and the U.S. military turned into such a machine of one-sided slaughter that its casualties are fewer than 1 percent of those in its wars, and the top cause of death in its ranks is suicide.
But we opponents of the madness leave behind wars prevented, wars ended, bases stopped, weapons deals stopped, money divested from weapons, police demilitarized, people educated, ourselves educated, and the tools created to carry all of this further.
Let's look at some of the statistics.
The Wars:
The wars that have used the "war on terror," and usually the 2001 AUMF, as an excuse have included wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Philippines, plus related military actions in Georgia, Cuba, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Turkey, Niger, Cameroon, Jordan, Lebanon, Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Nigeria, Tunisia, and various oceans.
(But just because you've gone nuts for wars doesn't mean you can't have coups too, such as Afghanistan 2001, Venezuela 2002, Iraq 2003, Haiti 2004, Somalia 2007 to present, Honduras 2009, Libya 2011, Syria 2012, Ukraine 2014, Venezuela 2018, Bolivia 2019, Venezuela 2019, Venezuela 2020.)
The Dead:
The best available estimates of the number of people directly and violently killed by the wars so, not counting those who've frozen to death, starved to death, died of disease after moving elsewhere, committed suicide, etc. are:
Iraq: 2.38 million
Afghanistan and Pakistan: 1.2 million
Libya: 0.25 million
Syria: 1.5 million
Somalia: 0.65 million
Yemen: 0.18 million
To these figures can be added another 0.007 million deaths of U.S. troops, a figure that does not include mercenaries or suicides.
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