Study Reveals 4.5M Deaths From US Invasions Post 9/11

[nik-]

West so bad.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by tjinaz

So do you get to deduct all the Iraqi citizens Saddam was killing that lived because he was taken down? How about Rwanda? Do the 500k people that died because no one acted count as well? Lol.. US in Cambodia. US is clearly the villain the Khmer Rouge were "freedom fighters". Talk about rookie numbers 150k is literally a drop in the bucket compared to Pol Pot. I guess that is just western privilege. In the West we invade and fight on others land. In the rest of the world the governments just kill their own in the millions.

I think that is the utilitarian calculus that gets people into these wars. If we stop the government from killing today and installing a democracy at some point in the future we will have saved millions of lives by implementing democracy.

In terms of looking back and evaluating the costs and benefits of a war I think your thoughts are correct that the benefits of the removal of a dictator should be considered just as the government and economic conditions left after the war ends should also be considered. I think that is precisely what this study begins to try to account for on the cost of war side. Someone would need to do a similar analysis on the benefit of war and then do some sort of life NPV calc.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by GGG

I think that is the utilitarian calculus that gets people into these wars. If we stop the government from killing today and installing a democracy at some point in the future we will have saved millions of lives by implementing democracy.

In terms of looking back and evaluating the costs and benefits of a war I think your thoughts are correct that the benefits of the removal of a dictator should be considered just as the government and economic conditions left after the war ends should also be considered. I think that is precisely what this study begins to try to account for on the cost of war side. Someone would need to do a similar analysis on the benefit of war and then do some sort of life NPV calc.

Well with Afghanistan, there was essentially a 20-year war to end up right back where they started. So I imagine the calculations would be pretty easy there. And considering Saddam was essentially installed as a puppet by the U.S., wouldn't the death under him still count as at least partially their fault?

You could probably say something similar about Vietnam and Cambodia. The U.S.' actions ultimately killed a lot of people and was ineffective at stopping the inevitable from happening.

There's also the flipside of that, too. How many more people died as a result of the U.S. backing coups/death squads or installing their own far-right dictators in Central and South America?

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Well with Afghanistan, there was essentially a 20-year war to end up right back where they started. So I imagine the calculations would be pretty easy there. And considering Saddam was essentially installed as a puppet by the U.S., wouldn't the death under him still count as at least partially their fault?

You could probably say something similar about Vietnam and Cambodia. The U.S.' actions ultimately killed a lot of people and was ineffective at stopping the inevitable from happening.

There's also the flipside of that, too. How many more people died as a result of the U.S. backing coups/death squads or installing their own far-right dictators in Central and South America?

The US should have definitely stayed the #### out of Iraq in 2003, and Vietnam. The dissenting voices should have been listened to at the time.

But there were tons of voices who called for the US to stay out of Europe and the Pacific in the 40s. Thankfully, they didn't listen to those voices at the time.

I think 9/11 required a response. Was the NATO response the correct one? I don't know. Canada and the US weren't attacked again - but the UK, France & Spain were.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Well with Afghanistan, there was essentially a 20-year war to end up right back where they started. So I imagine the calculations would be pretty easy there. And considering Saddam was essentially installed as a puppet by the U.S., wouldn't the death under him still count as at least partially their fault?

You could probably say something similar about Vietnam and Cambodia. The U.S.' actions ultimately killed a lot of people and was ineffective at stopping the inevitable from happening.

There's also the flipside of that, too. How many more people died as a result of the U.S. backing coups/death squads or installing their own far-right dictators in Central and South America?

what? This is pretty incorrect. I think you're conflating support in the Iran-Iraq war for putting him in power previously. They most definitely did not. The Baathist party was Soviet leaning. The Iran-Iraq war caused that split.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Well with Afghanistan, there was essentially a 20-year war to end up right back where they started. So I imagine the calculations would be pretty easy there. And considering Saddam was essentially installed as a puppet by the U.S., wouldn't the death under him still count as at least partially their fault?

You could probably say something similar about Vietnam and Cambodia. The U.S.' actions ultimately killed a lot of people and was ineffective at stopping the inevitable from happening.

There's also the flipside of that, too. How many more people died as a result of the U.S. backing coups/death squads or installing their own far-right dictators in Central and South America?

Afghanistan is one of the more difficult wars to calculate the benefits/losses of.

The Taliban was preventing women from seeing male doctors, and preventing women from going to school to be doctors themselves. The infant mortality/mother's death rate fell dramatically in Afghanistan post invasion.

If you look at the life expectancy post Taliban, it rises pretty dramatically, then begins to fall again.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24003828/

So yes, Afghanistan is pretty much back to where it was, politically, 20 years ago, but the impact on infant death was very dramatic during those 20 years.

Also, Afghanistan wasn't sold as much as on the human rights aspect. That was much more of a post-9/11 revenge invasion.

Also, the USA most certainly did not install Saddam Hussein as a puppet. Hussein was put in power as the leader of the Ba'ath party, which was a socialist movement that the USA was very opposed to. The USA did support Iraq heavily in their war against Iran though.

[activeStick]

Speaking of Kissinger... Happy early birthday!

https://twitter.com/user/status/1662180710331850752

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by GGG

I think that is the utilitarian calculus that gets people into these wars. If we stop the government from killing today and installing a democracy at some point in the future we will have saved millions of lives by implementing democracy.

In terms of looking back and evaluating the costs and benefits of a war I think your thoughts are correct that the benefits of the removal of a dictator should be considered just as the government and economic conditions left after the war ends should also be considered. I think that is precisely what this study begins to try to account for on the cost of war side. Someone would need to do a similar analysis on the benefit of war and then do some sort of life NPV calc.

I think that's a very generous and naive assumption about the motivations behind military intervention.

It's also a principle that's clearly contradicted by cases of overthrowing democratically elected governments to put in place non-democratic governments less friendly to the interests of the people living there.

Even to the extent such humanitarian interests factor into decisions to invade somewhere or to bomb somewhere else, the utilitarian calculus is certainly not attributing equal weight to an American life and the life of an Afghani, a Cambodian, an Iraqi etc. The greater good of humanity as a whole sadly does not move the needle much wrt a country's national interests.

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by activeStick

Speaking of Kissinger... Happy early birthday!

https://twitter.com/user/status/1662180710331850752

50 years later and they're still killing people and blowing off legs.

Great thing for a country's development potential too when to build infrastructure like roads and railways requires first clearing the entire route of cluster bombs.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

I think that's a very generous and naive assumption about the motivations behind military intervention.

It's also a principle that's clearly contradicted by cases of overthrowing democratically elected governments to put in place non-democratic governments less friendly to the interests of the people living there.

Even to the extent such humanitarian interests factor into decisions to invade somewhere or to bomb somewhere else, the utilitarian calculus is certainly not attributing equal weight to an American life and the life of an Afghani, a Cambodian, an Iraqi etc. The greater good of humanity as a whole sadly does not move the needle much wrt a country's national interests.

I wasn’t quite clear enough in my first paragraph. The utilitarian calculus is used as the selling feature for war. That’s what makes it dangerous. You can just extend out in time how long you want to measure and you can justify anything.

I agree that’s not why wars happen. That’s much more about energy and political security.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by jammies

It is difficult to take the West's condemnation of repression and human rights violations seriously when our governments indulge in both when it suits their purposes. Whether we enjoy more freedom than the average Chinese citizen is irrelevant to someone whose family was killed and house destroyed by Western bombs.

If we want to be seen as the good guys, we need to act, and not just talk, like the good guys.

I'd be fine I'd the US could just stop doing outright evil and stupid things. If they could only limit themselves to evil stuff that actually serves a purpose, that'd already be a massive improvement.

But of course, great powers are gonna do what they do.

[Itse]

Double post.