Most of the civilian casualties aren't even documented in a war. If you think the military you support invades a country and only kills the bad guys, you are watching too many hollywood movies.
There isn't a single war without innocent civilian casualties caused by every side. At least this is under the guise of accidental, some nations do it on purpose.
The US isn't concerned with civilian casualties. Of course, it wouldn't go out of its way to inflict them, but it simply pays no regard to them, no matter what their scale. Look at US actions in Laos, Cambodia, and Libya for direct instances of this, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed because of US actions.
Yes civilians do die in wars but the conduct of the US forces in South east Asia was pretty reprehensible by any measure. Particularly if you’ve read “Kill anything that moves” by Nick Turse
In the real world military actions often have unintended civilian casualties. The difference is that some groups don't care (china, russia) or are doing them purposefully (terrorists). If you can't understand the moral distinction then I don't think you're going to be able to add anything but noise to these kinds of debates.
176k people in Afghanistan died during the war[1]. Up to 1 million died due to the Iraq war[2]. We left almost all of Korea and Vietnam completely destroyed after those wars.
The US has actually has been at war for nearly every year of its existence[3]. I find it really hard not to consider America "the bad guys".
I don't think there are "proper baddies" though. The US acts just as much of a baddie as any other country. Every country will do what it wants to advance its interests (especially a superpower)
You are wrong because one bad bomb that killed the 7 kitchen workers made world headlines. If they bombed the shit out of everyone, then there wouldn’t even be any kitchen workers going in. The fact that this war is going on for months and this one is the first that killed people who it shouldnt have would tell you otherwise. Also a big difference is in the other wars you mentioned, the fighters wouldn’t disguise themselves as civilians, use hospitals and civilians as shields did they?
It is not true that the U.S. killed a million people in the Middle East. And this is not some sophistic semantic argument either, as it remains not true when you include Afghanistan. The number of civilian casualties is not even close.
It is also not true that the U.S. doesn't care about civilian casualties. The U.S., U.K., and Australia are the only countries I know that put lawyers in air strike operations cells to ensure the law of armed conflict is followed. The French red card holders receive training but don't tend to be lawyers, believe similar is true for Germans and Italians. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who takes this obligation more seriously than the U.S. and closest allies.
1 million dead civilians caused directly by US imperialism is still a lot of accidental deaths. To the point where intentions are completely irrelevant
The difference is that hundreds of thousands or even millions of civilians aren't dead. Which is what would happen have happened if they truly made no distinction between civilians and military.
It seems that 13k civilians were killed directly by the US and its allies
Wrong logic.
First, one report claims this as a theory, where as the US believes 1300.
Second, this was over 5 years, half a decade!
Third, great care was taken to not harm civilians.
Fourth, this was the US and her allies, not the US alone. Some of her allies are locals.
Further, this was a campaign against a violent group, Islamic State, invading, and slaughteting people relentlessly. Had the US and allies not stepped in, it is not hard to imagine IS killing even more, had their progress not been halted.
This is just an absurd comparison. You are working so hard, and diligently, to present the US in the worst light possible. It is just silly.
And yet, instead of killing/imprisoning the dictator, US-led invasion resulted in many civilians killed, their houses destroyed, not to mention drone strikes against civilians. If (many) innocent people get killed in the end, I see no big difference.
The the US government allows these stats to be researched at all, much less put into writing. It's always been obvious the vast majority of deaths in US involvement overseas are innocents, including a lot of women and children. The 90% figure surprises me not at all.
I know we're talking about drone strikes, but we should always and forever note that the civilian casualties from the US' war on terror far outweighs [0] those who died from terrorism. Not to mention the US troops who died to make Iraqi oil available to US businesses, or who continue to die by suicide and social deaths related to their experiences in the war [1].
It's a shame that an escalation in civilian deaths is viewed as an evil, but that there are civilian deaths to escalate is viewed as a necessity of foreign policy.
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