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I would love you to find me a source for millions of non enemy combatant deaths directly caused by the US. Notice that I never said that the US hasn't committe

I would love you to find me a source for millions of non enemy combatant deaths directly caused by the US. Notice that I never said that the US hasn't committed shameful human rights abuses. I'd be happy to discuss them. Most are taught in schools, like Kent State in which 4 students were killed. Do the Chinese teach about Tiananmen, where hundreds were killed? If you seriously want to compare the US to one of the bloodiest nations in the history of the world, I'll take that comparison any day.

anon231321 9y ago
"I would love you to find me a source for millions of non enemy combatant deaths directly caused by the US." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualt...
user982 9y ago
> I would love you to find me a source for millions of non enemy combatant deaths directly caused by the US. The US killed roughly 20% of the population of North Korea with direct targeted bombings of civilian centers and infrastructure.[1] They destroyed so much of the country that they ran out of targets. Civilian death estimates for North Korea alone start around 1.5 million. "We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too." — General Curtis LeMay [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-war-crime-north-korea-wont-forget/2015/03/20/fb525694-ce80-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-war-crime-nor...
- semperdark 9y ago
  I would invite you to read a list of notable quotes by Gen. LeMay [0]. The man had a specific interest, sustained over decades, in promoting and normalizing the idea that the US should kill civilians to make wars easier. Meanwhile, most estimates put North Korea's total deaths at between 400 and 700 thousand. I'm sure you'll find many war crimes on both sides. The crimes of North Korea do not justify those of the US, and those of the US do not justify those of North Korea. If you insist on comparing them, again, I'll take that comparison any day. To put this another way, the fact that the US has done X, does not excuse 1000X done by repressive regimes around the world. Trying to cast the US as the world's "bad guy" isn't brave or controversial, it just gives cover to the truly evil nations committing ongoing genocide. [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay
  - travmatt 9y ago
    I’ve found it fascinating that people cannot coherently talk about a different nations moral failings without equivocating and falling back onto moral relativism and what-aboutism regarding how the US is just bad. Funnily enough, the EU is the chief purveyor of this equivocation, regularly chiding the US for it’s privacy laws while hypocritically issuing exemptions to China for its repression of political dissidents and keeping conspicuously quiet regarding its censorship.
    - grandalf 9y ago
      > I’ve found it fascinating that people cannot coherently talk about a different nations moral failings without equivocating and falling back onto moral relativism and what-aboutism regarding how the US is just bad. Translation: "USA, USA, USA, USA". If you think about it not as a citizen or partisan but in terms of systems of human organization, the question to ask is: "Why is it that different nations with different cultures still manage to have some of the same moral blind spots?" In this view, Hitler's concentration camps, Gitmo, and the Russian Gulag are all serving the same function. The difference is in magnitude. The idea that citing equivalence is dishonest rests on the idea that magnitude is all that matters in moral issues. If Jerry Sandusky had only molested one child would he be a significantly better person than he is after molesting dozens? Sorry I don't really feel the need to canonize someone who unlike Sandusky only managed to victimize one person, nor would I feel the need to give Sandusky any credit if a person were discovered who had victimized thousands. My point is that ugly things happen for a variety of reasons. All regimes (the US, NK, Russia, China, etc.) benefit in some way from identifying a class of people to imprison as political prisoners. The US is generally able to keep the number imprisoned fairly small and keep them overseas where they are out of sight and out of mind. Other nations are not able to manage this and must imprison more people. Similarly, any spouse may benefit from intimidating the other spouse in some way. Some do it verbally, while others do it physically. Sure you can get on a moral high horse and say that only the physical form of intimidation is bad, that verbal threats are harmless. That's analogous to the idea that Gitmo is harmless but NK or Russia's treatment of political prisoners is deeply concerning. Note that my argument is not that both are equally bad. They are not. My argument is that they are both bad enough that we have s much stronger moral duty to fix the problems at home before we focus our energy on politicizing similar issues abroad.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
yesenadam 9y ago
Hi. 'find me a source': Google is your friend. I can understand if you don't want to learn about this stuff. You sound young, or naively gloaty at least. If you think talking about 4 people is relevant then prepare for a big shock. It's really a horrific story though. I learned about it until I couldn't stand it anymore...all that stuff about central America in the 80s is so depressing. But no more than e.g. 800,000 (!) bombing raids on Laos in 1964-73, dropping more bombs than in the whole of WWII. Understandably it's hard to get precise figures, or any kind of figure, for killing on such a huge scale. You guys don't bother counting these days. Do people born with birth defects from chemical weapons count? Killed with unexploded bombs after a 'war' - 20,000 in Laos alone since 1973. ... Did you hear they were using uranium bullets in the latest Iraq slaughter?! I wonder how long that will cause 'problems'. I guess I first learnt about most of this from Chomsky's earlier political books, and following up his references and reading elsewhere, until it was all too depressing and I had to stop. He wasn't making it up. The way he straight-facedly reports the grotesque pronouncements of officials, letting the facts condemn themselves, is not something forgettable. I found this source[0] saying 20 million after a moment's googling. (And a minute checking the site didn't seem obviously insane.) I'm no expert at all. I didn't think "millions" was particularly controversial. I don't think I've seen a total figure estimate before, but from the stuff I've read about Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, central America, Iraq x2 etc etc, I thought "millions" was pretty inarguable. Just read about all the places the U.S. has invaded/bombed/'interfered with' in the 20th C. You'll be doing well to make it halfway. Often because they were getting too democratic, not doing what the U.S. wanted, the "threat of a good example", that's the depressing thing. Then cover the whole thing up with propaganda so the U.S. public thinks it was all in a good cause. Pretty sickening. Do you only count 'domestic' human rights abuses? And 'non enemy combatants'? So if they fight back, their human rights aren't abusable or something. (Or they just slaughter whole villages and say they were enemy soldiers. See wikipedia page on Vietnam casualties) And I guess 'directly caused' means if the U.S. gets rids of democracy and installs a dictator (e.g. Iran), and sells them weapons, like they did so many times in the 20th C, (and probably graduates of U.S. torture school) well, anything bad that happens later isn't 'directly caused' by the U.S.? Anyway. Oh also Scott Noble's documentaries are available on his site[1], some covering aspects of this subject. I think they're excellent, also very depressing, although they feature some very inspiring people. [0] https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051 https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil... [1] http://metanoia-films.org/films/ http://metanoia-films.org/films/

anon231321 9y ago

"I would love you to find me a source for millions of non enemy combatant deaths directly caused by the US." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualt...

user982 9y ago

> I would love you to find me a source for millions of non enemy combatant deaths directly caused by the US. The US killed roughly 20% of the population of North Korea with direct targeted bombings of civilian centers and infrastructure.[1] They destroyed so much of the country that they ran out of targets. Civilian death estimates for North Korea alone start around 1.5 million. "We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too." — General Curtis LeMay [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-war-crime-north-korea-wont-forget/2015/03/20/fb525694-ce80-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-war-crime-nor...

semperdark 9y ago
I would invite you to read a list of notable quotes by Gen. LeMay [0]. The man had a specific interest, sustained over decades, in promoting and normalizing the idea that the US should kill civilians to make wars easier. Meanwhile, most estimates put North Korea's total deaths at between 400 and 700 thousand. I'm sure you'll find many war crimes on both sides. The crimes of North Korea do not justify those of the US, and those of the US do not justify those of North Korea. If you insist on comparing them, again, I'll take that comparison any day. To put this another way, the fact that the US has done X, does not excuse 1000X done by repressive regimes around the world. Trying to cast the US as the world's "bad guy" isn't brave or controversial, it just gives cover to the truly evil nations committing ongoing genocide. [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay
- travmatt 9y ago
  I’ve found it fascinating that people cannot coherently talk about a different nations moral failings without equivocating and falling back onto moral relativism and what-aboutism regarding how the US is just bad. Funnily enough, the EU is the chief purveyor of this equivocation, regularly chiding the US for it’s privacy laws while hypocritically issuing exemptions to China for its repression of political dissidents and keeping conspicuously quiet regarding its censorship.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    > I’ve found it fascinating that people cannot coherently talk about a different nations moral failings without equivocating and falling back onto moral relativism and what-aboutism regarding how the US is just bad. Translation: "USA, USA, USA, USA". If you think about it not as a citizen or partisan but in terms of systems of human organization, the question to ask is: "Why is it that different nations with different cultures still manage to have some of the same moral blind spots?" In this view, Hitler's concentration camps, Gitmo, and the Russian Gulag are all serving the same function. The difference is in magnitude. The idea that citing equivalence is dishonest rests on the idea that magnitude is all that matters in moral issues. If Jerry Sandusky had only molested one child would he be a significantly better person than he is after molesting dozens? Sorry I don't really feel the need to canonize someone who unlike Sandusky only managed to victimize one person, nor would I feel the need to give Sandusky any credit if a person were discovered who had victimized thousands. My point is that ugly things happen for a variety of reasons. All regimes (the US, NK, Russia, China, etc.) benefit in some way from identifying a class of people to imprison as political prisoners. The US is generally able to keep the number imprisoned fairly small and keep them overseas where they are out of sight and out of mind. Other nations are not able to manage this and must imprison more people. Similarly, any spouse may benefit from intimidating the other spouse in some way. Some do it verbally, while others do it physically. Sure you can get on a moral high horse and say that only the physical form of intimidation is bad, that verbal threats are harmless. That's analogous to the idea that Gitmo is harmless but NK or Russia's treatment of political prisoners is deeply concerning. Note that my argument is not that both are equally bad. They are not. My argument is that they are both bad enough that we have s much stronger moral duty to fix the problems at home before we focus our energy on politicizing similar issues abroad.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

yesenadam 9y ago

Hi. 'find me a source': Google is your friend. I can understand if you don't want to learn about this stuff. You sound young, or naively gloaty at least. If you think talking about 4 people is relevant then prepare for a big shock. It's really a horrific story though. I learned about it until I couldn't stand it anymore...all that stuff about central America in the 80s is so depressing. But no more than e.g. 800,000 (!) bombing raids on Laos in 1964-73, dropping more bombs than in the whole of WWII. Understandably it's hard to get precise figures, or any kind of figure, for killing on such a huge scale. You guys don't bother counting these days. Do people born with birth defects from chemical weapons count? Killed with unexploded bombs after a 'war' - 20,000 in Laos alone since 1973. ... Did you hear they were using uranium bullets in the latest Iraq slaughter?! I wonder how long that will cause 'problems'. I guess I first learnt about most of this from Chomsky's earlier political books, and following up his references and reading elsewhere, until it was all too depressing and I had to stop. He wasn't making it up. The way he straight-facedly reports the grotesque pronouncements of officials, letting the facts condemn themselves, is not something forgettable. I found this source[0] saying 20 million after a moment's googling. (And a minute checking the site didn't seem obviously insane.) I'm no expert at all. I didn't think "millions" was particularly controversial. I don't think I've seen a total figure estimate before, but from the stuff I've read about Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, central America, Iraq x2 etc etc, I thought "millions" was pretty inarguable. Just read about all the places the U.S. has invaded/bombed/'interfered with' in the 20th C. You'll be doing well to make it halfway. Often because they were getting too democratic, not doing what the U.S. wanted, the "threat of a good example", that's the depressing thing. Then cover the whole thing up with propaganda so the U.S. public thinks it was all in a good cause. Pretty sickening. Do you only count 'domestic' human rights abuses? And 'non enemy combatants'? So if they fight back, their human rights aren't abusable or something. (Or they just slaughter whole villages and say they were enemy soldiers. See wikipedia page on Vietnam casualties) And I guess 'directly caused' means if the U.S. gets rids of democracy and installs a dictator (e.g. Iran), and sells them weapons, like they did so many times in the 20th C, (and probably graduates of U.S. torture school) well, anything bad that happens later isn't 'directly caused' by the U.S.? Anyway. Oh also Scott Noble's documentaries are available on his site[1], some covering aspects of this subject. I think they're excellent, also very depressing, although they feature some very inspiring people. [0] https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051 https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil... [1] http://metanoia-films.org/films/ http://metanoia-films.org/films/