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Hundreds of Thousands of Iraqis Were Killed in the War. One Was My Brother

47 points by ca98am79 4y ago

newaccount2023 4y ago
[flagged]
throwayyy479087 4y ago
I'm sure that there will be no negative repercussions from this, and that Iraqis will want to emulate everything about the USA. /s
- hackeraccount 4y ago
  Checkout Vietnam. I'm not saying they love us or want to emulate us but given the history relations between Vietnam and the U.S. are amazingly good. I appreciate blowback arguments but drawing a line from A to B to C is easier once you get to C - when you're at at A it's pretty impossible.
consumer451 4y ago
Washington Post Poll: Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 Attacks (2003) https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/stories/data082303.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/s...
- pjc50 4y ago
  Incredible. A lot of people, both press, government, TV, and columnists, worked very hard to make sure the public was that misinformed.
  - consumer451 4y ago
    There are several experiences to never forget about September 11th and this one is high on my list. We are easily programmed meat machines.
  - brwck 4y ago
    [flagged]
causi 4y ago
And for what? Today, Iraq is struggling to rebuild itself. Iran and ISIS remain a serious threat. The Americans hoped to build a Jeffersonian republic in the heart of the Middle East, and failed. The whole thing seems like a horrible, tragic mistake. I disagree. This is a bold statement for someone who left Iraq fourteen years ago and never went back. Probably the current regime is better than Saddam. Is it so much better it was worth two trillion dollars and half a million lives? Is it so much better the rise of and fight against ISIS was worth it? I would like to hear the perspective of someone who lives there.
- miroljub 4y ago
  > This is a bold statement for someone who left Iraq fourteen years ago and never went back. Probably the current regime is better than Saddam. Is it so much better it was worth two trillion dollars and half a million lives? Is it so much better the rise and fight against ISIS was worth it? I would like to hear the perspective of someone who lives there. You don't need to be "someone living there" to answer this question. Just imagine half a million people in your state got killed by some foreign invader, and try to answer for yourself would it be wort it.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    > The number of soldiers who died between 1861 and 1865, generally estimated at 620,000, is approximately equal to the total of American fatalities in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, combined. Was the US Civil War "worth it"? I suspect the current answer is yes. Was the Iraq thing as pertinent or powerful as the civil war? I lean toward no, but I don't have detailed information.
  - causi 4y ago
    Just imagine half a million people in your state got killed by some foreign invader Half a million people were not killed by a foreign invader. They were killed as a result of a foreign invader destroying the existing power structure. The number actually killed by coalition troops is a small fraction of the total.
miroljub 4y ago
[flagged]
- boeingUH60 4y ago
  I smell the sarcasm, but something is telling me this could be someone’s true thought, lol
- sofixa 4y ago
  I smell sarcasm, but still, you're not that wrong. The motivation absolutely matters - US Imperialism is much softer, even in it's war crimes, than Russian Imperialism that comes with genocide bundled. In the former case where it hurts is that they try to paint a rosy picture (freedom and democracy etc.) while committing war crimes / invading left and right for business interests, and that hypocrisy is very annoying. At the same time when the Russians invade, they're brutal, war crimes are part of their process. I'd take the former over the latter any day, even ideally neither should be a thing in the 2020s.
  - hotz 4y ago
    Can we compare the list of invasions and proxy wars started by America and Russia? To justify the atrocities of the west is the height of hypocrisy.
    - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
      After the second world war: - War in Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF; March 2003 - November 2011) ... - War in Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF; October, 2001 – December, 2014) ... - Persian Gulf War (1991) ... - Vietnam War (1962 - 1973) ... - Korean War (1950 - 1953) And this does not include things like coups in South America, or the fact they are surrounding Iran with missiles. The USA is among the biggest war mongers of the world, they have killing millions since 1950, and everybody seems to just go "meh".
      - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
kodah 4y ago
When I was working in Afghanistan I met a decent number of interpreters and Afghani leaders that were former forced fighters. I even guarded one while he was being interviewed and jailed, he was the first of a few that I'd end up meeting. The story that sticks with me is the last one and I think will sit with me for the rest of my life. I was back at my units "home" base where they spent most of a year. Recently US and, I believe, Georgian EOD troops were engaged in heavy fire outside of town and an IED exploded as they tried to defuse it. You hear a lot of these stories day to day so like the author I was pretty desensitized to hearing about people dying trying to do their jobs. Not a day later I was reassigned to the small jail that we had and I met a man who didn't speak English, had a gut but wasn't overweight, and who lacked any education beyond religion and farming. I kept him fed, kept him safe, made sure he had rec time, time in the bathroom etc... I could do basic communication with him through a combination of hand signals. Mostly though I had no way of having any real conversation with him. HumInt came to visit and interview him. They had gathered his side of the story and were going back out to gather information based on what he told them. He was captured after detonating the IED that had killed the EOD troops just days before by connecting a battery to a buried cable. It became clear to me early on that this man did not have the know-how to create a projectile cone, the REX for the explosive material, or the electrical knowledge to determine the battery and wire gauge necessary to carry out this attack. I read through his jacket and understood he had lived mostly a farming life, he was devout in his religion (as most were in that area), and he had a family. The Taliban had approached him to carry out this attack, his gut was a combination of disease and malnutrition most likely which is why they targeted him. They offered him the chance to do this act in exchange for his family being taken care of. A day or so later HumInt came back. They asked me a lot about how he was acting and I told them mostly normal, he'd been sleeping most of the day, he prayed as usual, and had asked for some religious items. They informed me that they had gone to his house with representatives from one of the units on our base and had found that his family had been killed. They had been debating on whether to tell him because he was surely going to the jail in Kabul where he would likely be hanged. They told him during the interview and I remember from that time until he left he was just mute. This will be how I forever remember the Taliban and sister groups like Al Queda. > And yet. > It is hard to express what it means, if you have lived under an authoritarian regime, to experience freedom. Those who have grown up with the privilege of liberty are lucky not to understand it—and the heavy price you are willing to pay for it if you have lived without it. This sentence punches far above it's weight class.
H8crilA 4y ago
The shortest answer to whataboutism on this topic is that the invasion of Iraq was also criminal (second time, not the first time). It was based on lies, achieved very little, displaced and killed millions. Please do not do the disgusting Russian thing of pretending that "we're only defending ourselves" or are otherwise justified in these actions. Not being able to face historical facts and be honest is a major, major problem for the future. Again, to pick on Russia look at how many of them genuinely do not understand why almost all of Eastern Europe would gladly go back in time and suffocate baby Stalin with their bare hands, without thinking. Homo Sovieticus can only see the exaggerated glory of the Soviet Union without seeing the millions farmers starved to death in the Holodomor, or the hundreds of thousands tortured in KGB offices for absolutely no reason.
WhereIsTheTruth 4y ago
More then few millions.. not just "hundreds of thousands", i don't like the way it is worded He most likely used data from a survey in 2007 [1], hence i'll question the integrity of the article Already mentions millions in 2008 [2] > More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 And 2.4 millions in 2016 [3] > But our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion. [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20090422225308/https://surveys.ap.org/data/Ipsos/national/2007-02-16%20AP%20Iraq-soldiers%20topline.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20090422225308/https://surveys.a... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-deaths-survey-idUSL3048857920080130 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-deaths-survey-idUSL3... [3] - https://www.salon.com/2018/03/19/the-staggering-death-toll-in-iraq_partner/ https://www.salon.com/2018/03/19/the-staggering-death-toll-i...
- cudgy 4y ago
  Could it be some of the deaths were caused by the instability that toppling the existing Saddam Hussein government caused and not only by direct US military involvement? Some consequences that come to mind are warlords battling for control of provinces, unleashed tribal factions now free to kill each other, collateral damage from US military attacks destroying critical civilian infrastructure like sewage treatment and medical capacity, starvation, etc.
kerblang 4y ago
The amount of spite and hatred in the comments here are a little bit surprising... But here's a question: Do you believe this man wants the wrong things? Do you believe his desire for freedom, and his willingness to sacrifice everything for it is all foolishness and lies? I am hoping not. I already know how much you hate the USA and other western governments, but I'm just wondering whether you despise the principles that they are meant to represent, especially to the article's author.
- kodah 4y ago
  HN is a vacuum with respect to understanding war. Most people here are privileged enough to have fled from war outright or to have not been participating in it. That's not to say their perspectives are without value but I'd take them with a grain of salt and a side of empathy.
ManiAbod 4y ago
[dead]

47 points by ca98am79 4y ago

newaccount2023 4y ago

[flagged]

I'm sure that there will be no negative repercussions from this, and that Iraqis will want to emulate everything about the USA. /s

hackeraccount 4y ago
Checkout Vietnam. I'm not saying they love us or want to emulate us but given the history relations between Vietnam and the U.S. are amazingly good. I appreciate blowback arguments but drawing a line from A to B to C is easier once you get to C - when you're at at A it's pretty impossible.

consumer451 4y ago

Washington Post Poll: Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 Attacks (2003) https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/stories/data082303.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/s...

pjc50 4y ago
Incredible. A lot of people, both press, government, TV, and columnists, worked very hard to make sure the public was that misinformed.
- consumer451 4y ago
  There are several experiences to never forget about September 11th and this one is high on my list. We are easily programmed meat machines.
- brwck 4y ago
  [flagged]

causi 4y ago

And for what? Today, Iraq is struggling to rebuild itself. Iran and ISIS remain a serious threat. The Americans hoped to build a Jeffersonian republic in the heart of the Middle East, and failed. The whole thing seems like a horrible, tragic mistake. I disagree. This is a bold statement for someone who left Iraq fourteen years ago and never went back. Probably the current regime is better than Saddam. Is it so much better it was worth two trillion dollars and half a million lives? Is it so much better the rise of and fight against ISIS was worth it? I would like to hear the perspective of someone who lives there.

miroljub 4y ago
> This is a bold statement for someone who left Iraq fourteen years ago and never went back. Probably the current regime is better than Saddam. Is it so much better it was worth two trillion dollars and half a million lives? Is it so much better the rise and fight against ISIS was worth it? I would like to hear the perspective of someone who lives there. You don't need to be "someone living there" to answer this question. Just imagine half a million people in your state got killed by some foreign invader, and try to answer for yourself would it be wort it.
- bombcar 4y ago
  > The number of soldiers who died between 1861 and 1865, generally estimated at 620,000, is approximately equal to the total of American fatalities in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, combined. Was the US Civil War "worth it"? I suspect the current answer is yes. Was the Iraq thing as pertinent or powerful as the civil war? I lean toward no, but I don't have detailed information.
- causi 4y ago
  Just imagine half a million people in your state got killed by some foreign invader Half a million people were not killed by a foreign invader. They were killed as a result of a foreign invader destroying the existing power structure. The number actually killed by coalition troops is a small fraction of the total.

miroljub 4y ago

[flagged]

boeingUH60 4y ago
I smell the sarcasm, but something is telling me this could be someone’s true thought, lol
sofixa 4y ago
I smell sarcasm, but still, you're not that wrong. The motivation absolutely matters - US Imperialism is much softer, even in it's war crimes, than Russian Imperialism that comes with genocide bundled. In the former case where it hurts is that they try to paint a rosy picture (freedom and democracy etc.) while committing war crimes / invading left and right for business interests, and that hypocrisy is very annoying. At the same time when the Russians invade, they're brutal, war crimes are part of their process. I'd take the former over the latter any day, even ideally neither should be a thing in the 2020s.
- hotz 4y ago
  Can we compare the list of invasions and proxy wars started by America and Russia? To justify the atrocities of the west is the height of hypocrisy.
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    After the second world war: - War in Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF; March 2003 - November 2011) ... - War in Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF; October, 2001 – December, 2014) ... - Persian Gulf War (1991) ... - Vietnam War (1962 - 1973) ... - Korean War (1950 - 1953) And this does not include things like coups in South America, or the fact they are surrounding Iran with missiles. The USA is among the biggest war mongers of the world, they have killing millions since 1950, and everybody seems to just go "meh".
    - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

kodah 4y ago

When I was working in Afghanistan I met a decent number of interpreters and Afghani leaders that were former forced fighters. I even guarded one while he was being interviewed and jailed, he was the first of a few that I'd end up meeting. The story that sticks with me is the last one and I think will sit with me for the rest of my life. I was back at my units "home" base where they spent most of a year. Recently US and, I believe, Georgian EOD troops were engaged in heavy fire outside of town and an IED exploded as they tried to defuse it. You hear a lot of these stories day to day so like the author I was pretty desensitized to hearing about people dying trying to do their jobs. Not a day later I was reassigned to the small jail that we had and I met a man who didn't speak English, had a gut but wasn't overweight, and who lacked any education beyond religion and farming. I kept him fed, kept him safe, made sure he had rec time, time in the bathroom etc... I could do basic communication with him through a combination of hand signals. Mostly though I had no way of having any real conversation with him. HumInt came to visit and interview him. They had gathered his side of the story and were going back out to gather information based on what he told them. He was captured after detonating the IED that had killed the EOD troops just days before by connecting a battery to a buried cable. It became clear to me early on that this man did not have the know-how to create a projectile cone, the REX for the explosive material, or the electrical knowledge to determine the battery and wire gauge necessary to carry out this attack. I read through his jacket and understood he had lived mostly a farming life, he was devout in his religion (as most were in that area), and he had a family. The Taliban had approached him to carry out this attack, his gut was a combination of disease and malnutrition most likely which is why they targeted him. They offered him the chance to do this act in exchange for his family being taken care of. A day or so later HumInt came back. They asked me a lot about how he was acting and I told them mostly normal, he'd been sleeping most of the day, he prayed as usual, and had asked for some religious items. They informed me that they had gone to his house with representatives from one of the units on our base and had found that his family had been killed. They had been debating on whether to tell him because he was surely going to the jail in Kabul where he would likely be hanged. They told him during the interview and I remember from that time until he left he was just mute. This will be how I forever remember the Taliban and sister groups like Al Queda. > And yet. > It is hard to express what it means, if you have lived under an authoritarian regime, to experience freedom. Those who have grown up with the privilege of liberty are lucky not to understand it—and the heavy price you are willing to pay for it if you have lived without it. This sentence punches far above it's weight class.

H8crilA 4y ago

The shortest answer to whataboutism on this topic is that the invasion of Iraq was also criminal (second time, not the first time). It was based on lies, achieved very little, displaced and killed millions. Please do not do the disgusting Russian thing of pretending that "we're only defending ourselves" or are otherwise justified in these actions. Not being able to face historical facts and be honest is a major, major problem for the future. Again, to pick on Russia look at how many of them genuinely do not understand why almost all of Eastern Europe would gladly go back in time and suffocate baby Stalin with their bare hands, without thinking. Homo Sovieticus can only see the exaggerated glory of the Soviet Union without seeing the millions farmers starved to death in the Holodomor, or the hundreds of thousands tortured in KGB offices for absolutely no reason.

WhereIsTheTruth 4y ago

More then few millions.. not just "hundreds of thousands", i don't like the way it is worded He most likely used data from a survey in 2007 [1], hence i'll question the integrity of the article Already mentions millions in 2008 [2] > More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 And 2.4 millions in 2016 [3] > But our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion. [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20090422225308/https://surveys.ap.org/data/Ipsos/national/2007-02-16%20AP%20Iraq-soldiers%20topline.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20090422225308/https://surveys.a... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-deaths-survey-idUSL3048857920080130 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-deaths-survey-idUSL3... [3] - https://www.salon.com/2018/03/19/the-staggering-death-toll-in-iraq_partner/ https://www.salon.com/2018/03/19/the-staggering-death-toll-i...

cudgy 4y ago
Could it be some of the deaths were caused by the instability that toppling the existing Saddam Hussein government caused and not only by direct US military involvement? Some consequences that come to mind are warlords battling for control of provinces, unleashed tribal factions now free to kill each other, collateral damage from US military attacks destroying critical civilian infrastructure like sewage treatment and medical capacity, starvation, etc.

kerblang 4y ago

The amount of spite and hatred in the comments here are a little bit surprising... But here's a question: Do you believe this man wants the wrong things? Do you believe his desire for freedom, and his willingness to sacrifice everything for it is all foolishness and lies? I am hoping not. I already know how much you hate the USA and other western governments, but I'm just wondering whether you despise the principles that they are meant to represent, especially to the article's author.

kodah 4y ago
HN is a vacuum with respect to understanding war. Most people here are privileged enough to have fled from war outright or to have not been participating in it. That's not to say their perspectives are without value but I'd take them with a grain of salt and a side of empathy.

ManiAbod 4y ago

[dead]