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> That's what gets me the most about this; how very apathetic the American public and American politicians have been about the mass slaughter of Iraqis (includi

by Volpe 13y ago

> That's what gets me the most about this; how very apathetic the American public and American politicians have been about the mass slaughter of Iraqis (including thousands of civilians), torture, indefinite detention without trial in Guantanamo, extrajudicial assassination on US citizens, and so on and so forth. It's chilling to think that so few people care. But 'they' (speaking in generalisations) never did care iraq is just the latest of a very long series of events where the US slaughters civilians, it's pretty much a consistent theme in US history and ALL of it's conflicts.

Volpe 13y ago
I realised I perhaps didn't provide much in the way of citation: Hiroshima/Nagasaki: Upto 250,000 deaths [1] Vietnam+Cambodia: 100,000 + 400,000 maimed or killed by agent orange + 500,000 children born with birth defects (also from agent orange [2] Korean War: 1.5 million civilians killed (both sides (difficult to delineate), 20% of the north koreans population killed. [3] Gulf War 1: 15000 civilians killed [4] You then have Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan drone strikes. Paints a fairly compelling picture. Those of you with the attitude of "That is just a fact of war, civilians die". Given you know this before a war, you therefore know you are going to kill civilians making the action ethically worse, than if you didn't know this "Fact of war". This isn't even going into the blatant disregard for human life the US demonstrated with slavery (~10 million african slaves killed, admittedly western europe in general shares the blame for that)[5], trail of tears[6] (4000 cherokees killed), etc... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties#Deaths_caused_by_the_American_military http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties#Deaths_c... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Korean_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Korean_... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Coalition_forces_in_the_Iraq_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Coaliti... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#European_colonization_and_slavery_in_the_Americas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#European_c... [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears

by Volpe 13y ago

Volpe 13y ago

I realised I perhaps didn't provide much in the way of citation: Hiroshima/Nagasaki: Upto 250,000 deaths [1] Vietnam+Cambodia: 100,000 + 400,000 maimed or killed by agent orange + 500,000 children born with birth defects (also from agent orange [2] Korean War: 1.5 million civilians killed (both sides (difficult to delineate), 20% of the north koreans population killed. [3] Gulf War 1: 15000 civilians killed [4] You then have Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan drone strikes. Paints a fairly compelling picture. Those of you with the attitude of "That is just a fact of war, civilians die". Given you know this before a war, you therefore know you are going to kill civilians making the action ethically worse, than if you didn't know this "Fact of war". This isn't even going into the blatant disregard for human life the US demonstrated with slavery (~10 million african slaves killed, admittedly western europe in general shares the blame for that)[5], trail of tears[6] (4000 cherokees killed), etc... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties#Deaths_caused_by_the_American_military http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties#Deaths_c... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Korean_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Korean_... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Coalition_forces_in_the_Iraq_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Coaliti... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#European_colonization_and_slavery_in_the_Americas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#European_c... [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears