• DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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    1 year ago

    Those million deaths are mostly the casualties from the civil war stage of the Iraq occupation, and were not the direct result of coalition violence.

    Most, as mentioned, were casualties from sectarian violence and loss of service. Insurgent on insurgent action. Not even really Iraqis vs Iraqis tbh, given the large number of foreign volunteer fighters.

    America’s fault for both destabilizing the region and not enforcing order in the mess they created, but not the result of coalition troops gunning people down in the streets.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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        1 year ago

        Sure, if you don’t count all the mercenaries they hired as coalition troops. Mercenaries you can watch, on YouTube, firing .50 cals into traffic as “warning shots.”

        And you ignore that “military age male” doesn’t mention being visibly armed, particularly suspicious, and is defined as simply being over a male over 16.

        But even if that number was a hundred times higher in reality it would still be about 10% of the total estimated casualties.

        The point, as mentioned, was not to kill people, as the original comment implied.

        It was to conquer and control an oil rich nation.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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            1 year ago

            Compared to the atrocities of the fairly recent past? The Rape of Nanking, the Holocaust, the Eastern Front, even Manifest Destiny?

            Absolutely. Even assuming the worst, because unlike then mass extermination wasn’t the point, which is what they claimed it was.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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              1 year ago

              I didn’t realize it was a contest. What is the minimum number of people to not count as “pretty low?”

              • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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                1 year ago

                In case you’ve forgotten the context of this internet argument, the original commenter implied the world was seeing unprecedented wars launched solely to kill as many people as possible.

                So if they could point to a war in the last two decades that killed, idk, five million people solely to kill five million people, like the Second Congo War, that’d be a start, but it still wouldn’t be at all comparable to the ethnic cleansings of the past.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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                  1 year ago

                  I don’t think there’s ever been a war solely to kill people. There are always other factors even when there’s a genocide going on. So if that is your criterion, the number is zero.