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

https://www.thefp.com/p/hundreds-of-thousands-of-iraqis-were

by ca98am79 • 3 years ago

47 36 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

consumer4512• 3 years ago

Washington Post Poll: Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 Attacks (2003)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/s...

pjc504• 3 years ago

Incredible. A lot of people, both press, government, TV, and columnists, worked very hard to make sure the public was that misinformed.

consumer4512• 3 years 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.

causi2• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

causi2• 3 years 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.

mc323• 3 years ago

The world is not clear-cut black and white. Few are completely bad or completely good. Maybe no-one is. Sanguinely, the world is realpolitik and the good must do some bad to increase good. Also the bad do some good in order that they may continue to do bad. On balance was it good? It's an open question.

Should the world have let Saddam initiate an Iraq-Iran War II? Was he bluffing? We don't know -he's dead. Maybe countries, like siblings, need to duke it out sometimes.

Many years ago there were people calling for Bush (and maybe Obama) to be arrested by the ICC. Bush and Obama are rehabilitated and now there is a more immediate foe who is now to be arrested and rendered to the ICC. Still, we could benefit from examining and have a congressional inquiry into the matter with consequences so that future presidents think twice before committing to war so easily. Then again, the Congress has abrogated its responsibility to declare war, and allows presidents lots of latitude to engage the military in "not war near wars" which are wars in all but name. If they really meant it, they would take that responsibility back.

It's more about degrees of good vs degrees of bad. There is no clear-cut good guy and we have to live with that. There are people who are bothered by the duality.

pjc504• 3 years ago

Bush and Obama are rehabilitated

I'm fairly sure that most of the leftists who complained about Bush back then have not rehabilitated him, they've just added more people to the front of the list.

krapp2• 3 years ago

On balance was it good? It's an open question.

No, it isn't an open question. The United States dragged the world into a war based on lies and false pretenses. It invaded and destroyed a sovereign state, allowing museums and priceless cultural artifacts to be looted and burned, murdered millions of people - Iraqis and allies - and left a broken country to the depredations of the insurgent forces their own ham-fisted belligerance created.

And no one knows why. It wasn't because of WMD, that was bullshit. Not because Iraqi intelligence had a hand in 9/11. Not yellowcake from Africa. All lies. Not even for the oil. We didn't even take the fucking oil. Why? Because the neocons already had plans to Christianize and democratize the Middle East? Because Bush wanted to cement his family's legacy? Because Afghanistan wasn't big enough to satisfy American bloodlust against Muslims post 9/11?

It was evil. Unqualified evil. Absolute evil. Evil that will have the United States mentioned in the same breath as Nazi Germany for the next hundred years.

pjc504• 3 years ago

It's great that they actually found a victim of the war to speak up, but of course he has to be speaking _in favor_ of the war.

If he hadn't put that ridiculous "I disagree" after the obviously true explanation of the failure, this article would not have been published.

cudgy2• 3 years ago

The going criticism of Sadaam was that he had killed 10,000 people during his reign (as a CIA backed dictator I may add). Even the most US fanboy supported reports admit the US committed more deaths in the first week of the war; many times that 10k over the course of the war.

Which regime would rather live under if you were a normal Iraqui?

kodah6• 3 years 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.

levinb• 3 years ago

Thanks for the anecdote and your service. Sometimes there are situations where everyone is wrong. I just don't know what the answer is here.

bo-tato2• 3 years ago

Why do you assume the taliban killed his family? if they go around killing family of people that do bombings for them they aren't going to find many people willing in the future. I know nothing of afghanistan but where I'm from (latin america) the US has a long history of training paramilitaries and death squads. My guess just based on that story would be US or Georgian connected paramilitary group killing his family as retribution for killing one of their own, and as a message to scare future people from working with the taliban.

kodah6• 3 years ago

In a world of infinite possibilities it is possible, but I doubt it. I spent a year in Helmand and Nimroz. In that time I watched the Taliban attack our bases with three large, at times overwhelming attacks. I watched them gather on mountain tops as we turned bases over to the ANA and proceed to slaughter them after we left. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, I believe the stories of forced fighters who had their family members abducted and held hostage, were tortured, and the general sense of enslavement that the local populous felt under Taliban rule. You are right that I didn't, and nobody from HumInt or our sister unit watched these executions happen, but anyone thats served in or lived in Afghanistan for any significant period of time is familiar with the Taliban's patterns. Additionally, two EOD members are fairly inconsequential to the military and any intelligence community that would have to train, arm, and deploy said paramilitary units.

Additionally, in Latin America if memory serves me correct paramilitary units were used because the US didn't want to go there as a military presence for both optics and cost. We (the military) were already present in Afghanistan.

Lastly, as I said earlier as well, this one death and one attack among many. There was very little significance to this attack. EOD was doing civilian route clearance, trying to clear civilian roads of IEDs and bombs planted by the Taliban. We didn't use these specific roads so that the Taliban wouldn't put bombs on them, but they did anyway and used it as leverage on the local populous. These types of operations were part of "hearts and minds" operations. The real message from the US military was sent every year during Opium Interdiction operations where after the Taliban had enslaved farmers to produce poppy for them we would raid the Taliban opium production facilities.

908B64B1972• 3 years ago

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

What a sad ending.

This will be how I forever remember the Taliban and sister groups like Al Queda.

Something that amazed me was to see how fast the ANA capitulated.

Billions of dollars were spent on education and training for the Afghan army so that they could stand against the Taliban. I was expecting the population to be very happy to get rid of them for good, seeing how they were treated under their regime. And yet it only took them a few weeks to completely undo decades of work. This reeked of double allegiance. In some regions, the village elders accompanied by ANA soldiers were welcoming the Taliban and cheering for their return. No fights. Worse, ANA soldiers were seen giving military supplies to the Taliban.

Apparently, families frequently sent their sons to fight on both sides of the conflict.

kodah6• 3 years ago

I have long sat with a post I want to publish about being a Marine during those times. I watched as President Obama and Vice President Biden told people countlessly how well the training was going, that the takeover was progressing despite generals raising internal warnings, there were messages broadcast across SIPR about troops being shot in the back during training and operations by their counterparts. I served with a Gunny that was awarded a Bronze Star with a V because when his counterpart patrol was ambushed all of the ANA ran and left them to fight off a strong contingent by themselves. The administration lied to fullfil their desires to be free of Afghanistan rather than doing the arduous work of freeing Afghanis. You're spot on about the ANA giving away supplies and doing other things, but I suspect this was out of fear and coercion knowing that they were not ready and our ROE was significantly dialed down to the point that we could not protect them.

I hesitate to publish it because, frankly, I think it'd be co-opted by the right and ignored by the left. If meaningful change is to be made for future wars, both of them need to sit up straight and listen with sober ears.

H8crilA• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.a...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-deaths-survey-idUSL3...

[3] https://www.salon.com/2018/03/19/the-staggering-death-toll-i...

cudgy2• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

kodah6• 3 years 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.

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

Related Stories