I watched a movie the other night that had some interesting facts. Here’s a breakdown of the percentage of casualties of war that were civilians by war:
World War I: 10%
World War II: 50%
Vietnam: 70%
Iraq: 90%
That’s right. despite 100 years of advancement in military technology, supposedly “frighteningly” accurate weapons, and the goal of “winning the hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people, 90% of all deaths related to the war were civilians. The Iraq war killed many many times the number of Iraqi civilians than the number of American civilians killed on September 11, 2001. Just for reference, Iraq was not involved in 9/11, they did not harbor any 9/11 terrorists, and didn’t even turn out to have the weapons of mass destruction we “were sure” they had.
Now we’re still in a war with Afghanistan. The death toll is not as severe as Iraq’s, but it’s still unconscionably high. It’s entering it’s tenth year, and has officially become America’s longest war. By military estimate, there are less than 100 Al-Queda left in Afghanistan, and less than 25,000 Taliban. For reference, the Taliban did not attack us on 9/11. We are there to find Osama Bin Laden, who apparently fled the country in 2002. He’s not there, very few terrorists are there, the people don’t trust us, and over 97% of the country is still loyal to the Taliban. They don’t want what we’re trying to give them.
We don’t need this war, we were never supposed to be at war with Afghanistan. We were never supposed to be at war with Iraq. We were supposed to catch the bad guy who blew up New York. We failed, he’s gone, and we’re mired in a senseless war. Credit to Obama to finally ending the other senseless war (or did he?), but it’s time to end this one too.
Perhaps it’s time to say “Let’s fight terrorism by not fucking with the middle east anymore so they stop being pissed off at us for killing their civilians wholesale”.
It’s time for peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment