Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compare it to US deaths in Vietnam (60,000) and in Iraq/Afghanistan (~7,000). The irony is that for all the warmongering politics of the US, the population are highly sensitive to actually losing soldiers in battle. There were single days in WWI (and the US Civil War) that saw single countries having more combat deaths than the US has seen this century in total. The US public wants wars it can win effortlessly (consc…
This just goes to show how asymmetrical Afghanistan and Iraq are in terms of war. We just don't know what is like to be on the receiving end of war. Think about it: an Australian soldier in Afghanistan has made a choice (maybe forced by her economic condition, sure) to risk her life in Afghanistan. Afghan civilians didn't really have that choice. The estimates for civilian deaths in Iraq are above 100k, around 20k fo…
That's just the best estimate for those killed in and around main areas of conflict. With all the ethnic cleansing, and general privation from the destroyed infrastructure of the Iraq nation, the total death toll is estimated to be 1 million or more.
War is more horrible than most people (who haven't directly experienced it) can imagine. We the voting public should not take any decision to go to war lightly. As we have in the past.