And how many of those civilian deaths were caused by the military vs. by others?
This may be increasing the hijack from the OP, but it is arguable that by deliberately destabilizing a barely coherent nation that was patched together of overlapping tribal units by the British Mandate following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the USA did more harm than help.
You have three power groups in Iraq that have deep hatred for each other.
The only good thing I can attribute to a dictatorial regime is that it forced these folks to get along.
Because if they didn’t they were brutally murdered and, in some cases, so were their families.
But, we didn’t go there to kill Iraqis. We went there to liberate Iraq.
What? Don’t look at me that way. That is what we were told.
And, I’ll bet you that the young women and men who volunteered to do this after 9-11 thought they were going there for a righteous purpose.
But, some really stupid decisions were made and we have come off as an enemy to Humanity.
Do we want that?
I am SO tired of war. Anyone who has studied American history can tell we are a very warlike nation. Think about the total years we have been in existence (235.5 years as of 14 Jan 2012).
Of that span of time, how many years have we in conflict with some other military force?
Anyone want to make a guess?
But, during that time of almost continuous warfare, how many war crimes have any of our troops been tried and convicted of?
That may be a legitimate and objective metric for ‘military evilness’ and certainly could be applied to any other nation.
What do y’all think?
Sounds good to me. Now, cue the “they just get covered up better in the US” whiners.
Followup on my earlier comment–
According to this Timeline of United States military operations - Wikipedia
it looks like we have the following years without some military conflict or war:
1811, 1826, 1828, 1829, 1830, 1834, 1845, 1850, 1897, and 1977
10 years. 235.5 years. 4.2% of our history had years without some military conflict.
Mind you, I know just counting a year as a unit of war is a very rough approximation, but I wonder how this would compare to other nations.
How many war crimes have been successfully prosecuted against USA troops?
Is there some way to count these?
By individual convicted members of the armed forces?
Do you charge the bomber on the Enola Gay for all of those deaths?
How about the pilot/captain?
There are some obvious war crimes, but the line between military actions and war crimes is not very clear. In fact, I assert it is quite grey. When the other guys kill POWs, then THAT is a war crime; when we do it… it is justified because … uh… well because we are the good guys, right?
There probably is some study done by some other anthropologist (that is what my BA and MA are in), but I am just screwing around this afternoon and I can’t be bothered to look it up.
Maybe one of the military historians here could help.
Gosh I hope this is on-topic.
Really? The Enola Gay? Why not charge Einstein and Oppenheimer?