By Ruslan Khubiev
Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard
cross posted with http://www.stalkerzone.org/ruslan-khubiev-the-war-on-terror-half-a-million-lives-that-america-forgot-to-mention/
source: https://regnum.ru/news/polit/2525099.html
Translation: disinformation
What is the difference between “news” and “analysis”? First of all, news doesn’t contain reasons and explanations, and analysis describes them. For comparison, the information that appeared the other day about “militants in the Syrian province of Idlib starting to massively violate the ceasefire regime”, and also that “governmental troops in Syria repelled a powerful attack committed by terrorists” is the usual news. But a logical chain about the fact that the Saudis by the end of 2018 doubled their purchases of Soviet arms in Bulgaria is already analysis since it explains that militants now started to have enough forces and funds to actively put up resistance and how the US tries to disrupt Putin and Erdogan’s agreement in the province of Idlib.
The timing of such an aggravation with the launch of “Turkish stream”, especially in the zone that the president of Russia and Erdogan created personally, is quite in the spirit of the United States, however the contents of “international” news doesn’t clear this up in any way.
It is on this principle that the Anglo-Saxon media has been built – a minimum of facts, a maximum of needed comments.
A capacious example of such an approach was shown in the international press literally the other day. This concerns the extremely curious report of the American Brown University, in which the figures of human losses were scrupulously counted – the losses of the US army, its allies, and peaceful citizens in the “anti-terrorist” operations of America in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is curious first of all that the world media only made it public selectively. As usual, everything was reduced to listing western “successes” and the full concealment of the fact of how many peaceful lives were lost in the process. The news was reformed in such a way that the military “victims” of America were presented as the contribution of the US on the altar of the fight against global terrorism, and that’s why the whole world was urged to repent for its inaction and to thank Washington.
But how would the world community perceive this information if it received analysis and figures in full? It would be curious to check this …
“Lost” facts
Let’s assume that the entire western mainstream became objective at the present timepoint and gave all elements of the report from the beginning to the end. In this case we would receive a completely different picture. After all, in the aforementioned communique, besides information about the US’ losses in Iraq totalling 4,550 servicemen, and in Afghanistan – 2,401, there are also victims that the world press didn’t dare to write about.
First of all, this concerns private military companies and their affairs. According to the American report, in Iraq 3,793 mercenaries were killed, and in Afghanistan – 3937. As can be seen from these figures, the losses of PMCs are not only comparable with the losses of the American army, but they partially exceed them. As a result, this leads us to a simple conclusion, namely that in this or that approximation the total number of PMC fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan is in a varying degree comparable to the total number of personnel of the US official army. In addition, the sum of these losses is greater than the losses of the USSR in the Afghan war.
And if things are like this, then a question arises: according to what laws do these people act, not being tied down by army regulations? What rules of law limit their actions if it’s not the legislation of the US? Who can force them to observe at least some laws in a completely foreign country? Where were the guarantees that they simply didn’t flatten everything that they could reach, especially taking into account that the number of “atrocities” of Anglo-Saxon PMCs is extremely high? In a word, the press had its reasons to “avoid” publishing these figures.
Besides this, even without them, American troops never reckoned with the victims among the “local population”. And this is described very well even in this report on.
Thus, according to the presented data, in total half a million people became the victims of the “anti-terrorist” wars of the US. More precisely, from 480,000 to 507,000 human losses. More particularly, among civilians, employees of humanitarian missions, civilians, and journalists who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan during “direct military operations” since 2001, 204,575 people and 38,480 civilians are registered respectively.
For comparison, the ally states of US that illegally come to these countries lost 1,464 soldiers there. And this is despite the fact that under the figures of “civil” losses, unlike combat ones, there is the footnote “approximate data”.
The world media, when presenting such figures, traditionally focused on the combat losses of American soldiers, presenting them as precisely victims of “democracy” in the defense of peace and freedom, however according to dry statistics, the number of acts of terrorism and their victims in the regions where the US came only increases. And if to summarise the number of military losses of the coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan and then to compare them with the number of victims from their actions among peaceful people, it will become clear that for every death of a NATO soldier “combatting terror” there are about 30 civilian deaths. And this means that, regardless of how blasphemous it might sound, it’s not a fact that even acts of terrorism would cause so many peaceful losses …
The number of civilian victims presented by Brown University is extremely approximate. After all, the people who died as a result of a loss of access to food, water, medical institutions, electricity, or other infrastructure weren’t included in the list, and furthermore, the greater number of affected persons who didn’t die isn’t specified.
Being a supporter of the US, putting the sovereignty of your country in their hands, it also very unsafe. Pro-American regimes, according to the data of the report, lost (they were killed) over 109,000 police officers and local military personnel. The same thing also concerns journalists – the number of losses in Iraq totalled 245 people and 54 correspondents in Afghanistan.
Of course, according to the American army’s data, during military operations from 109,000 to 114,000 militants were destroyed. But how many from them were actually civilians is an open question, especially if to consider that the local operations of American special troops and US drones in Pakistan, without any full-scale invasion, already led to 23,000 human losses.
History lessons
The actions of the army are always shrouded in a veil of secrecy, however it is even more difficult to understand the actions of 17 American intelligence agencies, each with their own special prisons, special prosecutors, and new powers (allowing to “approve” the beginning of an operation only after it has ended). And nevertheless, the lovely image of the US as a torch-bearer of truth, democracy, value of life, and human rights is nevertheless still kept in many people’s heads. And only the Americans, as irony would have it, self-critically state: “The United States Isn’t a Country — It’s a Corporation!”.
And every time when there are problems concerning “business”, the ostentatious veil instantly flies off the Americans. The very first problem of resource restriction led to the most cruel war between the North and the South, and the question of slavery in it was, to put it mildly, only secondary. Only much later, with methods of advertising, was it skilfully brought to the forefront. In reality, even back then the aspect of prohibitive customs tariffs that were imposed by northerners on southerners and ruined the latter to the root was a key moment. In other words, even in the first years of America’s existence, the country was built on the basis of a good life for capital, but not for people. By the principle: “hide the truth deeper, and put PR on the outside”. Manipulating “military” figures is only a small example.
In fact, the US wasn’t at war in only one period of its own history, and even then it was because the weight of what was stolen was too strong. The country for a long time involved itself in sharing out the “wealth”, and it is for this reason that it didn’t covet the “money” of someone else. This concerns fertile lands, places of warm climate, conveniently situated deposits of minerals, and other wealth after the genocide of the former residents of the country. In reality nobody even thought about peacefully reaching an agreement with the native Indians.
However, as soon as “profits” came to an end, and the level of competition increased again, then wars instantly began too. Capitalism always needs continuous growth, but for its sake it started to honestly trade only in the event that it was impossible to speak with the other party with the help of brute force. And there is only one such example of this in history – the USSR. Today the NATO and US army are capitalist tools, and that’s why places will be found in the world for expansion.
During its 242-year history the US has launched 209 wars and armed conflicts. And if to be more exact, they were launched by corporations via the hands of politicians and the leading institutions of the country. It’s not a coincidence that the United States doesn’t “win” in war – victory in them is a secondary aim. As a rule, the conflicts that are kindled by America aren’t important for the state. The most important thing is that profit is received by the necessary party whilst it is ongoing.
As a matter of fact, this is a specific supra-national business, and first of all – for the largest corporations and financial elite. You be the judge: a key trend of the development of America’s military-industrial complex in recent years is extraordinary and prompt monopolistic growth. The “free” markets started not to be enough, the world was divided due to the previous years, Russia prevents hot conflicts from being unleashed, and China prevents economic expansion.
As a result, from 1993 to 2007 alone the number of general military contractors in the US was reduced from 37 companies to 5 – “Boeing”, “Raytheon”, “Northrop Grumman”, “Lockheed Martin”, and “General Dynamics”. It’s no wonder that so much effort is being spent on maintaining the necessary image of conflicts. And it becomes more and more difficult to kindle wars, but a “hot” war with Moscow and the People’s Republic of China is an excellent and capacious decision. War is a profitable business, and it’s not important whether it is “cold” or “hot”. And business knows best of all knows that advertising is very important.
The same thing also concerns the report considered above. It is only a small drop in the ocean of the problem, while the reality is even more horrible. Eventually, even US Congress wasn’t aware that before 2017 more than 1,000 of its soldiers had been in Niger for years – participating in combat operations, dying without publicity and without people in the US being informed. And if the tragic incident in the village of Tongo Tongo hadn’t happened, it wouldn’t at all be difficult to hide the fact of mineral deposits being protected by these military troops in the interests of third corporate parties.
In other words, today the US is the “muscle” of trans-national corporations, and therefore they, because of this status, are obliged to wage war all over the Earth. It is important for our society to understand this sense, otherwise we won’t be able to make out a grin behind the cute smile of the US.
Having being built by “business” on the bones and resources of others, having towered thanks to the fraud and masquerade of “nonexistent persons”, western civilisation is faithful to its former principles also today. Everyone who has sovereignty and doesn’t allow external financial elite to come to their country are enemies, and the difference for a long time has consisted only in the fact that the weight of what was done is so big and the information space is so wide that it becomes extremely difficult to hide the “wolf maw” of America from the world…
This is a concise digest of the overwhelming evidence of a marauding Hegemon, using the false flags of WMDs, Western “values” and “democracy” as cover for genocidal military action, war crimes, rape, pillage and massive destruction of vital infrastructure, while using mercenaries and terrorist proxy foot soldiers as shock troops.
The immediate capture by the military of Trump as CEO of Hegemony, Inc paid off in extending the Syrian War into Syria 2.0, extending and expanding the Afghan War, invigorating AFRICOM actions in many North Africa and sub-Sahara conflicts. It, importantly, gained a near Trillion dollar budget for new weapons and hundreds of billions in deals from “allies” and “friends” purchases of American weapons.
The MIC of the Hegemon is feasting on the misery and horrors inflicted by the US Military around the globe.
All the while, fear-mongering over the threats supposedly posed by China and Russia expands daily, despite the vast sums of monies fleeced from the taxpayers by the Pentagon.
There is no correlation between Trillions spent and national security, or between military operations enacted and protection from terrorism (the supposed “enemy” in each and every conflict zone on every continent).
The money spent and the military operations are the theater, the drama. Big money + big operations is supposed to be self-justifying. It isn’t and never has been. Just look at the small footprint Russia used with its military in Syria. Russia basically has used its normal budget for training and exercises and testing weapons as the budget for the warfare they waged to rescue Syria from the abyss of the Caliphate.
The Hegemon is a criminal enterprise, replete with lies, cover-ups and terror tactics.
Always has been.
It is dressed up as #1, Exceptional, model for the world, a great friend and rescuer of the down-trodden.
Never has been.
The US military in action is a murder machine, proud of “breaking things and killing people”.
It is now operating on the outer limits of its tether. The remaining ‘rules’ that once constrained it are weak.
What now constrains the beast and its empire are Russia, China, Iran and the awakening others who see the USA as poison to humanity, especially deadly to sovereign nation-states.
(Thanks to Ollie and Angelina for this translation.)
Let’s not kid ourselves. During his campaign speeches, while saying on the one hand that the US needed to reduce its presence around the world, and take care of home, in the next section of the speech–I refer specifically to a speech he gave in San Jose, the seat of Silicon Valley, California–he mourned the lack of funding for our ‘wonderful’ jets that lack money to maintain them. As if the missing trillions unaccounted for couldn’t pay to maintain some F-18’s or whatever.
It was in that moment that I realized that Trump was applying for job, he’s no slave…he volunteered for duty.
It is a common practice, in fact. Both Bush and Obama campaigned on a quasi peace platform and both lied through their teeth. Needless to say, Hillary was at least as bad if not more dangerous.
And yet the two parties that really did mean to cut military presence, the Greens and Libertarians were not even allowed into the debates. Yet more evidence of fake manipulated elections.
So Trump was not dragooned against his will to support a bigger military budget. He bragged about his plan to do so! And he didn’t intend to use such an overfunded and bloated military?
In many places, the Greens and the Libertarians are not even allowed to be listed on the ballot It varies from state to state, but some states require a huge number of petition signatures to get a candidate on the ballot — and of course the Democrats and Republicans are excluded from those rules and get on the ballot automatically.
American democracy, where you don’t get to hear other voices and often you won’t even find other choices on the ballot. But hey, its a free and fair election, right?
Half of million people killed by America’s War of Terror?
Pfffttt.
Americans simply don’t give a damn.
As former American general Tommy Franks and regime official Donald Rumsfeld have admitted, “we don’t do body counts.”
Serial killers and mafia gangsters are choir boys compared to America’s military and regime leaders.
Yea, when Stalin said that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is merely a statistic, everyone assumed he was talking about the Bolsheviks rather than the West.
According to the authoritative two-volume study by Al-Ani and Castellano, the American wars against Iraq since 1990 have so far killed over 3 million Iraqis. That doesn’t include Syrians, Iranians, Lebanese, etc.
Three million seems to be a nice round figure that the USA often chalks up in its wars. It killed at least 3 million Koreans, at least 3 million in Vietnam and neqrby countries… and 3 million in Iraq. That’s close to 10 million, with dozens of other countries still to count (although admittedly with smaller butcher’s bills). By my reckoning, 10 million is about 2 “Holocausts”.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Genocide-Iraq-Against-Security-Council-ebook/dp/B00A6VK2L0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1543217406&sr=8-2&keywords=iraq+al-ani
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Genocide-Iraq-II-Obliteration-Modern/dp/0986076929/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1543217406&sr=8-3&keywords=iraq+al-ani
There is a technique that the liars hate that counts “excess deaths”. This technique looks at how many people actually died compared to what the typical statistical death rate was before the Four Horsemen rode into town.
I know that in the original studies of how many dies in Iraq, this technique was used, and is how they came up with the first number of a million dead way back in the Bush era. The technique is entirely proper, versus the twistings of assigning deaths to various categories.
BTW, the official service-people casualty figures are also twisted to be understated. For example, I remember a case early in the occupation of Iraq. A US Army sergeant was driving a vehicle like a jeep. Some insurgents opened fire, and the sergeant tried to take evasive action with his driving. The result was that he hit something solid and died. The official US Army stat guys and gals said that this was filed under the category of ‘traffic accident’ and thus was not included in the official figures of ‘war casualties” from the war. This was back when more attention was being paid, so at least some of the antiwar sites publicized the incident. Who knows how many similar incidents have occurred and are not listed among the official casualty numbers? The figure of how many US service people did not come home alive from a tour in Iraq would be more useful than the ‘combat casualties’ number they release, but of course that more important number is what we are never told.
The same is done at home. For instance there has been a dispute between Trump’s lies that only a few people were killed by his negligent response to the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico. Trump claims a small number of deaths, like 17 or something. While statisticians who counted the excess deaths said that some 3000 people were killed. (those numbers are guesses from memory, so not exact.) Trump of course only counts the people who were physically killed by a falling tree or collapsing building during the hurricane itself. This of course ignores that an already impoverished place had its food and water distribution destroyed during the storm, and that the for-profit electric utility put profits before people and for months failed to restore power to parts of the island. Trump killed thousands of people by failing to do his duty to people he was supposed to protect and defend, and covers it up with fake statistics that are very limited in terms of counting official deaths from the storm. In other words, Trump follows “the American way”.
Right on! The USA is corporation, governs 350,000,000 domestic servants and directs produced profit to its owners and directors, the oligarchs. The big theft corporation CEOs,, banksters and certain foreign interest serve as directors, 527 persons are elected by popular vote, and paid a salary to be the operating board. The worker masses are allowed to select(vote for) 5 of the 1054 candidates presented by oligarch owned political parties (voting for the person to run the government has proven itself to be a most efficient device, capable to protect the oligarch from the masses). Why do you suppose 350,000,000 members of the American Public, condone Oligarch controlled USA, inc.? Where is the starting point for that analysis?
I see the situation much like an hour glass.. The neck of the hour glass is the elected government, the masses at the bottom, the oligarchs at the top. Still the question, why do the masses find this situation satisfactory? Is it gangland mentality where one joins to secure personal security? Discovering the system, phenomena or condition that maintains mass obedience to Oligarch take all dominance would be interesting? Thanks for the article.. look forward to your answer?
Poll of Americans conducted by Gallop. https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/10/27/poll-americans-say-us-needs-a-third-party
For the sixth straight year, a majority of Americans say American needs a third party. Now the latest number is 57%. Only 37% of Americans say the two corporate parties do an adequate job of representing Americans.
Not that the pollsters set a very low bar of ‘adequate job’, and the American people still firmly say no.
Of course, in America, it has been well established by research that what the people want is never important and that only what the oligarchs want is acted on by the non-democracy form of government.
Just be careful with that 350 million figure. Most of them don’t vote, realizing that its not worth even a small effort and it won’t change anything. Of those that do get interested in politics, a majority say that a third party is needed as the two major corporate parties fail to adequately represent the people.
War is a Racket
by United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler
https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c2
from the chapter “Who Makes the Profits”….
” The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.
Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket — and are safely pocketed.”
As the Talking Heads once said, “Same as it ever was, same as it ever was…”