On rare occasions Donald Trump makes sense-----not because he thinks before he speaks, he almost never does------but from perhaps intuition from being alive for 70 years. Estimates of civilian deaths or ‘collateral damage’ in war are almost always disputed; nonetheless. these estimates are as close as we can get to the facts in the fog of war, Do these estimates support what Donald Trump said to Bill O’Reilly yesterday?
Let’s set side by side the butcher bills of civilian killed during Russian and American war making since Vladimir Putin first took office.
Estimates of Collateral Damage
|
USa |
Russia |
|
US invasion and occupation of Iraq (2003-2011) — 165,000 civilian deaths |
Second Chechen War (2000) — The exact death toll from this conflict is unknown. Unofficial estimates range from 25,000 to 50,000 dead or missing, mostly civilians in Chechnya. |
|
US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (2001 to present) — 31,000 civilian deaths |
Georgia (2008) 228 civilians from Georgia were killed --- and 365 South Ossetian servicemen and civilians (combined) were killed |
|
Libya — 2011 NATO airstrikes “to protect civilians” — 25,000 civilian deaths overall (I was unable to find any estimates pertaining to US airstrikes,) |
Eastern Ukraine (2014 to present) — more than 2300 civilians |
|
Drone Attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Somalia — estimated range f civilian deaths to present — 617-1261 |
Airstrikes upon Syrian Rebels --—8,033 t0 10,554 non-combatants reported killed
|
|
Airstrikes upon ISIS in Iraq and Syria — minimum estimate to present ---— 2358 |
Assassinations of Journalists and dissidents in Russia — well over 100 since March 2000 |
This compilation is just my net-surfing this morning. These estimates come from disparate sources using different criteria and methods of data collection. Collateral damage estimates seem always to be ‘wild-assed guesses”. Doing the arithmetic to find sums at the bottom USA and Russia columns doesn’t seem to be a meaningful exercise. But we are certain that the killing of innocents does takes place in both Russian and American military interventions.
What does seem meaningful is that the killing is at the same order of magnitude in both columns. Yes, this does point to moral equivalence in Russian and American killing in warmaking and political conflict. Yes, Donald Trump, is making sense when he asks whether “our country is so innocent”.
But what is even more important to hold in mind is the order of magnitude of killing in nuclear war.