Voters should really be holding their leaders to account the fiscal and moral costs of these wars, especially given their strategic objectives haven't been met. OTOH, one could argue it's kept a lot of people employed, and those people vote too.
I think that invalidates the theory a bit but the personality cult that got Biden elected was anti-Trump, not pro-Biden.
And retaliating for the 9/11 attacks, of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_cas...
The criticisms in the Wikipedia are very detailed and imply there are problems with the 650000 figure of which 186000 are due to US troops direct actions. That still seems high, but you know being caught in the middle of a civil war is challenging.
Sounds like not only the American politicians were drunk on something, what the hell are you talking about? In no way have the US been through the same pile of shit that Iraq has been through, and neither have any of those problems suddenly walked over the ocean home to the US. Sure, the US has their nose wet in Iraqi and Afghan blood, but let's not pretend and say that US takes any sort of responsibility for the bloodshed they've caused.
Otherwise I agree with your comment.
Key figures in Iraq, such as Ali Al Sistani, pressed US civilian authorities to stand up an interim government until a permanent government could be drafted. The interim government stood up in May 2004. But by that time Iraq had become a political vacuum with disastrous results. Various external political factions from terrorist groups and nation states were massively importing arms and radicalized youth to instigate internal tribal warfare and acts of terrorism.
Shortly after the interim government stood up GEN Casey took over command of coalition forces in Iraq and promoted a hand's off policy and letting the Iraqis clean up the mess, which further compounded the internal problems when Iraq really needed a strong occupation force to stabilize conditions until conditions allowed the capabilities for self governance. GEN Casey was replaced two years later in 2006.
In mid-2006 it really looked like Iraq was on the verge of civil war and the US completely reversed policy by late 2006 announcing a troop surge in 2007. The successful command policies of COL HR McMaster were given some credit for exemplifying a successful approach. GEN Petraeus took command of coalition forces in Iraq and advocated a policy of counter-insurgency (COIN) that made significant advances at reducing internal violence and building trust in internal institutions. Over the next two years the surge declined to prior troop levels with forces more engaged in peace keeping and stability missions.
In 2009 coalition forces were drastically reduced in what was called a withdrawal. By that time Iraq was no longer on the verge of civil war. Conditions were improving and permanent government institutions were coming online. Unfortunately, the withdrawal was too early. Newly established Iraqi military forces were still conducting peace keeping and stability missions and had not matured enough yet to focus on national defense. This became apparent with the ISIS invasion of Mosul.
I am not sure you can honestly characterize US as being caught in the middle of the war. US caused it. Everything that follows is its responsibility. That is why you don't start wars willy nilly.
from the judgement of the International Military Tribunal for Germany, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judnazi.asp#common
- Lancet survey (March 2003 – July 2006): 654,965 (95% CI: 392,979–942,636)
- Opinion Research Business (March 2003 – August 2007): 1,033,000 (95% CI: 946,258–1,120,000)
- Iraq Family Health Survey (March 2003 – July 2006): 151,000 (95% CI: 104,000–223,000)
- PLOS Medicine Study (March 2003 – June 2011): 405,000 (95% CI: 48,000–751,000)
Only Opinion Research Business[1] seems to put the upper bound above 1 million.
Rather than going for the "Lancet Surveys" page on Wikipedia, you'll probably get a better view when reading through the general page of "Casualties of the Iraq War" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Also, hestefisk (which you're replying to) are talking about Middle East, not just Iraq. US sure has killed a lot more people in Middle East than just the ones that died in Iraq.
> being caught in the middle of a civil war is challenging
Not sure we're talking about the same war here. As far as I know, the US invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq in recent times (so no civil war), pretty sure we're referring to those events (post 9/11), not the civil wars that were happening there before that.
The only thing that makes Amercians forget - lack of conscription and relatively small army(as % of population).
In fact “concentration camp” is largely a misnomer. The sizable majority of Holocaust victims were killed in extermination camps, like Treblinka. These never even purported to hold any prisoner population, and simply murdered all prisoners immediately upon arrival.
The British have no shortage of problems. But nothing in their history is even remotely comparable to Hitler.
The main visible difference nowadays is that Germans of today are hyper-aware of the atrocities committed in the past by their ancestors. Britons are often either ignorant of theirs or are proud of them.
Warning: Disturbing images
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_Holocaust#/med...
In contrast, Nazi leadership sat in a seaside resort and meticulously planned out the industrial mass execution of millions of people. The entire regime from Hitler down was involved. So while, I'd agree there's a moral equivalence between Kitchener and Heydrich, the Nazi regime itself is far more guilty than the British Empire.
[1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/boer-war-begins-...
No wait! The British are worse, because majority have not accepted the horrors that British empire has brought to many people... Not the least being be Bengal Famine of 1943. There's no question that Nazis were evil. Time to realize that many other empires were/are "not benevolent".
It's called a balance of consideration argument, sometimes also "conductive argument".
Obviously, the legal question is different from this, IANAL and I don't even know if lawyers use conductive arguments in this way. The judge in this extradition case certainly didn't, but that's not surprising since her job wasn't to judge Assange's actions.
Let's not even get into his work laundering Russian hacked docs to damage the US, and then repeatedly lying about it.
He also is credibly accused of being a rapist.
The US has done some bad shit, no doubt, but that doesn't make Assange some saint. He's a bad dude.
While the rape accusation was retracted.
There's no equivalence of a proven fact vs accusation. Assange is unquestionably on a moral high ground here.
and Not even going to respond to your whataboutism here, just lazy argumentation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
It comes from not understanding the difference between logical entailment and logical equivalence when given a set of premises and a conclusion. I'd've hoped programmers would have taken enough discrete maths to know this.
It’s not that I haven’t - but I’m 8 years out of uni and have completely forgotten how to apply Modus tollens and I suspect I’m not alone.
In this case, the UK should not only consider the extradition request itself, but how they stand with regards to the US and their war crimes. And when it comes to war crimes, for the UK to be silent is to be complicit.