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Comment by grumple | Hacker News Reader

> The world started "burning" again with the war on Iraq / Afghanistan.

If terrorists didn't kill thousands of Americans on 9/11, those wars don't happen, so you'd have to say 9/11 started it. Ironically, the world had less combat deaths worldwide than ever during those two wars (although this does a terrible job of capturing deaths caused by war, but not directly from combat): https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace

The 90s were relatively peaceful compared to the previous few decades, but we still had the Yugoslav Wars, Israeli-Palestine at times, the Gulf war, Rwanda.

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You could also argue that without the US financing the Afghan side in the Soviet-Afghan war and the Iraq side in the Iraq-Iran war then the Taliban wouldn't have taken advantage of the Afghan power vacuum post civil war and that Iraq wouldn't have attacked Kuwait to avoid paying their debts, starting the Gulf War which was the prelude to the Iraq War

Yeah we definitely got what we paid for with Operation Cyclone. Unclear how things would have unfolded if Soviet expansion hadn't been opposed though.

> If terrorists didn't kill thousands of Americans on 9/11, those wars don't happen, so you'd have to say 9/11 started it.

The narrative to push the war on Iraq largely also revolved around "WMDs" while the legality of the war still remains debatable.

> Ironically, the world had less combat deaths worldwide than ever during those two wars

I wouldn't measure peace just by number of deaths, but even if we were to do so, it is also worth taking into account the increased security measures and the less freedom we have to prevent deaths.

so basically, you're suggesting that the terrorists goal to attack the US and destabilize the globe is correct, and the terrorists won?

sounds like the war shouldn't have happened, and the correct solution was not to do that

I mean I think at least a plurality of people on this website agree that the War on Iraq was a mistake. A lot of people at the time were very clear that it was a mistake.

That’s whitewashing it. The War on Iraq was a crime, not a mistake.

Do you really think it's fair to say that I'm whitewashing it to call it a mistake? Do you really think I'm the person you need to persuade? This is a weirdly combative stance to take against someone that, in all likelihood, largely agrees with you. What's the benefit of it?

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