No. NATO was not directly involved in those wars. Some members of NATO were involved in those wars. Which is a very important distinction. Russia is part of the UN, that doesn't mean that the UN is currently invading Ukraine.
Sure, but my point still remains. Multiple nations were involved here and lost soldiers in a war here as well. This tangent aside, my main gripe is still about the media coverage. Civilian casualties are awful in every war. But to show incredulity about the idea of white people as refugees is just ingrained racism that's going to be hard to break. And this idea of what a shock this is absolutely rich considering the most substantial wars in our history have all been.... IN EUROPE.
100k did not die in the war. The war lasted a week. They died in the occupation. How many of those were inflicted by Americans? Would you like me to link the videos of them celebrating and tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein? I'm not even talking about the agenda of that administration. I'm talking about the people welcoming the regime change. What Ukraine is currently embroiled in is a war. A true war. Two conventional armies doing battle and a populace that does not want that occupation in any form. Russia aims to annex Ukraine. I just don't see how these are even remotely the same thing. They can't beat the Ukrainian army so they're laying waste to the cities. When did we ever do that in Iraq or Afghanistan? If you want to come up with an example of us doing this, go back to WWII. We fire bombed Japan. We nuked them. That's a much more apt comparison.
Come on, man. The damage we did to that country is far worse than the supposed salvation we provided. And this has been well documented. There are as many Iraqi journalists who called the US "invaders." But we keep digressing. the point was about media coverage on atrocities against civilians. You can't deny this week's news has been getting a lot more play than the ones that happened as a result of the war we started in Iraq. Good point.
I'm pretty sure it was UN Peacekeeping forces. And yes, some members of those UN Peacekeeping forces were members of NATO but again, that doesn't mean it was a NATO action.
We had no business in Iraq. It was a war based on lies and both wrong and foolish. Afghanistan is much more debatable.
I mean... Biden botched a drone strike just like 4 months ago and killed 10 civilians in Kabul. Didn't see nearly the uproar then. Pootie was trying to hit the TV tower today and mistakenly hit the Holocaust Memorial and killed 5 civilians in Kyiv. I can't be the only one who sees the parallels.
Oh I agree. I remember at the time of the invasion that I didn't really understand why we were going in, but now I'm fully aware that we used Iraq and Afghanistan as basically a playground for large companies to freely waste American taxpayer money. People died for that. Americans died. Iraqis died. I'm fairly certain the whole thing was just to waste money. Trillions of dollars. We basically accomplished nothing. I just personally take issue with how a lot of people define the wars because to me there was really two different things. The war and the occupation. The wars were fought very well by our military. I think they did a good job of completing their objectives quickly and with minimal overall loss of life. Our military is fantastic at that. It was the occupation that sucked and led to a lot of destruction and loss of life and for nothing. Well...... not for nothing..... it was trillions of dollars.
There is a LOT of fake stuff right now on social media. Videos from years ago purported to be current, etc. Dropping fliers has been replaced by viral posts on Instagram.
Ya... i'll just disagree with you on that. But this is a debate for another day. You should watch this.
I feel your trying to make this point at the wrong time though. I mean should we all just not care about Ukraine so that we can justify not caring about other wars? Wait till the next war happens that nobody cares about then ask everyone why they cared about Ukraine and not that war.
Fair enough. Not to be contrarian, but are the Ukraine solidiers using the civilian population as human shields? Does Ukraine want their own people killed to win the PR war? That's where the parallel starts to break down.
My neighbors on one side are Latinx and on the other Asian. Not blond and blue eyed. Might be Christian but I am not.
I stand corrected. I would still highlight that we weren't intentionally targeting civilians, unlike Putin. But circling back to my original point, I think this is the first major war of the advanced age where everyone has a camera phone and internet fast enough to upload it and platforms like Reddit and youtube to share it. This is the first war where it feels like we're right there in the middle of it. Iraqi invasion casualties[edit] Franks reportedly estimated soon after the invasion that there had been 30,000 Iraqi casualties as of April 9, 2003.[82] That number comes from the transcript of an October 2003 interview of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with journalist Bob Woodward. They were discussing a number reported by The Washington Post.[when?] But neither could remember the number clearly, nor whether it was just for deaths, or both deaths and wounded. A May 28, 2003, Guardian article reported that "Extrapolating from the death-rates of between 3% and 10% found in the units around Baghdad, one reaches a toll of between 13,500 and 45,000 dead among troops and paramilitaries."[83] An October 20, 2003, study by the Project on Defense Alternatives at Commonwealth Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, estimated that for March 19, 2003, to April 30, 2003, the "probable death of approximately 11,000 to 15,000 Iraqis, including approximately 3,200 to 4,300 civilian noncombatants."[84][85] The Iraq Body Count project (IBC) documented a higher number of civilian deaths up to the end of the major combat phase (May 1, 2003). In a 2005 report,[86] using updated information, the IBC reported that 7,299 civilians are documented to have been killed, primarily by U.S. air and ground forces. There were 17,338 civilian injuries inflicted up to May 1, 2003. The IBC says its figures are probably underestimates because: "many deaths will probably go unreported or unrecorded by officials and media."[19]
