编辑“美国”（章节）

===The War on Terror===
Lest we think that the harm of US foreign policy stops at providing aid to dictators, the United States has also carried out a great deal of violence all on its own. To demonstrate the enormous death toll of US military intervention and invasion, let's take a look at the post-9/11 "War on Terror," including the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (among others).

According to a 2019 report from Brown University's Costs of War project, "between 770,000 and 801,000 people have died" in what the report refers to as "America's post-9/11 wars." This tally does not include so-called "indirect deaths," such as those resulting from displacement and the destruction of crucial infrastructure (e.g. water and sanitation systems). In a 2019 article for the ''Hill,'' David Vine (Professor of Anthropology at American University) writes that "total deaths during the post-2001 U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen [are] likely to reach 3.1 million or more — around 200 times the number of U.S. dead."<ref>The Hill | Reckoning With the Costs of War: It's Time to Take Responsibility</ref> Others have come to similar conclusions. According to a 2018 report from the ''Intercept:''<blockquote>In addition to those killed by direct acts [of] violence, the number of indirect deaths — those resulting from disease, displacement, and the loss of critical infrastructure — is believed to be several times higher, running into the millions.<ref>The Intercept | The Assassination Complex: The Drone Papers</ref></blockquote>These death tolls are backed up by earlier research. A 2009 article from the MIT Center for International Studies, which looked ''only'' at Iraq, found that "we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million 'excess deaths' in this war as we approach its six-year anniversary." Keep in mind that this is only one of the invaded countries, and that this article was authored in 2009 (more than a decade ago). The current death tolls, when factoring in all nations (as well as the decade of subsequent warfare), are likely many times higher.

The United States government has engaged in a concerted effort to hide the civilian cost of its Middle Eastern wars. According to a 2017 report from the ''New York Times'', the actual rate of civilian causalities inflicted by coalition forces in the Middle East is "more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition. It is at such a distance from official claims that, in terms of civilian deaths, this may be the least transparent war in recent American history."

In point of fact, US forces often kill more people than the terrorists they are supposedly there to fight; a 2019 article in the ''New York Times'' reports that "more civilians are being killed by Afghan government and American forces than by the Taliban and other insurgents, according to a [United Nations] report on Wednesday."<ref>The New York Times | U.S. and Afghan Forces Killed More Civilians Than Taliban Did, Report Finds</ref> This is not even mentioning the US drone program, which was detailed in a 2013 report from the ''Intercept.'' To make matters worse, civilian casualties from US wars have been increasing dramatically since Donald Trump took office, according to a 2018 article from the ''Washington Post.''

While it must be noted that the United States did not personally kill all of the millions of people mentioned above, it still bears a heavy burden for these deaths, having initiated the invasions, and started the entire conflict. In the same way that we hold Hitler responsible for the deaths of WWII (since he was the one who started it), so too should we hold the United States responsible for the deaths listed above. For more information on the civilian cost of US intervention, I recommend ''The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars'', a study authored by John Tirman, director of the MIT Center for International Studies.