Happy Anniversary

March 20 2003

Civilian casualties are the deaths of non-military individuals as a result of military operations. The number of documented civilian deaths in the Iraq war peaked in 2006 at 29,517 casualties. Since then, the number had fallen to 4,162 casualties documented in the year 2011, and the number of casualties have been decreasing since 2014. Due to the nature of the Iraq war and of war reporting, data cannot be considered exact. Many civilian deaths that occurred during the war in Iraq may remain unaccounted for.

The Iraq war was launched in March 2003 upon the invasion of Iraq by US forces. Eight years later, in December 2011, the US formally declared an end to the Iraq war. From the start of the war in 2003 until September 30, 2015, it is estimated that the United States spent a total of over 819 billion US dollars on war costs in Iraq. This number includes funding requested by the President and appropriated by Congress, and accounts for both military and non-military spending. Spending was highest in 2008, that year over 142 billion US dollars were spent in Iraq by the United States government. As of 2019, about 7,990 U.S. active-duty military personnel were deployed in North Africa, the Near East, and South Asia. 

The number of US American soldiers killed in Iraq peaked in 2007 with just over nine hundred causalities. In the same year, there were over 25,000 civilian deaths in Iraq.

And Petraeus is on the TV talking to Jake Tapper about Ukraine.

Costs of War 

At least 929,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. The number of people who have been wounded or have fallen ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who have died indirectly as a result of the destruction of hospitals and infrastructure and environmental contamination, among other war-related problems.

Thousands of United States service members have died in combat, as have thousands of civilian contractors. Many have died later on from injuries and illnesses sustained in the war zones. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and contractors have been wounded and are living with disabilities and war-related illnesses. Allied security forces have also suffered significant casualties, as have opposition forces.

Far more of the people killed have been civilians. More than 387,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting since 2001.

Millions of people living in the war zones have also been displaced by war. The U.S. post-9/11 wars have forcibly displaced at least 38 million people in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria. This number exceeds the total displaced by every war since 1900, except World War II.

The U.S. could have pursued several nonmilitary alternatives to holding accountable those responsible for perpetrating the 9/11 attacks. These alternatives would have been far less costly in human lives. For example, the U.S. invasion of Iraq turned the country into a laboratory in which militant groups such as Islamic State have been able to hone their techniques of recruitment and violence. The formation of Islamist militant groups spreading throughout the region counts among the many human costs of that war.