US spending and the collateral damage of the “war on terrorism”

According to the report of the project “War Costs” of Brown University, led by the US so-called. The “war on terrorism” has killed nearly a million people worldwide and has cost more than $ 8 trillion in nearly two decades. The report, which was released on August 25, examines the aftermath of US wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other regions where the US military is involved in conflicts called “perpetual wars.”
According to project co-director Neta Crawford, “It is imperative that the wide and varied impact of the many wars and counterterrorism operations in the United States since 9/11 is properly considered. Accounting goes beyond the Pentagon figures, because the cost of the September 11 reaction covered the entire budget. “ The report estimates that the war on terrorism, which will mark its 20th anniversary on September 11, 2021, directly killed 897,000 to 929,000 people, including at least 387,072 civilians. According to many experts, the United States “significantly underestimates the true losses that these wars took with human lives.”
The US invaded Afghanistan and removed the Taliban from power in retaliation for the September 11, 2001 attacks. The number of deaths caused by conflicts since the 9/11 attacks has been a source of heated debate as politics and imprecise science intersect in a heated debate over conflicting interests. In 2015, doctors who won the Nobel Prize for Social Responsibility calculated that more than a million people died directly or indirectly in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone.
The economic costs estimated in the Cost of War report include $ 2.3 trillion spent by the United States on military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, $ 2.1 trillion in Iraq and Syria, and $ 355 billion in Somalia and other regions of Africa. The War on Terror has displaced at least 37 million people, in addition to hundreds of thousands killed in direct violence. The United States is tracking the deaths and injuries of its own military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there are no convincing government statistics on casualties and deaths among enemy combatants and civilians. This omission, critics say, is intentional.
The authorities also deliberately falsified the death toll of US servicemen: “The Department of Defense’s Strategic Influence Office (2001/02) is one of the prime examples of official disinformation tools designed to influence public opinion in support of its policy in Iraq,” the authors note. Although the US no longer has a military presence in Afghanistan, the war on terrorism looks set to continue, with the Biden administration signaling that it will continue targeting the Islamic State of Khorasan, the Islamic State’s franchise in Afghanistan and Central Asia. using drones and other means, and this will lead to new casualties among the population.
A network of international human rights organizations launched a five-month campaign on 31 August to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the outbreak of the “war on terror”. The London-based international witness campaign includes over 40 global partners from 13 countries. The launch of the campaign began on the same day that Washington ended the longest war in US history with its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the conflict that marked the start of the US President George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In a statement released on Tuesday, “the campaign will include events highlighting the impact and setbacks of the war on terrorism.”
The pernicious rhetoric of the war on terrorism has become a global phenomenon. The architects of this campaign gained public support by demonizing Islam and created a system of laws and policies that inflicted injustice on the Muslim population on an unprecedented scale. The infrastructure of hatred was then used to suppress dissenting voices and undermine civil liberties for all. The state of oversight, securitization and the erosion of the rule of law are manifestations of a toxic campaign.