How many people has the United States killed in your lifetime?

I was just dismissed as well.

I'll forgo the investigation, review, and compiling of the interludes by the u.s. that bothered me in addition to what didn't, for your interest, as that would take me several hours, to then be dismissed.

Without doing any research, I would say............all of them.

This spitting is in the way. It remains a serious subject.

All right, you got me there. Good point.

I think most of us suffer from the handicap of being confined to our own perspective. And when it comes to matters like this, a person really only 'knows' what he wants to know. If that's the case, it's not hard to believe that people can form some dubious opinions. And I'm not at all excluding myself in the least...

What I meant there is that from my perspective, the US is intentionally killing less people (at least percentage wise) than it was 150 years ago. I'm also taking in to account civilian killings - things like sales of tobacco, alcohol and the like; malpractice, good old fashioned murders...

Now I realize that the fact I don't feel the need to lament every unnecessary death may make me callous. And the fact that I don't feel particularly inclined to do the exact math in order to come to the conclusion that things seem relatively better now than they used to be - re intentional killing, may also make me callous. Am I mistaken? possibly. But this is the under-informed opinion I have.

Don't sweat it osso. I get dismissed all the time. When the day is done and my pride is back safely at bay, I find it's to my advantage.

Of course, wha'do I know?

Hi, thack.
I think I'll go at this for my own interest. So, no one skip lunch.
I'm often taken as vaporous, since I can be in self expression.

I won't rush now, though.

A lot of what Robert now says, I've said before him on a2k. No way I want to chase that down, that's just memory, me going on re our u.s. invasions. Now I see:

"I really have no idea what you are on about, osso. And it's one of the rare things I'm really not all that curious about."


Such a delight.

cicerone, WWII and the Korean war were not in my lifetime. That happened before I was born. Robert asked "in your lifetime".

They were in my lifetime. Robert is about thirty, I'm about seventy.

I'm in agreement on present robert posts, but am being shunned for dimwittendess of some sort, what is she about? which I take as usual, while I'm the only apparent one who agrees with him.

Why would I stay up all night to compile links?

I understand your position. Nobody wants to be made to be perceived as an asshole.

That's the ****'n reason why numbers will never mesh.

True.

Not if it is a collaborative effort to develop a timeline ranging from the oldest member's lifetime to the youngest member's lifetime.

The casualty numbers for a specific dot on the timeline don't change just because someones range of years doesn't cover that particular spot on the timeline.

To make it easier on folks, we could start the timeline at 1911 to cover anyone under 100 and end the timeline at 1998 since the youngest member here should be at least 13 years old.

So now all we need is to work up a chronological list of all the wars, conflicts, interventions, invasions, terrorist acts and other similar actions the United States was involved in and then get casualty counts for each.

One thing we'll have to determine is whether this list of actions will include only overt actions or will also include covert actions. Also, will the list be limited to only actions where we supplied our personnel/citizens to the action or will it include actions in which we just sold arms to the conflicting entities?

. . . and are we talking solely about deaths as the result of hostile actions (wars, incursions etc.) or do we include executions by state and Fed. governments, police shootouts with law-breakers etc.??

If you are able to define what the parameters are, you might get someplace, but nobody really knows what to include and what is to be omitted. Many of the questions have been asked, and I wonder if anyone has been keeping notes as to what exactly is to be included. Chronological numbers can have some semblance of organization, but that's only the beginning. The knowledge of a 13-year old cannot possibly have the experience or knowledge about the many ways the US has killed people around the world.

A guess: 250,000

And this is meaningful because...?

I don't care what the number is.

10 is not necessarily better that 100,000.

The issue is why these people were killed.

Of course if you are an absolutist pacifist, it probably does make a difference, but that's an issue for another thread.

YOB: 1983 (~29 years)

Definition used: Deaths from foreign military actions of US soldiers/weapons. Not a number defined by the total dead from conflicts, but some number of the dead in a conflict directly attributable to a US action.
Estimate without googling: 500,000 - 600,000

While thinking about it, here's two more guesses for other additional groups

Definition: Killed domestically by capital punishment
Estimate without googling: 15,000 - 20,000

Definition: Killed domestically by police action
Estimate without googling: 25,000 - 30,000

A
R
Taking guesses without judgement or google

You need to Google

Part of the point of this is gauge perception, not pass judgement. I replied as I saw fit, and plenty of numbers are available. Googling a death count for Iraq (for example) will return a very large range of numbers, and how these numbers are defined may not align with how I choose to define it. So what exactly should I have googled?

Is there a "correct" number that we could all agree on? If not, bugger off.

A
R
T

OK - Thanks