Determining who the asshole is, and visualizing impersonal statistics

[pmb]

In any given situation, the person who is claiming that something is the end of the world is almost certainly an asshole. This is a handy rule of thumb, and applies pretty well across the board, with the possible exception of people talking about global thermonuclear war or other extinction-level threats (large asteroids, etc).

Also, the recent news that nobody seems to be talking about is that according to every peer-reviewed independent study, we have now killed more than 1,000,000 people in Iraq, either directly or indirectly, since 2003 as a result of this war. That is a lot of people - one six-thousandth of the world population, and 4% of the population of Iraq. Visualizing this from an Iraqi point of view resulted in this map. But honestly, this sort of number is way past "visualization" territory. Our government has, in the past 6 years, spent more than $500,000,000,000 on a stupid war, and this war has caused more than 1,000,000 people to die.

One million people. Dead. For what?

Comments

[pmb.livejournal.com]

While there's blame on both sides, it was a "war of choice", and the choice was ours. That makes it more our fault than just "they killed those, and we killed these". Would those people have died if we hadn't invaded? Would those people have died no matter how we invaded? Since we threw the first punch, those seem to be the crucial questions.

[akjdg.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree, my agreement just falls short of feeling that 'we' killed those people. *consults with wife* I think the best way to articulate my feelings on the matter is that we are perhaps guilty of manslaughter on many of the 1,000,000 dead, but not 1st degree murder.