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Comment by scyzoryk_xyz | Hacker News Reader

*some clueless young guys have to go and kill untold numbers of innocent people in another country.

It never ceases to amaze me how citizens of the USA place the vast majority of sympathy to their beloved “troops” and barely any on those who actually get invaded.

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Yep. About 5000 American soldiers died in the Iraq War. A tragic loss, undeniably.

Iraqi deaths? Estimated to be between 400,000 and 1,000,000. That doesn't include deaths that will follow for decades from lasting damage and the instability that followed in the region and continues to this day.

Don't forget the lasting effects of depleted Uranium munitions:

https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-do...

that's a particularly nasty thing to be lobbing around. The shell that just keeps on shellin' long after the war is over.

Thanks for the reminder. I remember it being a big deal in the early 2000s but I don’t recall any mention of it in the last 15 years. I had completely forgot about the issue.

To go on a tangent, I am curious whether the effect would be any better with lead ammunition residue instead of DU?

I believe that the toxicity of DU comes from its properties as a heavy metal, same as lead, rather than from being radioactive. [0]

[0] Chemical DNA damange effect is a million times higher than radiological according to this: https://zenodo.org/record/1259849

People everywhere care more about people like them than about foreigners. German people were more upset about the 200 people killed in the 2021 floods than about the hundreds of thousands killed in the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

It’s sad, but not specifically American.

(That said, I always use the number of Iraqi deaths when arguing that GWB is the worst president of all time.)

Why's that amazing? The media dictates what most people talk about, and how they do it.

Never noticed how topics switch over time depending on what's in the news? That's what people talk about! News switches the main topic, people switch the main topic. The old topic becomes forgotten and it does so quickly.

If you take a closer look, you'll even see that they talk about the thoughts they've read, in the perspective they've received read them. I have little reason to assume it's not like this everywhere.

There will always a part who disagrees, but it will always be a minority compared to the masses, which creates beneficial controversy and keeps people arguing.

It is kind of fun to just not follow national news and then get into conversations with relatives / friends that do. Most conversations are really pre-programmed including the views that they will have. "Telegram is bad because it is used by extremists" for example. The most egregious example being COVID of course. The different national narratives were slightly out of sync at all times, so that people got told the Vaccines were effective at preventing infection, spread and the "way out", while at the same time another country was already running Booster programs because two doses were not enough and weren't even effectively preventing hospitalisations after 6 months.

And many people pick up terminology or even whole headlines really quick. Sometimes it’s super easy to tell which newspaper/website someone is reading by that.

Even television and entertainment play a huge part. They introduce and normalize issues, and in that way shift the borders of the overton window. It's strange how much of culture is, in a sense, manufactured. With the internet, at least there are some places where you can go to have open conversations now

Those places become less and less, actually.

I've found more and more places where people, under the umbrella of doing good, dictate what's allowed to be said. Often it's not even the actual admins of the channels, but a mob of people outraged-on-behalf-of-others. Powerhungry assholes.

"It never ceases to amaze me how citizens of the USA place the vast majority of sympathy to their beloved “troops” and barely any on those who actually get invaded."

Yes - but don't confuse average people in the street with the ra-ra'ing media. Especially in war situations, it is the media's job to propagandise the populace, and ensure that 'the people' are behind whatever it is they are doing. Dissenting opinions will not get any air.

Considering how those same troops are treated (or, more aptly, not treated) after they become veterans, that sympathy isn't exactly worth much either.

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