Friday, August 27, 2021

From Jenna Orkin

More than 7,000 American military personnel have died in the U.S.-led wars worldwide since 9/11, and as of 2015, another 50,000-plus had been wounded. An additional 30,000 active-duty personnel and veterans of these wars have died by suicide. More than 7,402 U.S. contractors were also killed, in Afghanistan and Iraq alone. The direct deaths in the wars were upward of 800,000, but Brown University’s Costs of War project, which supplied the data in this paragraph, found that several times that were killed indirectly through such causes as war-related disease and water shortages. As of last year, the wars have cost about $6.4 trillion, and there will be the future costs of service members’ long-lasting benefits. And finally, the wars have created at least 37 million refugees.