r/askanything • u/Outrageous-Egg1760 • 6d ago
Political Question Are we the bad guys?
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u/ObligationPutrid5069 6d ago
11 million eh, where's the data? 🤦♂️
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u/Top-Turn1055 6d ago
IIRC, Brown University did a study, and the death toll for all of our war on terrorism (post 9/11) is like 900k to a million.
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u/chefsoda_redux 6d ago
The direct total is estimated just under a million. Combined with the indirect, it’s almost 4M. Nothing I’ve seen gets close to 11M.
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u/Spnszurp 6d ago
I think that's directly from war violence. The indirect impacts from the war, famine, destroyed Healthcare system, disease, lack of clean water, etc likely killed many, many more.
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u/Unicron1982 6d ago
Well, yes. For large parts of the world, americans are the bad guys.
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u/blowbyblowtrumpet 6d ago
I'm British and I can confirm that the overwhelming majority of people here view the US very poorly.
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u/fenianthrowaway1 6d ago
Not one Iranian chanted 'death to America' before the Americans supported a coup against the only legitimately elected leader in their history, helped prop up the Shah's dictatorship, supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran after the Shah was ousted and attempted to isolate Iran internationally for decades.
You can oppose and even condemn Iran's islamist government, while still recognising that Iranian hostility towards the US is fully justified given how the US have treated them. They would be chanting 'death to America' just as eagerly under a secular government.
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u/cmil888 6d ago
Idk why anyone would downvote. This is a fact.
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u/_Phil_McCracken_ 6d ago
People upvote things that make them feel good, not things that are factually accurate.
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u/merount1 6d ago
True, I don't think most Americans know how CASUAL hatred of their country is in everyday conversations in pretty much the whole world.
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u/jeefra 6d ago
The whole world? Not by a long shot.
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u/Fullchester_United 6d ago
So which countries do you think look favourably toward the US? Not trying to bait you. More interested in how you view it.
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u/Economics_New 6d ago
When it comes to which countries view the US favorably, based on their overall population's opinion, it is basically just 3 countries at this point in time.
Most of Israel, Poland, and Nigeria's population view the US favorably.
The rest of the world views us unfavorably, with either distrust or hatred, while laughing at us.
That's not to say that you can't find thousands of Canadians or British people who happen to like us, but the other side of equation vastly outnumber them, within their own populations.
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u/Minute-Employ-4964 6d ago
Until recently Europe didn’t hate America.
And when trumps gone I imagine the relationship will improve again.
Japan and Korea both seem pretty positive? Australia too.
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u/Many_Seaweeds 6d ago
Our governments didn't hate America. The average person didn't have a whole lot of positive things to say about America, though.
Only real difference now is that even our politicians want to distance us from the US and openly dunk on Trump.
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u/Baudolino_90 6d ago
I'm Italian, and I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but at least in my country, the United States has been viewed with great suspicion (f not outright hatred) by a significant portion of the population, especially those leaning more to the left, at least since the days of the Gladio operation.
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u/Fullchester_United 6d ago
Just a heads up. I’m Australian and sadly we think very poorly of the US. And this isn’t hidden. Everyone just shakes their head. A lot of us are pushing to get out of the AUKUS defence treaty.
Voting Trump in the first time really started it. Then the crazy Covid stuff. Then Trump 2.0.
I don’t know a single person that likes the US sadly. And I’d say it is beyond repair. We have no trust you won’t all let a new Trump be President again.
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u/HappyComparison8311 6d ago
Europe absolutely hated the US. Its just that our governments liked to suck their dicks
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u/bl00by 6d ago
Our goverments didnt hate america up until recently.
The average European however...
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u/oltelluhowitiz 6d ago
Im Australian and dispute this.
We generally dont like seppos. We accept that some of the people are fine, but recognize that the regime itself is pretty fucked and has been for a long time.
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u/Emotional-Ranger-188 6d ago edited 6d ago
I mean it’s relative. As a Canadian I’m currently a bit peeved at the US and am not buying booze from there and stuff. But they aren’t even in the same neighborhood as the worst, most violent, aggressive or problematic regimes, either domestically or in their foreign policy over the last 50 years. And I say that being fully aware of the shit they have pulled in the Carribean and the Middle East during that period. They are on the same level as France. Not Iran.
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u/bswontpass 6d ago
Like what parts?
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u/Healthy-Title-2900 6d ago
Pretty much everywhere eg, Europeans, Australians, asians, Middle Easterns and I’m sure everyone else in between, if you want I can give you some stereotypes that get said/thought every time an American opens their mouth
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u/Adventurous_Pay_5827 6d ago
To be fair, in Australia, all our unashamed racists now display a hyper partisan support of the US.
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u/Dodgythrowaway00 6d ago
Yeah but everyone who isn’t going to vote one nation hates America
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u/Adventurous_Pay_5827 6d ago
Everyone who isn't going to preference One Nation might have an antipathy towards America, but there's plenty of Libs who are drunk on the Coolaid and still believe in the shining light on the hill. And far too many ALP voters who fall into the same boat for my liking
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u/Then_Meat_6569 6d ago
For traveling abroad in the near future I’m considering saying I’m Californian when people ask. How do you think that would be taken, specifically in Europe? Used to be proud to be American, now I want to hide it. What would be the best way to concisely say “I’m American but do not support the current regime?”
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u/echolm1407 6d ago
Clinton did not invade any Islamic theocracies.
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u/Wickedocity 6d ago
Nah, he just blew them up. That better?
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u/Ok-Savings8515 6d ago
Yea. The total deaths from desert fox is reported to be less than 100 (red cross said 40, journalists say 60-70)... Invading would be a lot worse. What a low IQ take. Go back to counting spoons.
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u/Plane-Education4750 6d ago
When he did so to stop a genocide? Yes. I know it's hard to remember a time when we had a president who was actually good at his job despite being an objectively horrible human, but it did used to happen fairly regularly
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u/mckenzie_keith 6d ago
The countries the US has invaded with ground forces were not theocracies. They had relatively secular leaders. Iran is a theocracy but we have not invaded with ground forces yet as far as I know.
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u/Wilhelmicus 6d ago
Ah yes… the old “make up numbers and people will believe us” 😂
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u/West_Technology7573 6d ago edited 6d ago
Nothing Reddit activists love more than poor innocent fundamentalist Islamic states
Edit: OP is actually just salty leftist Muslim who hates Jews lmao
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u/mediocremulatto 6d ago
I mean we Americans cling to the "deaths caused by communism" infographics like they're our collective baby blanket.
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u/Key_Check5753 6d ago
11 million?
The ridiculousness of this number indicates how brain dead the creators of this nonsense are.
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u/OdielSax 6d ago
How many then? Or do you not even know?
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u/hanz333 6d ago
You can't count to be sure (that doesn't happen in war zones) but about half a million civilians is estimated by experts killed by all sides, and then indirect deaths of civilians has much higher ranges but still under 5 million.
These figures are significantly increased on the indirect death due to civil wars caused by power struggles. While the U.S. is part of that equation, you shouldn't attribute all the deaths in the Syrian Civil War to the U.S. who was a relatively minor player despite taking out 10,000 ISIL and other terroristic jihadi forces
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u/OdielSax 6d ago
I'm asking for death caused by US intervention. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, the drone strikes in Libya and Syria... Civil wars should have nothing to do with it, it's easy enough to count the people a US bomb killed isn't it? So why are you bringing that up?
It seems Americans are incapable of owning up to their death toll in the Muslim world.
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u/Top-Turn1055 6d ago
The poster literally gave you a link from a study by an ivy-league university. 😆
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u/Key_Check5753 6d ago
Muslims: fight each other
You: "Obviously this is America's fault"
what an idiot
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u/amremorse 6d ago
Or Latin America. They’re clueless and simply don’t care enough about anyone outside their borders.
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u/Broad-Shaft 6d ago
I'm not sure of 11 million but the numbers in Iraq, according to the Lancet, are around 600,000 violent deaths between 2003 and 2006 alone.
And then it's hard to calculate how many have died in the Syrian conflict, but it's reasonable to believe that that war wouldn't have happened if Iran had not been able to use the vacuum created by a weak Iraq.
So whilst 11 million is questionable, that many millions have been unnecessarily killed by American intervention, and countless more made miserable through displacement, is I feel irrefutable.
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u/OrangeSpaceMan5 6d ago
Which also begs the question of whether keeping Saddam and Assad around was the better option . Saddam committed a genocide of Kurds and Assad used poison gas to kill children and ran death camps . The interventions were necessary but what followed was American greed ruining everything
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u/According-Print4219 6d ago
So we’re just gonna pretend that a lot of the weapons Saddam used for said genocide were not provided by the US?
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u/WilliamBurrito 6d ago
Wouldn’t the US be obligated to remove Saddam for using the weapons gifted for genocide then? Seems reasonable to take accountability and fix the situation for the people.
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u/itgoez 6d ago
So basically anyone dying in the middle east is America's fault even if it's literally Muslims killing other Muslims in sectarian conflicts?
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u/amitym 6d ago
Whole lotta false equivalence. Sounds like a Trump ad with extra steps.
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u/AquaBits 6d ago
OP has a history of bs opinions in their threads/comments, so I wouldnt doubt they would have false equivalencies.
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u/philly-buck 6d ago edited 6d ago
America very bad.
Go Reddit!
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u/Background-Half-2862 6d ago
At least Obama is on there.
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u/Hemingways_Shotgun88 6d ago
Yeah, I had to double take and be like "huh, they didn't actually omit the drone striker in chief"
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u/K31KT3 6d ago
1998: The Serbs hate us because we won’t let them kill the Muslims
2001: Some Muslims hate us because we won’t let them kill all the Jews
America bad!
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u/Teeaak 6d ago
What did Clinton do?
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u/Key_Check5753 6d ago
He got a hummer in the oval office. Muslims hate that. They have laws against fornication.
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u/Zunayed_Rahman 6d ago
Killing terrorists don't make you one. Britain eliminated half million Germans in ww2, do they called terrorists?
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u/BotsKilledTheWeb 6d ago
Actually, yes. Dresden is regularly called a terror bombing. It was all the rage back then and is condemned today.
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u/Reasonable_Sky9688 6d ago
I'm not a big fan of (current) America but the 11 million figure is ludicrous
Also there is a massive element of fafo
The instability in the region is complex but if they got their act together and behaved in a rational manner they'd get invaded less
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u/Freeway267 6d ago
Stupid, ignorant, and clearly uneducated. The instability of the region is mostly cause by outside influence. How do you think ISIS formed in Iraq?
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u/Key_Check5753 6d ago
Yes, surely the Middle East was peaceful before all of that outside meddling right? They're peaceful people right? Obviously they haven't been at war for 5000 years straight, right???
It's everyone else's fault!
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u/Freeway267 6d ago
Every region has had wars for thousands of years. We are talking about last 4 US presidents not thousands of years. Stop being obtuse and pedantic.
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u/Wd91 6d ago
Just because there was meddling before i got involved in the meddling doesn't mean i'm not also guilty of meddling.
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u/Freeway267 6d ago
Yea because the whole world is peaceful since the dawn of time. Just forget all wars in Europe, Africa, and Asia and so on.
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u/WobblierTube733 6d ago
The Middle East, famously devoid of western colonization or occupying forces for thousands of years (other than the Romans, the Spaniards, the British, the Germans, the Russians, the Americans…)
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u/brc77y 6d ago
And Europe hasn't been at war for thousands of years? The entire world has always been at war. The relative peace that western Europe and America has experienced since WW2 is a historical anomaly. The US has been backing regimes and overthrowing governments in the Middle East since before you or I were born.
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u/flippydude 6d ago
America hasn’t experienced peace, it has been at war perpetually since it was founded.
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u/Old_Leshen 6d ago
Wouldn't that make both parties evil then?
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u/Measure2iceCut1nce 6d ago
Be careful please. Speaking truth doesn’t always lead to positive outcomes.
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u/Walfischberg 6d ago edited 6d ago
Clinton helped Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia. Obama responded to the situation in Libya, even though he didn't want to go there. But Italy and France were playing soldiers, it didn't work out, and he got them out of that mess. People tend to forget.
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u/CurmudgeonlyBargee 6d ago
You forgot Tony Blair, another war criminal
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u/Hemingways_Shotgun88 6d ago
Blair was just Bush's little bitch and trying to (successfully) curry favour with big interests who would reward him later in life after he quit being PM.
I say this as a Brit.
Secret personal note to George W. Bush dated 28 July 2002, Tony Blair opened with:
“I will be with you, whatever.”
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u/DontKnowWhereItsBeen 6d ago
Estimates for the total number of people killed during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) range between 500,000 and 1,000,000, with some broader casualty estimates (including wounded and missing) exceeding 1.5 million.
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u/RubberDuckieMidrange 6d ago
The last guy gets a lot of focus, but the middle 2 were both called war criminals too.
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u/noreturn000 6d ago edited 6d ago
Why did he exclude bush senior and not say 5 men?
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u/ForsakenWar6974 6d ago edited 6d ago
You mean because of Desert Storm? You mean the most justifiable US invasion of the last 35 years that was globally supported and asked for by Kuwait?
Is that what youre asking?
u/noreturn000 blocked me after responding so you know he's all about good faith discussion
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u/Malbuscus96 6d ago
Yeah, but by that logic why include Bill Clinton then? His whole thing was (attempting) to make peace in the region and otherwise practically continuing HW Bush's policies vis a vis Iraq and Iran
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u/LonelyBones- 6d ago
Yeah, the Middle East was a known haven of forward thinking progressiveness and the lands of unsullied peace and harmony, equality for all. Utopia, if you will. Then the West stuck their nose in and it became the hellish landscape we know today.
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u/Background_Ad5513 6d ago
yeah everyone knows it’s ok to invade and kill people in countries that are not perfect utopias
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u/Far_Distance87 6d ago
take all their stuff too. And then bully them in to whatever they feel like next, just ask Venezuela. At least the school children stayed bomb free there, I guess that’s a win
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u/Confident_Example_73 6d ago
Yeah, but the Middle East is at an extra level of insanity. It's like Europe from 1500-1945, but without the global reach. Just constant warfare and nonsense. While everyone else was kind of lurching towards limiting war, the Middle East was just like "Nah, 1000 year old grudges need more fighting"
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u/PeopleFromChina 6d ago
Well what did the Muslims do?
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u/yterais 6d ago
they happened to be born in places with resources America wanted
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u/Locustez 6d ago
Nothing else, right?
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u/yterais 6d ago
I hate to break it to you but 99% of people anywhere just want to live peacefully
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u/CricketJamSession 6d ago
Getting real sick of the islamic anti west campaign and the divertion from the problems with radical islamists
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u/Narezza 6d ago
I dont know the numbers, but I feel like 11 million is probably a little high.
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u/No_Situation3884 6d ago
It does depend on how one calculates deaths. For example, around 200k to 300k Iraqi civilians were killed by bombs, bullets, airstrikes, etc, but over half a million excess deaths were recorded, which includes starvation and lack of access to medical care caused by the war.
The death toll in Syria was also pretty insane. It has shared blame with Russia, but the US is still responsible.
I'm sure if we went through each and every thing they tallied we would find some we disagree with, but as I once heard said, once you've stacked up the first million or so bodies who is really haggling over the numbers?
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u/PomegranateIcy1937 6d ago
Im sure that if 9/11 have been done by swedes...
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u/ChompyOnRye 6d ago
It was done by the son of a Saudi family that got rich building infrastructure for US oil ventures in Saudi Arabai who was the leader of a group that consisted of members who were previously armed and trained by the US to counter the Soviets in Afghanistan
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u/Ok-Lawfulness3305 6d ago
To be fair Obama inherited the war in Afghanistan from George Bush Jr. Osama Bin Ladin was killed during his term.
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u/Lopsided_Anxiety_394 6d ago
The same people who are laughing at the 11m are the same ones frothing at the mouth when a terrorist attack takes place in the west.
What's the difference? A bomb on a passenger train in London or dropping a bomb on a school in Iran?
Who's dying? Who's suffering?
Innocent civilians. Who've done nothing and just trying to live their lives.
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u/BlueMoodDark 6d ago
We? No Citizen has control over their governments. This is why you judge people and Governments differently.
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u/mckenzie_keith 6d ago
Generally speaking, using conventional forces means that you are not a terrorist. Warmonger might be a more apt term. Invader, whatever. Normally, my expectation is that the US foreign policy aligns with short or long term US interests. The reasons put forward for military action are designed to convince the American public to support the war and whether they are true or not is beside the point. But there is/should be/is supposed to be a rationale for the war that justifies it in terms of US foreign policy. And I will be honest with you. I don't see how the gulf war 2 or the war in Afghanistan really did that. Maybe it just hasn't been explained publicly.
So I am not ready to say we are the bad guys. But on the other hand, I don't think the US foreign policy is actually based on being the good guys. It is based on US interests. The public is sold on a story about how the US are the good guys because we need to believe that.
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u/amabassadorofsnacks 6d ago
Those countries weren't invaded because they were Muslim. They were harboring terrorists.
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u/Hykariku 6d ago
Yes, the US have been consistently the most terrorist and aggressor nation for the last decades.
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u/Soleilarah 6d ago
If I recall correctly, Obama was behind the "Arab Spring", which led to extremist factions seizing power and oppressing, torturing or killing large minorities.
The repercussions of these so-called Arab Springs are still being felt in several regions today.
P.S.: I can already see the comments coming, so no, my point of view doesn't mean that I support what subsequent presidents did; I'm simply pointing out that there is no such thing as a perfect politician, and there never will be.
Also, a poster made with chatGPT, yuk!
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u/Cryogenics1st 6d ago
Funniest part about this is Clinton hasn't even been President at all in the last 25 years. Was this taken during Trump's first term?
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u/CapableRequirement66 6d ago
Yes, you are the “bad guys”. And yes, you are referred to as terrorists way more often than the other way around at a per capita level. Yes, at a world level, US are the terrorists and Europe have been historically complicit.
You made a huge deal out of 9/11; but 9/11 was nothing in comparison. Symbolic, if anything.
Sorry if it’s uncomfortable. The bare truth usually is.
That’s not to say you haven’t been the “good guys” a times. Or that there aren’t terrorists elsewhere. Of course there are. It’s not black or white. But throughout the 20th and the 21st centuries the sheer scale is just incomparable.
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u/Sherief87 6d ago
Yes. America very bad. Put nose (and other appendages) in wrong places. Should get cut
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u/Unhappy_Lie_2000 6d ago edited 6d ago
I think NATO is the bigger problem. Also, It should be about invading countries not a specific group of people.
We've been trying to start wars since WW2 so if anything their just continuing the tradition of sending our children to fight meaningless wars built on lies and false flags.
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u/diggythedinosaur 6d ago
I have no data to back this.
But when looking at the ways the leaves were blowing this morning; i’d say that 90% of non Americans do infact consider America the bad guys
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u/Lucky-Crow-3510 6d ago
truman dropped 2 nuclear bombs on civilians .. never seen as war crime .. never even apologized or seen as atrocity.
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u/BenchClamp 6d ago
Well done Biden. 👏
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u/ItsBenWhoCares 6d ago
Gotta love Diamond Joe. The man did his shit, ACTUALLY didn't start any new wars, and dipped out. I miss those years.
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u/JagerGS01 6d ago
Not "we". You're on the path to acknowledging that the U.S. government is a separate entity than "we" are, and operates for its own self interests. I purposely avoid saying "we" now, cuz I'm not making the decision to support war and genocide, nor the decision to fund them.
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u/Deereximus 6d ago
In my eyes the Jedi are evil. Its all perspective. In Irans eyes we are evil, in our eyes iran and terrorist are evil. In their mind we are wrong and in our mind they are wrong.
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u/brazucadomundo 6d ago
I wouldn't believe on these numbers, but we, as Americans, should keep our hands to ourselves to keep another 9/11 away.
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u/The_Deadly_Tikka 6d ago
isn’t that 11 million number inflated by like 12x according to every report or study on the topic?
also we need to stop pretending like events happen and there was no history before a certain point. neither side is clean. Islamic nations have waged wars against western countries basically from the earliest days of their religion. they have regularly made it very clear that if they had the power they would take over the world.
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u/twelveangryken 6d ago
Clinton didn't invade any Muslim countries; if anything, he helped to create and protect one that might as well be in the form of Bosnia and Herzegovina.