The American System of Suffering, 1965-2014

Posted on Jan 8, 2013

Dave_B_ (CC BY 2.0)

A Vietnamese farmer in 2010.

By Nick Turse, TomDispatch

(Page 2)

Leaving aside those who perished from disease, hunger, or lack of medical care, at least 3.8 million Vietnamese died violent war deaths according to researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington.  The best estimate we have is that 2 million of them were civilians.  Using a very conservative extrapolation, this suggests that 5.3 million civilians were wounded during the war, for a total of 7.3 million Vietnamese civilian casualties overall.  To such figures might be added an estimated 11.7 million Vietnamese forced from their homes and turned into refugees, up to 4.8 million sprayed with toxic herbicides like Agent Orange, an estimated 800,000 to 1.3 million war orphans, and 1 million war widows. 

The numbers are staggering, the suffering incalculable, the misery almost incomprehensible to most Americans but not, perhaps, to an Iraqi. 

No one will ever know just how many Iraqis died in the wake of the U.S. invasion of 2003.  In a country with an estimated population of about 25 million at the time, a much-debated survey—the results of which were published in the British medical journal The Lancet—suggested more than 601,000 violent “excess deaths” had occurred by 2006.  Another survey indicated that more than 1.2 million Iraqi civilians had died because of the war (and the various internal conflicts that flowed from it) as of 2007.  The Associated Press tallied up records of 110,600 deaths by early 2009.  An Iraqi family health survey fixed the number at 151,000 violent deaths by June 2006.  Official documents made public by Wikileaks counted 109,000 deaths, including 66,081 civilian deaths, between 2004 and 2009.  Iraq Body Count has tallied as many as 121,220 documented cases of violent civilian deaths alone. 

Then there are those 3.2 million Iraqis who were internally displaced or fled the violence to other lands, only to find uncertainty and deprivation in places like Jordan, Iran, and now war-torn Syria.  By 2011, 9% or more of Iraq’s women, as many as 1 million, were widows (a number that skyrocketed in the years after the U.S. invasion).  A recent survey found that 800,000 to 1 million Iraqi children had lost one or both parents, a figure that only grows with the continuing violence that the U.S. unleashed but never stamped out. 

Today, the country, which experienced an enormous brain drain of professionals, has a total of 200 social workers and psychiatrists to aid all those, armed and unarmed, who suffered every sort of horror and trauma.  (In just the last seven years, by comparison, the U.S. Veterans Administration has hired 7,000 new mental health professionals to deal with Americans who have been psychologically scarred by war.)

Many Afghans, too, would surely be able to relate to what Pham To and millions of Vietnamese war victims endured.  For more than 30 years, Afghanistan has, with the rarest of exceptions, been at war.  It all started with the 1979 Soviet invasion and Washington’s support for some of the most extreme of the Islamic militants who opposed the Russian occupation of the country. 

The latest iteration of war there began with an invasion by U.S. and allied forces in 2001, and has since claimed the lives of many thousands of civilians in roadside and aerial bombings, suicide attacks and helicopter attacks, night raids and outright massacres.  Untold numbers of Afghans have also died of everything from lack of access to medical care (there are just 2 doctors for every 10,000 Afghans) to exposure, including shocking reports of children freezing to death in refugee camps last winter and again this year.  They were among the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been internally displaced during the war.  Millions more live as refugees outside the country, mostly in Iran and Pakistan.  Of the women who remain in the country, up to 2 million are widows.  In addition, there are now an estimated 2 million Afghan orphans.  No wonder polling by Gallup this past summer found 96% of Afghans claiming they were either “suffering” or “struggling,” and just 4%  “thriving.”

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