[a green flag with a leaf stands above an utopian green city with vegetation and clean energy]
Greenists believe that the world should be a better place for green people, and everyone else too
[an orange fascist-looking star in a gear logo stands above a bleak concrete city]
Orangites believe that the world should only have orange people, and that all greens should be hung
[an orange character speaks smugly, in a bedroom that contains an orangite logo and a greenist/orangite flag]
Me?
I'm a greenist-orangite,
why do you ask?
You are adding wounded to Obama but not Bush Sr to make Obama look worse. That's exactly the problem I described at the start.
Including wounded Obama is still less than the 100,000-200,000 killed by Bush Sr.
I swear, every time I demonstrate good faith, people accuse me of acting in bad faith. You provided casualty numbers and expressed confusion as to why they didn't line up with death numbers, I figured out and explained the confusion, even though it was favorable to your position, and now you say I'm trying to be deceptive. You provided those numbers, you interpreted them that way, tbh I also forgot that distinction until you pointed out the difference, don't come at me with "you're adding wounded to Obama's numbers to make him look worse" when you're the one who provided those numbers.
There's one other problem with the comparison you're making. You're looking at confirmed civilian casualties in Afghanistan, but total deaths in the Gulf War. Personally, I believe both wars were unjustified so total dead is the more relevant number, but we can also compare civilian casualties, just so long as we're looking at the same statistic in both cases.
Because we were talking about deaths, I used a small number and you then added wounded as a rebuttal instead of agreeing that Obama didn't kill as many. No matter how much data I show, you keep wanting to make Obama worse than Bush.
No I'm not. https://www.forcesnews.com/news/remembering-gulf-war-key-facts-figures
I didn't add wounded as a rebuttal, you added wounded when you linked stats of total casualties, and I corrected your mistake. My only fault in that misunderstanding is that I didn't catch your mistake right away.
I literally just corrected your mistake by pointing out that you were overestimating the number of confirmed civilian deaths under Obama by including all casualties, so no, I am not twisting numbers around to make him look bad, I'm just trying to make sure that we're comparing the same stats and interpreting them correctly. Where I come from, that's called "responsible fact checking."
You're looking at confirmed cases in one case and estimated cases in the other. You can find a breakdown of that estimate on Wikipedia, where the vast majority of those numbers come from the uprisings and the aftereffects of things like destroying power plants.
Look, I don't care which figure you want to compare. Casualties, deaths, civilian deaths, confirmed civilian deaths, direct or indirect, but you have to use the same figure in both cases.
No, you said "military not civilian" without even checking. Once I showed it was civilian you then say "but estimated" The content of the wikipedia link I provided earlier is titled "Aggregation of estimates".
You can't stop looking for a way to make Bush look better than Obama. You won't even read links or research before writing anything to make Obama look worse.
By any measure Obama was less. I've shown it with sources. If you think Bush was better than Obama, show your sources.
Bro. I have looked at every single source you have provided. I wouldn't have been able to explain the discrepancy you were confused about if I hadn't.
No, you absolutely have not. Where did you cite, for instance, direct civilian casualties in the Gulf War? Objectively, you have not. You only say "by any metric" because you're playing fast and loose with the metrics, comparing stats of different things. I'm not asking for "by any metric," I'm asking for one metric. Whichever you choose! But it has to be the same for both.
You made the claim (the original claim was ("less than any president in 50 years," and we haven't even touched Clinton or any other presidents), so the burden of proof is on you. I'm not positively asserting that Obama caused more deaths than Bush Sr, I just found that claim questionable and was curious where you got it from.
If you leave it to me, I'll compare total deaths. Based on the sources you've provided, the total death toll of Afghanistan was probably about twice that of the Gulf War, and roughly half of Afghanistan happened under Obama. I don't have stats that break down the number of total deaths by president, so I don't know for sure, but it's close enough to be dubious.
You said I used military when the link said civilian. You said, "But Bush is estimated." when the Obama link also said estimated.
We only have estimates for both.
Which I provided yet you continue to fight.
That isn't true based on reported estimates.
Estimated 29k under Obama is not roughly equal to estimated 100k under Bush Sr.
I can't tell if you're confused or lying at this point. That 29k figure is direct deaths while the 100k figure includes indirect deaths, from things like losing power or access to medicine.
Again, I don't care if you want to include indirect deaths or not. What I do care about is if you arbitrarily include or exclude them in order to try to prove bullshit.
You keep imagining excuses to make Obama as bad as Bush:
100k isn't indirect. It is direct violent death.
"Population-based studies produce estimates of the number of Iraq War casualties ranging from 151,000 violent deaths as of June 2006"
"The Iraq Body Count project documents 186,901–210,296 violent civilian deaths in their table."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Come on, now you're not even talking about the right war. We were talking about the Gulf War under Bush Sr, not the Iraq War which started under Bush Jr. (can't wait to hear how this is "another source I won't listen to"). What does the article on the Gulf War say?
The number of direct, confirmed civilian casualties by US forces in the air campaign was in the thousands, nowhere near 100k. However, many more civilians died due to the damage to infrastructure or in the uprisings that the bombing campaign encouraged.
In other words, the 100k figure includes indirect deaths. This isn't me twisting numbers around somehow, this is simply what the article says.
You are right, I referenced the wrong source. I'm remembering the links from 15years ago when I had this argument with conservatives on Reddit who were pushing the idea that Obama was the worst president ever.
You cannot take a Harvard study about predicted deaths from lack of medical care and then say that reported civilian deaths from war were from indirect.
If you are going with direct civilian killings from Obama then you use the column labeled "Civilians killed as a result of U.S.-led military actions" from the earlier link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war_in_Afghanistan_(2001-2021)
For example: "The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) attributed 596 Afghan civilian deaths as having been caused by international-led military forces in 2009, representing about a quarter of the 2,412 Afghan civilian deaths it recorded as having been caused by the war in 2009."
I was including indirect for Obama.
Which is not what I'm saying. I'm only saying that he's the same as the rest. A capitalist warmongerer with a smile who says nice things and acts with decorum, a kinder, gentler machine gun hand.
Also I'd be a little surprised if conservatives actually cared about how many Afghan civilians were killed.
Yes I can? Predicted deaths from lack of medical care are indirect deaths. That's what indirect means.
By all means. However the article only breaks down the stats that way through 2011. 596 + 440 + 207 gives us 1,244. If we assume a constant rate, then we can divide that by 3 to get the average per year and multiply by 8 for his whole term. That gives us an estimate of 3,317. As compared to the 2,300-3,364 direct, confirmed deaths from the US during the Gulf War.
And so finally we have one concrete metric we can compare the two on, and the conclusion is that they're roughly the same. Ofc, those numbers are both very low because of the metric we're using:
Both wars were wars of aggression, wars of choice, that could have been stopped with the stroke of a pen by the president and only the president, so I hold them each responsible for the total number of excess deaths, civilian or military, direct or indirect, Afghan/Iraqi or US. The total death toll for each is well over 100k.