War Making Headlines, but Peace Breaks Out
A Yahoo News article on how peace is breaking out all over the world. The story points out that the number of people killed in battle world-wide has dropped to the lowest point in the post-WWII era.
A Yahoo News article on how peace is breaking out all over the world. The story points out that the number of people killed in battle world-wide has dropped to the lowest point in the post-WWII era.
August 29th, 2004 at 10:08 pm
Somehow I don’t think this will make the top of the US political headlines.
Oh well.
August 30th, 2004 at 5:30 pm
It reminded me of an article I read about 8 months ago, the main point was that since Saddam Hussein was forced out of power, terrorism and guerilla warfare all across the world was on the decrease. I suppose that would imply that peace was breaking out, but I didn’t realize that combat deaths were at the lowest point ever in the post-WWII period.
August 30th, 2004 at 6:47 pm
I wonder though if their number includes the battle related civilian deaths in Iraq that no one is supposed to be counting…..
August 31st, 2004 at 9:34 am
Well, they said combat deaths. I don’t think victims of truck bombs count as combat deaths.
As for overall Iraq civilian deaths: while watching some RNC coverage, I saw a protest sign with a list of body counts of US soldiers, Afghani and Iraqi “citizens” (no differentiation between thugs and innocent bystanders, apparently), and the like, and the total didn’t come out to more than 12,000. That seemed a bit low, so I googled and found iraqbodycount.net. They claim 11,700 to 13,700 civilian deaths in Iraq to date.
That’s total deaths. Compare that to the yearly totals under Saddam: “In pre-2003 Iraq somewhere between 20,000 to 40,000 innocents were killed annually by Saddam or died as an indirect result of his ruination of the country.” (from a June 27 2004 editorial by Vicor Davis Hanson in The Oregonian).
To quote from the VDH editorial again: “The road to Iraqi democracy is awfully messy, but it should be compared with the alternative of Saddam’s gulags, not the local Rotary Club elections.”
August 31st, 2004 at 9:40 am
Victor Davis Hanson, not Vicor. WordPress chokes on the comment when I edit it because it’s not escaping ’s very well.