According to this article from Brown University, around a half million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since the U.S. invasions, around half of them civilians. For me, this continues to bring doubt on the idea that here is any such thing as a humanitarian war that helps more people than it hurts.

This total is only people killed by violence – it does not include “indirect deaths” due to “loss of access to food, water, health facilities, electricity or other infrastructure.”

Obviously, it doesn’t include horrible conflicts the U.S. is less directly involved in (but still involved in) such as Syria and Yemen.

I also read this depressing article in Foreign Policy in Focus saying the ongoing civil war in South Sudan is much nastier than I realized, with a death toll around 400,000 and counting.