Movie Dead: 9,000,000,000+ (in just 25 films)
Really killed by US: 16.1 million ( Low )
23.6 million ( High ?)
Real
Dead Action: The U.S.
Military and the Enemy - 1945-2010
How many people have been killed through U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II ? Hazard a guess?
We are working on a composite list of wars / military "actions" fought by or for the U.S. government. This is a work in progress and is just in rough draft form. Nevertheless, the various numbers add up to an interesting comment on the value taxpayers are getting for their tax dollars. Included at the bottom is a special "Victory" scorecard that changes with the numbers posted above it.
The list includes a list of how many "good guys" and "enemy" are estimated to have died with references to sources. There are both "low" and "high" estimate columns. In cases where multiple estimates were found, I subjectively chose the ones that I found most credible.
There are well over 200 military actions overseas involving the U.S. military. I have for now not endeavored to compile any data for the events before 1945. That exercise would no doubt be illustrative, but the years following World War II saw the passage of the "National Security Act of 1947" and the United States' rise to its current status as the only global superpower. While the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II are of great and continuing interest, their inclusion would complicate the process of extracting understanding from this brief study.
Although many of these spreadsheet lines merit their own books or perhaps encyclopedias, it is hoped that what is conveyed in this summary will be reveal a respect for the past and an optimism for the potential of a more benevolent future.
Please, help fill in the gaps and make this review more robust. Do you have references? Corrections? Suggestions? Criticisms? Let us know.
The work includes new data and links to www.iraqbodycounts.net to accommodate the latest invasion of Iraq.
Seemingly basic questions about U.S. wars linger, for decades. For example, how many Vietnamese were killed during the The Vietnam War? Apparently, the number is quite clear and cited in the documentary and on this website. 3,800,00 people were killed in Vietnam, not counting Americans, Cambodians, or Laotians. The reference in "Over 9 Billion Dead Served" and in the 1945-2010 tally, is offered in the form of a recently obtained audio MP3 file of a Robert McNamara interview, linked here at McNamara confesses. This figure does NOT include the 570,000 to perhaps 1,250,000 of deaths suffered by the Laotians and Cambodians. As far as I know, Robert McNamara, for his direct involvement in escalating that war, has never been indicted as a war criminal / for war crimes. Instead, he is celebrated as a belatedly insightful, senior statesman in his book, "The Fog of War", a work that mysteriously omits the 3,800,000 dead figure that McNamara, in an unusual moment of rare, real candor (in 1999), once thought important enough to emphasize.
Real Dead Action: 1945-2010 (spreadsheet produced html file).
234 U.S. "Interventions" 1798-1993: Document "Instances of Use of United States Forces Abroad" compiled by the U.S. Navy.
An additional list, that includes use of U.S. government forces within the United States, was compiled by Zoltan Grossman, reportedly relying on documents from "Congressional Record (23 June 1969), "180 Landings by the U.S. Marine Corps History Division, Counterspy (July-August 1982), and "Protest & Survive (Ellsberg) is titled "One Hundred Years of Intervention" (1890-1993).