You're looking at this all wrong - we could be justifying a brand new war every single day with these numbers!

Great sarcasm predicts the future.

While you were joking, this is honestly what I think is happening. Our country has already started a number of "wars" on groups and this is only going to get worse now that a significant portion of the population feels that our soon-to-be leaders are illegitimate.

This is why Trump will stay on the news. He's too sui generis to be the creation of TPTB, but they would never let an iron grip on the brain stems of the more suggestible 70% of the population go to waste. At the same time a third of us expect nothing from their votes for Biden because It Could Be Worse, another third will be sure that Trump's Triumphant Return awaits only a few thousand dead Bolivians or gays or whatever. If he faded from view, so would the heat he generates.

If Covid had originated in a less powerful country than China I'm almost certain we would have invaded them already. You can see it by the amount of "Chinese virus"/"it was made in a lab" rhetoric from the top to try and deflect from our shitty handling of it.

Deflection may have been positive side-effect. Officially it is:

> U.S. President Donald Trump Monday said his "Chinese virus" statement for weeks was a counter-propaganda strategy to fight Chinese allegations that American soldiers brought coronavirus to Wuhan.

Given how China and Russia stepped up their muscle flexing in the past year, how China is against an international investigation into the origins, I am expecting more than not, that 2021 will reveal it was indeed a lab leak. If natural, China still has to answer why it sat on corona for at least 3 months before notifying international health agencies. All this research should see atomic-bomb grade inspections anyway, those are long overdue. I don't want Iran experimenting with SARS-3 without oversight, invading afterwards will be too late.

This article from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is both critical of Trump, yet carefully supports the "leaked from a lab" theory: https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-ari... worth a read.

I dont think this is a joking matter. The toll of wars are far greater than the initial provoking incident. There are death tolls for your home troops, innocent civilians, and long-term tolls of disabilities and psychological damage.

I appreciate your feelings on this, but I somewhat agree with parent that humor is a good idea. The majority of Americans, and nearly all the "journalism" to which they are subjected, still believe that they should fear brown people overseas enough to preemptively murder them. That is counter to logic and reality, but logic is not the way to make this argument. Few people (well, few Americans anyway) are capable of controlling their fears through logic. Lots of people don't like to be the butt of jokes, though. If the rest of us are always laughing at them, their insecurity might open their eyes to the emptiness of their fear.

The "journalism", however, won't change until it's no longer cost-effective. We have to change ourselves first.

I’m fairly certain the parent commenter was being facetious. It’s really hard to comprehend why powerful people are willing to impose such devastation on humankind; the parent is mocking their thought process, with a touch of rather dark humor.

Bit late to put Saddam and Gaddafi back, and you might have some trouble dislodging the Russian and Turkish forces from their positions.

But that's why war is a genie you can't put back in the bottle.

And why exactly do you have to dislodge Russian and Turkish forces from their positions which are 10 000 km from the US borders and in Russian and Turkish neighborhood? Just to "secure the oil" [0]? Because stabilization, development, and prosperity of the affected countries is certainly not on the US agenda list if are to judge by the numerous outcomes.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U10p3Tn9V5Y

9/11 killed mostly high status people. COVID mostly kills low status people. So there won't be any wars this time.

There are a number of strategic reasons to be involved in the middle east and none of them are stupid. Would you be happier if ISIS was running amok?

ISIS was created by our involvement in the Middle East. It was the direct result of destabilizing Iraq and Syria.

It's crazy there are still people here who don't realize that ISIS was created because of US involvement. Great book with link below on the topic of America's actions in the middle east that talks about everything starting from Carter in the late 70s to time of publishing in 2016. Highly suggest reading.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/241154/americas-war...

Syria is such a complicated political situation that I don't think you can reasonably chalk it up to "America did Syria."

Under the Obama administration the CIA was funneling billions of dollars worth of military equipment -- ranging from small arms and ammo, to vehicles and even anti-tank missiles -- into the hands of Syrian militant groups[1][2].

These groups specifically include ISIS.

It's hard to think that the Syrian civil war would have been so bloody or lasted as long as it did without USA involvement.

[1] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-mystery-of-isis-toyota-arm...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/isis-weapons-cia-missile-...

Syria had a civil war before significant US involvement, but between being bordered by a completely destabilized Iraq, and the US campaign against Assad means that US involvement made the situation so much worse.

But it certainly intentionally fanned the flames and added a lot of oil after that.

Those strategic reasons are dumb. Getting rid of oil dependence was the smart option.

Maybe, but that's a separate issue.

Deaths from a natural disaster are fundamentally different than deaths caused by a murderer. Trying to evaluate policy by comparing the two is nonsensical. Like suggesting that it's a waste of time to spend resources to find a murderer when they only killed one person vs the thousands that die to flu.

Murderers are sometimes caught. Our multiple decades of wanton murder overseas have only enriched armaments manufacturers and their puppets in politics and journalism. That's not a good enough reason.