On: The front page of The New York Times for May 24, 2...

[gumby]

In 2003 I asked the NYT to list casualties of the Afghan and Iraq invasions on the front page but they told me they were satisfied to bury them in the middle of the newspaper. It was only ever a few names at a time, and Even that not every day.

Eventually they just stopped printing them at all.

[Udik → gumby]

> It was only ever a few names at a time, and Even that not every day.

Because Iraqis and Afghans, notoriously, have no names.

[gumby → Udik]

Very much so but I figured that was a position I was definitely not going to make progress on with the NYT via email. I was hoping that Even seeing just the names of Americans might remind people that something horrible was going on “over there far away”.

I edited in “and even that not every day”. I thought if I were less subtle the comment would be downvoted.

[onyva → gumby]

You mean the USA invasion to ... and the USA war in... I assume. These crimes are crimes initiated and committed by the USA and the UK for which only Iraqis and afghans had to pay the price.

[gumby → onyva]

I was hoping that the NYT would be willing to draw attention to even the small cost the US was paying...no luck.

Yes criminal invasions; calling them “wars” makes them sound more morally neutral, at least to the modern ear.

[oblio → gumby]

I'm not trying to belittle those deaths and they should have put them on the first page, but didn't 5000 Americans die in Iraq? At this rate Coronavirus will kill 100 times that :o

[docdeek → oblio]

Deaths in a war like Iraq were entirely preventable - no choice to go to war, no US deaths in Iraq.

[dao- → docdeek]

Pandemics are preventable. Pandemics escalating domestically is preventable.

[docdeek → dao-]

Indeed, though the newspaper in question was all-in for the Iraq War initially while it has never been cheering on the pandemic.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/26/pressandpublis...

[dntbnmpls → oblio]

> I'm not trying to belittle those deaths and they should have put them on the first page, but didn't 5000 Americans die in Iraq?

Did only americans die in iraq?

> At this rate Coronavirus will kill 100 times that :o

Hundreds of thousands of iraqis died because of the illegal invasion. That's not counting the people who starved or died of disease due to the destabilization of the country due to the invasion.

Also, there is a difference between death by natural causes and murder.

[oblio → dntbnmpls]

Would NYT dedicate the front page to Iraqis? I doubt it. I'm not American, BTW.

[dntbnmpls → oblio]

> Would NYT dedicate the front page to Iraqis?

Of course, if it aligned with their political agenda. But the NYT was behind the propaganda to start the illegal iraq war, so I doubt that.

[gumby → oblio]

Roughly half a million fatalities in the second Iraq war and about 150K in Afghanistan. (All numbers are of course disputed).

Of those they were about 4.5K and 1.5K US government employees (e.g. soldiers). Those are the only ones the NYT would bother to list, of course, but I had hoped even that meager portion might provoke some attention.

Your position echoes Stalin’s calculus that “quantity has a quality all it’s own. In both cases action (and inaction) by a few caused enormous misery for whole populations, though now the country has used its weapon of ignorance to attack itself.