This is the issue with antiwar discourse primarily focused on US troops. The troops are volunteers, and there are plenty of ways that harm to them can be minimized or negated while continuing to slaughter people, like through drones.
The actual victims of imperialism, the Iraqi people, did not volunteer for any of that shit. But to focus on them means treating them as human beings with moral worth, which, in US politics, is such an extreme far-left idea that it’s basically relegated to the “lunatic fringe.” The furthest “left” mainstream critique of the war is this stuff about the poor troops, which, yes, it’s still bad to send them into conflicts without reason even if they volunteered and even if the risk is mitigated. But it’s hardly the worst thing about the war, and it falls flat for a lot of people.
This is the issue with antiwar discourse primarily focused on US troops. The troops are volunteers, and there are plenty of ways that harm to them can be minimized or negated while continuing to slaughter people, like through drones.
The actual victims of imperialism, the Iraqi people, did not volunteer for any of that shit. But to focus on them means treating them as human beings with moral worth, which, in US politics, is such an extreme far-left idea that it’s basically relegated to the “lunatic fringe.” The furthest “left” mainstream critique of the war is this stuff about the poor troops, which, yes, it’s still bad to send them into conflicts without reason even if they volunteered and even if the risk is mitigated. But it’s hardly the worst thing about the war, and it falls flat for a lot of people.