Letters | Leaders lied, people died: who really benefits from senseless, wasteful wars?

Media in all wars engage in massive deception of the public, glorifying war and encouraging citizens to give up their lives for reasons conjured up by lying, immoral politicians and the corporate entities who stand to benefit

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A US Department of Defence graphic from March 2003 shows an English and Arabic copy of a leaflet dropped over southern Iraq by coalition aircraft, warning Iraqi troops not to use weapons of mass destruction. Opinion is still divided on whether the deadly and devastating war, in which the United States, the UK and their allies invaded Iraq, supported by the media, was indeed caused by intelligence failure over Saddam Hussein’s WMD programme. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:35am, 20 Dec 2020Updated: 6:35am, 20 Dec 2020

Wars are often started by leaders indifferent to the massive costs in lives and national treasure (“The lessons of war, cold and hot, are not lost on China and the US”, December 18).

The US Civil War, which cost the lives of more than 600,000 soldiers, was not fought to free the Black slaves in the South but to collect taxes, it is asserted by some. The reality is Black people in America did not acquire significant democratic rights until a hundred years after the war and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jnr.

World War I, which cost 40 million military and civilian lives, was fought over territorial ambitions and the hunger for power over others by European nations including Austria-Hungary, Germany, France, England and Russia. World War II cost an estimated 75 million lives.

Another bloodbath was the Vietnam war under then-US President Lyndon Johnson and his Harvard-educated top advisers. The cost of the Vietnamese war was 2 million civilian and 1.1. million military deaths, with the Americans losing around 58,000 soldiers. Canada lost the best of its youth with 67,000 dead in World War I and another 42,000 gone in World War II.

The ongoing Syrian civil war has left 400,000 people dead and created 6 million refugees.

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Entering its 10th year, Syrian civil war remains the 21st century’s deadliest conflict so far

Since the United States was founded in 1776, it has been at war constantly, including George W. Bush’s devastating wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. It must also be stated that the media in all wars engages in massive deception of the public, glorifying war and encouraging citizens to give up their lives for reasons conjured up by lying, immoral politicians and the corporate entities who stand to benefit from wars.