During the First World War, it was said that the British military maintained three sets of casualty lists. One version was kept to hoodwink the public. A second set was maintained to dupe the British War Office. And the third set was kept to deceive itself.
According to the New
York Times, nearly half a million troops have been killed or wounded over
the last 18 months of Ukraine's war with Russia. The Times calculates that
70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another 180,000 wounded. Russian
military casualties are even higher: 120,000 deaths and 180,000 injured.
Of course, these numbers are only estimates. Neither Russia
nor Ukraine have revealed their casualty lists. These tallies don't include
civilian casualties, which must be severe given the routine bombing of Ukrainian
towns and villages by the Russians.
As the Times put it, the toll of dead and wounded is “staggering.”
To put it in perspective, about 58,000 American soldiers died during the
Vietnam War, a conflict that stretched over ten years. Ukraine, a country with
a much smaller population, lost 70,000 soldiers in only 18 months.
Then there are the refugees. Around 8 million Ukrainians
have fled the country, and another 5 million have been displaced but still live
in Ukraine.
Most Americans feel no moral responsibility for this
catastrophe, even though American weapons and money have significantly
contributed to the carnage. College students, by the millions, protested the
war in Vietnam, but today's young students have more refined moral
sensibilities. They can be whipped into a frenzy if a conservative judge gives a speech on a college campus. They don't give a shit about the Ukrainians.
And consider this. The New York Times may have
miscalculated the death toll from the Ukrainian war. Douglas Macgregor. a
retired U.S. Army officer, believes 400,000
Ukrainians have been killed during the war—more than five times the number
reported by the Times.
America's legacy media report that Ukraine is winning this
war, but that's untrue. Ukraine will never recover Crimea or the Donbas,
no matter how many Ukrainians are killed or maimed in this senseless war with
Russia. And make no mistake. The Russians will find a way to make America pay
for provoking this pointless conflict.
