[idoubtit]

> Twenty years of counter-insurgencies around the Middle East has amounted to a US butcher's bill that would be less than one single day during a major offensive in 1916 in France or 1943 in the Ukraine.

That's an exaggeration. Iraq 2003-2009 suffered around half the deaths of France 1914-1918.

WW I, most deaths in a single day: ~30,000

WW I, total deaths from France, cvilians and military: ~1,400,000

Iraq invasion: ~200,000 verified violent civilian death. Total estimations are 2x-5× that number.

These figures were from Wikipedia. From memory, a few comparison points with other Middle East wars were the USA had a minor role (a military minor role, since I doubt Saudi Arabia and UAE would have invaded Yemen if the USA had not provided their full support):

Yemen (2015-): ~100,000 deaths. 10 millions suffer from hunger.

Syria (2011-): ~300,000 deaths

[ncmncm]

Americans have been carefully conditioned to count only American casualties.

The number of people killed or mauled in recent wars is so horrendous that any American complaining of unpleasantness should be ashamed.

[mcguire]

France, WW1: ~1,700,000 civilian and military (1.4M is military alone.); ~4.3% of its population. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties)

Iraq's population in 2002 was about 25,000,000 (France in 1911 was 39,000,000); ~650,000 excess deaths (2003-2006, the most I could find in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War) is about 2.6% of the population.

[thrower123]

I'm speaking from a decidedly US-centric point of view. Total deaths in all combat theaters from all causes for the US military is on the order of 11000 dead from the first boots on the ground in Afghanistan to today.