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#war#trump#why#more#greenland#president#said#don#https#conflict

Discussion (123 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

bitcuriousabout 2 hours ago
> The newspaper also reported, citing another unidentified official, that not all of the undisclosed deaths were directly tied to the months-long conflict but involved US personnel who were in the Middle East amid ongoing hostilities.

If someone dies near a war, but not due to the war, is it really fair to count them as a war fatality?

lukanabout 2 hours ago
If they are killed by houthi drones and not iranian drones, I would think so.

If someone on a military base with no attacks going on, got a heart attack by watching the news, probably not a war fatality.

But we don't know, so any concrete speculation is probably not very helpful.

AnotherGoodNameabout 2 hours ago
To get more specific this often means 'suicide' which absolutely is a casualty of war given the strain of war conditions, especially given the logistics concerns and duration of tours that they are forcing right now.
mitxelaabout 1 hour ago
Did it end up being true that the troops on that aircraft carrier had to catch rats and cook them to survive?
Freedom240 minutes ago
What logistics concerns are there? Isn't the US supposed to be one of the best at managing wartime logistics, which is why they have bases all around the world?
throw0101a36 minutes ago
> If someone on a military base with no attacks going on, got a heart attack by watching the news, probably not a war fatality.

Were they at that base as a (say) mechanic servicing aircraft engines for flights over the Persian Gulf? Are the only reasons why the planes (and thus him) are there is because of the hostilities with Iran, as otherwise they would be States-side?

runakoabout 1 hour ago
"With Covid, not of Covid," but for military casualties. One does see something new every day.
Retricabout 1 hour ago
There’s often more ambiguity than that. “Died of a COVID linked complication with COVID and other issue that is also linked to that complication.” You can’t spend endless resources deciding if something is or isn’t responsible.

Systems use arbitrary buckets like if someone commits suicide in less than six months from coming home after a war might count it, while excluding every case after six months. That’s going to misclassify cases in both directions but means you don’t need to track millions of people for decades or look through mental health details.

Obviously people with more data to work with can make a convincing case you’re wrong, but higher levels accuracy get expensive. In the end we know more than 1 million Americans died of COVID for example, how many more isn’t precisely known but ~1 million is plenty useful for decision making around the next pandemic.

lokarabout 2 hours ago
It's routinely written and recounted that for most wars in history more people died from disease than combat. But we still count them all as war deaths.
searealistabout 1 hour ago
It depends who is president.
iugtmkbdfil834about 2 hours ago
I will admit that after today's CNN report and subsequent CNN ban, I wondered why he is so annoyed. And now it makes more sense.
lukanabout 2 hours ago
Might be also that AI slob screw up, that allmost lead to armed confrontation with china: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/18/politics/us-military-ai-f...
mandeepj41 minutes ago
If Congress can get its act together, it can clearly tell this lunatic to fall in line and start performing according to his Job description, otherwise boot him out. But there's no chance they are going to do it.

They politicized fallen heroes from the Afghanisation withdrawal for their campaign time during RNC 2024. Current events clearly show they don't give a F about anything but themselves.

cocacola1about 2 hours ago
It’s 2006. The President has embroiled us in an unpopular war in the Middle East and has lied about it.

It’s 2026. The President has embroiled us in an unpopular war in the Middle East and has lied about it.

throw0101a35 minutes ago
> The President has embroiled us in an unpopular war in the Middle East and has lied about it.

The Republican President has embroiled us in an unpopular war in the Middle East and has lied about it.

jMylesabout 2 hours ago
Notably, the US is on precisely the opposite side of the conflict in 2026 compared to 2006.

To put it differently: its stated allies are direct lineal political and military descendants of the parties who were ostensibly its enemies in 2006, including Al-Qaeda / Jabhat Al-Nusra.

Enginerrrdabout 1 hour ago
That’s… hilariously not exactly new either. It can be said that our enemies and allies in 2006 were the almost exact opposite of the conflict in the 1980’s when we were funding the afghan mujahideen to fight the soviets.

So theoretically in another 20-30 years we can take a guess at who we’ll be fighting.

PorciiVorbescabout 1 hour ago
>So theoretically in another 20-30 years we can take a guess at who we’ll be fighting

Canada?

throw31082241 minutes ago
Seems exactly on the same side to me- Netanyahu was the one that pushed most for the US invasion of Iraq:

"Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel [...] also visited Washington in late 2002 to lobby for the invasion of Iraq.

Apparently referring to testimony on the Middle East that Mr. Netanyahu delivered to Congress on Sept. 12, 2002, when he was a private citizen, Mr. Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “The prime minister, as you will recall, was profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq under George W. Bush, and we all know what happened with that decision.”

Video of Mr. Netanyahu’s 2002 remarks — in which he said “I think the choice of Iraq is a good choice, it’s the right choice”

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/world/middleeast/kerry-re...

tessierashpoolabout 2 hours ago
This is par for the course for US foreign policy in the region.

There's even (disputed) allegations that Bush Sr funneled money and weapons to bin Laden in opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. If true, the big 2006 enemy was a 1986 ally.

thenthenthenabout 1 hour ago
Disputed by who?

“Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken”[1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

I also recommend the book “The Great War for Civilisation” by Robert Fisk

throwme_123about 1 hour ago
Have you never been at school?
dfxm12about 1 hour ago
It's 2016. Candidate Trump rails on Bush and his decision to get involved in Iraq.

He's not just a liar. He sold out his country.

fhdkweigabout 1 hour ago
I can't find the citation, but I vaguely recall him saying that if Kamala Harris was elected, she would start a war with Iran.
ceejayoz40 minutes ago
bix6about 2 hours ago
And all the republicans will still vote red for the lying, cheating, grifting man.

All my life I have had faith in the governments reports and statistics for the most part. This admin has torn everything down and for what?

atmavatarabout 2 hours ago
For a sizable fraction of people, when the facts conflict with their biases, they choose to reject the facts and double-down on their biases.
lokarabout 2 hours ago
Racism is a very powerful belief system.
shermantanktopabout 2 hours ago
-isms of all kind are powerful. But the most powerful are those that give the believer a distant group of people for them to blame for all their troubles, which are often self-inflicted.
airstrikeabout 1 hour ago
From an outsider's perspective, it's to be expected given the existence of cognitive dissonance.

I just wish people would snap out of it _eventually_

silisiliabout 2 hours ago
People tend to vote with their wallets in mind more than anything. I think that's why it ping ponged(inflation), and why they're getting destroyed in the midterm polling. The next president will likely have a D next to their name(more inflation).
jimt1234about 2 hours ago
I heard a good quote once: People don't vote to say thank you. People vote to say fuck you.
PorciiVorbescabout 1 hour ago
>People don't vote to say thank you.

How true is that? Plenty of older people I know vote consistently for one party because it did something good for them a long time ago.

HumblyTossedabout 2 hours ago
I don't trust polling.
dylan604about 2 hours ago
Both times Trump won, the polls predicted he would lose.
PenguinCoderabout 2 hours ago
Legally can't run a third time or be voted for again. But then again, legality hasn't stopped the things he does. Others need to step up.
ceejayozabout 2 hours ago
Not by anything like the 8-9 points we're seeing in midterm polling right now.
dfxm12about 1 hour ago
Trump was president before. People didn't vote for him a second time if they wanted to improve the economy.
zmgsabstabout 2 hours ago
Trump himself only happened because Ds abandoned the working class for grievance politics circa 2010 — forming “public private partnerships” to tear open old wounds while screwing the working class on behalf of corporations.
mitxelaabout 1 hour ago
Ds are doing neither. They're just pretending if they don't change anything, everything will be alright.
clipsy19 minutes ago
You're a couple decades late there, it was Clinton and the Third Way(tm) Democrats that abandoned blue collar workers.

(Of course, that doesn't capture the full story either -- before '92, white blue collar workers were already abandoning the Democrats to support Reagan while he and the Republicans gutted private sector unions.)

yakzabout 2 hours ago
They had a firm belief that the reports and statistics were fake. Let's see how this turns out.

*by "they" I mean the voters... the people that were elected were, and are well informed

lumostabout 1 hour ago
How confident are we that they know it’s fake? I somehow doubt they close the door and pull out the real information.
pianopatrick43 minutes ago
Time will tell how the votes will go in November. Right now the thing I'm hearing on podcasts is that a significant group of people who voted for Trump in 2024 might stay home. We'll know in less than two months.
underliptonabout 2 hours ago
Still have my fingers crossed that the guy in Kentucky gunning for McConnell's seat can pull off a historic upset.
throw2aabout 1 hour ago
That tells a lot about Christian values
verdvermabout 2 hours ago
May I assume you ask "for what?" rhetorically?
jimt1234about 1 hour ago
> All my life I have had faith in the governments reports and statistics ...

My Boomer mother tells me about this all the time. She said, growing up, people had absolute faith in everything the US government did or said; it was like religion. Then Vietnam happened. Specifically, the reporting around Vietnam and the number of casualties. My mother said that everyone knew someone who lost a family member in Vietnam, but the government was like, "Everything's fine."

bix6about 1 hour ago
Yeah I’m more talking things like the census. Or the report that they skipped a month of this year (inflation, jobs, I can’t recall for certain).
jimt1234about 2 hours ago
> ...and for what?

To keep the grift going, of course.

Buttons840about 2 hours ago
That's fair to say, but lacks details.

Most of Trump's public statements are done through a company that he owns. That same company charges a modest $100,000 per month for early access to his posts; just straight up facilitating insider trading for the President's personal profit. Plus people might find the administration making decision in their favor while paying the $100,000 a month.

There's also Trumpcoin through which people can transfer money to the President. This just happens in the open. Remember when Trump had personal 1-on-1 meetings with the top Trumpcoin holders? I remember.

I've barely scratched the surface here. Trump's personal worth has increased $3,000,000,000 during his second term, so far.

Corruption has existed before, but it has never been this out in the open.

kraken_cultabout 2 hours ago
Which can only probably be a benefit. If the corruption is this blatant and bad maybe the next swing around the pendulum there is less because people realize how much it's bad.
diego_moita41 minutes ago
Don't worry! Trump has a solution for that!

He's gonna change the name of the Strait of Hormuz to "Large of America". And all ships will be able to pass because freedom.

Take that Iran!

Razenganabout 1 hour ago
I recently fell into a rabbit hole of YouTube docs about wars from WW2's end till 2000

Most of those wars were mostly caused or perpetuated by the US or USSR not wanting countries to go to the other side.

In any video that shows the timeline of any war, there's scenes from the war, then it cuts to photos and scenes of politicians in the "master countries" sitting in their offices making decisions,

looking worried, on the phone, arguing, exasperated etc but otherwise comfortable, in their armchairs or on their sofas, far far removed from the people dying in the war..

...It's amazing how people keep agreeing to that.

optionabout 2 hours ago
US murdered 123 children in school, this has to be the top story of all world news for a year
ericmayabout 1 hour ago
It might be but then you have to remember Iran intentionally murdered over 30,000 of its own people including women and children so that’s actually what should be the top story of all world news for a year.
throwaway173738about 1 hour ago
That doesn’t excuse us doing it when we’re trying to cop the moral high ground. Otherwise we’re just in a race to see who can do the worst things.
ericmay43 minutes ago
Ours was a mistake, not intentional. There is a huge difference.
micromacrofootabout 2 hours ago
now we get to wonder why

we're no strangers to troops dying due to ongoing conflict pretty much everywhere

so why are they seemingly hiding a small number like this?

solid_fuel19 minutes ago
> so why are they seemingly hiding a small number like this?

Reflexive lies are basically the policy of this administration and party. They have demonstrated no interest in telling the truth about anything. The proper question is: Why would they start telling the truth now?

Their base has already demonstrated that there is no red line. There is no lie they could tell that would suddenly disillusion the MAGA-types.

ceejayozabout 2 hours ago
> so why are they seemingly hiding a small number like this?

They deny everything, no matter how low the stakes. See, for example, the reflecting pool fuss.

micromacrofootabout 2 hours ago
Indeed it's likely foolish to read into all the pure stupidity at this point
dylan604about 2 hours ago
That's the point, right? If you lie about everything, nothing really matters
Avicebronabout 2 hours ago
Because they are flailing? Fuel prices will decide the midterms. There are pockets of die hards but after asking plenty of trump voters, they aren't happy. As long as the democrats in the US keep the identity shit to a minimum and make gains on actual issues likr housing and healthcare they can't lose.
dylan604about 2 hours ago
> they can't lose.

Thanks for the laugh. The Dems have a habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

frmersdogabout 2 hours ago
You think those "losses" aren't (to a degree) calculated? They are going to try their damnedest to win enough seats to do what they want, without winning so many that they'd have to do what they must.
Avicebronabout 2 hours ago
I never said it wasn't going to be an incompetence slugfest
_doctor_loveabout 2 hours ago
During conflict, which side is winning or losing is usually counted in number of body bags sent home. These tend to influence voters tremendously. Anything to tell a good story on that front.
vkouabout 2 hours ago
In a conflict, the side that is winning is the side that still has the will to fight.
ameliusabout 2 hours ago
> so why are they seemingly hiding a small number like this?

Because they claimed a "flawless victory".

lokarabout 2 hours ago
In today's information environment, why would you ever admit to anything that hurts you? There seems to be no penalty for dishonesty.
verdvermabout 2 hours ago
Roy Cohn, one of young Trump's "educators" (also tied to McCarthy's Red Scare)

He taught Trump to always take credit for the good things and blame someone else for the failures. When there is no one to blame, hide it and/or deny it loudly

shadowtreeabout 2 hours ago
Zero service members died in our just announced de facto annexation of Greenland.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/us/politics/trump-greenla...

ceejayozabout 1 hour ago
They probably just re-extended the existing treaty so he could call it a win.

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/04-806-Denm...

shadowtreeabout 1 hour ago
"Among the agreed provisions is one stating the deal would not expire even if Greenland became an independent country in the future.

The official added that under the deal, the US has unilateral power to build additional military structures with no approval needed from Greenland or Denmark. It includes "permanent access, basing and overflights rights," the official said.

It also bans non-Nato countries from building bases in Greenland, and "bans adversaries from making investments in Greenland that could threaten the United States".

The official added that under the current status quo, adversaries have been allowed to invest in Greenland's "sensitive sectors without investment screening".

The official specifically referenced Russia and China, saying it blocks them from deploying troops or making investments in "sensitive sectors".

Without the official text being released, it is unclear how exactly the deal differs from a 1951 agreement with Denmark, under which the US can send as many troops as it wants to Greenland."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c63d7lexyym1o

ceejayozabout 1 hour ago
They already had these sorts of things (and Denmark, as a NATO member, was already pretty unlikely to permit Russian basing there).

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/den001.asp

"United States aircraft may fly over and land in any territory in Greenland"

"the Government of the United States of America, without compensation to the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark, shall be entitled within such defense area and the air spaces and waters adjacent thereto... (ii) to construct, install, maintain, and operate facilities and equipment"

etc.

krferriterabout 1 hour ago
Reading that it sounds like nothing is changing in terms of US military access to Greenland, and they’re essentially just reaffirming the existing agreement which provided broad and permanent US and NATO access to Greenland.

I think interacting with Trump is like interacting with a dementia patient who also is a malignant narcissistic and pathological liar, so I imagine Danish and US staffers had to find a way to frame the agreement to him that made it sound like he had gained something major, in order to get him to shut up about the issue and stop obsessing over his conquest ideas.

matteorasoabout 1 hour ago
It's crazy just how bullshit this war has been. At least with Iraq, you can argue that Saddam Hussein used to own WMDs in the 90s. What the hell is America doing in Iran?
krferriterabout 1 hour ago
We’re attempting to degrade the capability of Israel’s primary regional opponent so that Israel can continue and accelerate its ethnic cleansing and land annexations in both the Palestinian territories it administers, and in the neighboring states of Lebanon and Syria. That’s what we’re doing.
diegolasabout 1 hour ago
i never thought i would live to see the US support such a campaign by a clearly rogue terrorist ethnostate run by war criminals
mitxelaabout 1 hour ago
Hitler learned his craft by copying how the USA treated Native Americans.
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