Bringing War Home: Atrocities Abroad, Mass Shootings at Home

The War on Terror’s Toll, From Atrocities Abroad to Mass Shootings at Home

by TRNN

November 10, 2018

A new study says the U.S.-led so-called “war on terror” has killed up to 507,000 people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The report from Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs calls that half a million figure an undercount due to the, quote, “great uncertainty in any count of killing in war.” It’s the latest effort to assess the carnage from 17 years of endless and expanding U.S.-led war around the globe. And to that toll we also might add U.S. citizens dying at home. The shooter in this week’s [Thousand] Oaks massacre was Ian David Long, a veteran of the Afghan war. Ventura County Sheriff Jeff Dean said that police had previously interacted with Long, and that he may have suffered from PTSD.

As Ian David Long — an-ex U.S. Marine who served in the Afghan war — kills 12 people in Thousand Oaks, California, might we also count victims of mass shootings carried out by U.S. veterans? We speak to Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.