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civilian casualties
War No More: Veterans Reflect on the Meaning of Memorial Day
This Memorial Day, let us honor the memory of the dead by pledging to protect our precious planet, its people, and its environment.
May 26, 2025
This Memorial Day weekend, Veterans For Peace is calling on its members and friends to reflect on the gravity of the day, whose official purpose is to “honor all those who died in service to the U.S. during peacetime and war.” Veterans For Peace chooses to honor ALL who have died in wars, both combatants and civilians. Our hope is that a sober accounting of the casualties of war will mitigate against the tendency to turn Memorial Day—like Veterans Day—into a patriotic celebration of U.S. militarism.
We remember the words of President Dwight Eisenhower, who during World War II, was the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe:
“War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil.” He also famously stated, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
Medal of Honor winner Marine Corps General Smedley Butler took it a bit further:
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the loss of lives.
Veterans For Peace is deeply familiar with the pain that emanates from the loss of those lives. We have lost too many friends in wars in foreign lands, and in their aftermath at home due to suicide and service-related diseases. We have spent countless hours with Gold Star families mourning the loss of their loved ones. We also recognize that the “enemy” killed by our bullets and bombs had family and friends who loved them too. Their pain is no different than ours.
Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates that over 7,000 U.S. service members have died in the wars following 9/11. Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that more than 8,000 U.S. “contractors” have lost their lives in these conflicts. These hidden deaths reflect the U.S. government’s deception regarding these wars and its disregard for those who perish in them.
The more than 15,000 deaths mentioned above do not account for over 6,000 veterans who died by suicide each yearbetween 2001 and 2022, totaling more than 145,000 people, as documented by the nonprofit Stop Soldier Suicide. Veterans face a 58% higher risk of suicide than non-veterans. While military contractors experience many of the same mental health challenges as veterans, reliable suicide and mental health statistics are not available.
We must help to build a peaceful world based on mutual respect for the human rights of all, as well as for the rights of nature.
Civilian casualties are much greater. We must acknowledge that in modern warfare, it is civilians who make up the bulk of the dead and wounded. The number of civilians killed by the violence in the post-9/11 wars is staggering. Brown University estimates the low end of opposition deaths at 288,923 and civilian deaths at 408,749. The total number of direct violence-related deaths is estimated to be 905,000 people. And even more people die after the wars ends.
A May 2023 Brown University study estimated that there are 3.6 to 3.8 million indirect deaths, with a total death toll of 4.5 to 4.7 million people in post-9/11 war zones. As we mark 50 years since the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam, we will not forget that 3 million Vietnamese died in that unjust and unnecessary war, most of them civilians.
Endless war and suffering persists today, with tens of thousands dying in conflicts that are fueled by U.S.-supplied arms and “intelligence.” The U.S. was an instigator of the terrible war in Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of young soldiers have perished. The U.S. continues to provide bombs and political cover for the unspeakable genocide in Gaza, where estimates of civilian death range from 50,000 to over 100,000, with an even greater number of life-altering wounds. A generation of young Palestinian amputees and double and triple amputees will be a sober reminder to the world for years to come.
Another victim of war is the U.S. economy, which is greatly distorted by the ever-ballooning military budget, now proposed to reach One Trillion Dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) a year, even as essential social programs vital to poor and working class families are being gutted.
The “modernization” of nuclear weapons is included in the budgets of both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, totaling an estimated $946 billion over the next decade, and harkening a no-holds-barred era that could too easily lead to a nuclear war. Eighty years after the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is high time to put an to end to war before it puts an end to human civilization. War must be universally deemed obsolete, illegal, and unacceptable.
Wars will not end, however—and nuclear war will not be averted—unless there is a sea change in the thinking of the U.S. people and our political leaders. We must abandon the military doctrine of seeking “full spectrum dominance” in every corner of the globe. We must embrace the emerging multipolar world and take our place as one nation among many. We must help to build a peaceful world based on mutual respect for the human rights of all, as well as for the rights of nature. As the Vietnam-era poster reads, “War is not good for children or other living things.”
This Memorial Day, let us honor the memory of the dead by pledging to protect our precious planet, its people and its environment. Rather than exalting war, we must come together to abolish war once and for all.
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Amnesty Urges War Crimes Probe Into US Bombing of Yemen Migrant Jail
"The major loss of civilian life in this attack raises serious concerns about whether the U.S. complied with its obligations under international humanitarian law, including the rules on distinction and precautions."
May 19, 2025
The human rights group Amnesty International on Monday called for an investigation of an April U.S. airstrike on a migrant detention center in Yemen that killed and wounded more than 100 people as part of a wider bombing campaign targeting Houthi rebels that has left hundreds of people dead.
The U.S.—which has been bombing Yemen since 2002 as part of the so-called War on Terror launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks—intensified strikes in March 2025 in response to Houthi resistance to Israel's annihilation of Gaza and countries who support it. U.S. airstrtikes on Yemen, which averaged around a dozen per month during the final year of the Biden administration, soared to more than 60 in March under President Donald Trump, according to the Yemen Data Project.
"Under international humanitarian law attacking forces have an obligation to do everything feasible to distinguish between military and civilian targets."
On April 28, U.S. forces bombed the detention center for African migrants in the city of Sa'ada. People familiar with the site told Amnesty that all but one of the migrants jailed at the facility at the time of the attack were Ethiopians, except for one Eritrean. One person told Amnesty that they spoke to survivors of the strike, who said that detainees were sleeping when the center was bombed at around 4:00 am local time.
"They said they woke up to find dismembered bodies around them," the person recounted. "You could see the shock and horror on their faces. Some were still unable to speak because of the trauma."
Another witness said victims "suffered from different fractures and bruises," with some "in critical condition... two had amputated legs."
According to Amnesty:
Under international humanitarian law attacking forces have an obligation to do everything feasible to distinguish between military and civilian targets, to verify whether their intended target is a military objective and to cancel an attack if there is doubt. When attacking a military objective, parties to a conflict must also take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians in the vicinity.
"The U.S. attacked a well-known detention facility where the Houthis have been detaining migrants who had no means to take shelter. The major loss of civilian life in this attack raises serious concerns about whether the U.S. complied with its obligations under international humanitarian law, including the rules on distinction and precautions," Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard said Monday.
"The U.S. must conduct a prompt, independent, and transparent investigation into this airstrike and into any other airstrikes that have resulted in civilian casualties as well as those where the rules of international humanitarian law may have been violated," Callamard added.
Other recent U.S. massacres in Yemen include the April 17 bombing of the Ras Isa fuel terminal in the Hodeida region, which Houthi officials said killed at least 80 people and wounded more than 170 others, and the April 20 strike on the popular Farwah market in the Shuub neighborhood of the capital Sanaa that killed at least 12 people and wounded 30 others.
"At a time when the U.S. appears to be
shrinking efforts aimed at reducing civilian harm by U.S. lethal actions, the U.S. Congress should play its oversight role and demand information on investigations to date on these strikes," Callamard said. "Congress must further ensure that civilian harm mitigation and response mechanisms remain intact and robustly respond to this and other recent incidents."
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'Serious Disregard for Human Life': Dem Senators Press Hegseth on Yemen Civilian Casualties
"President Trump has called himself a 'peacemaker,' but that claim rings hollow when U.S. military operations kill scores of civilians."
Apr 25, 2025
A trio of Democratic senators on Thursday demanded answers from embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth regarding U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, which have reportedly killed scores of civilians including numerous women and children since last month.
"We write to you concerning reports that U.S. strikes against the Houthis at the Ras Isa fuel terminal in Yemen last week killed dozens of civilians, potentially more than 70," Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) wrote in a letter to Hegseth.
The lawmakers noted that "the United Nations Protection Cluster's Civilian Impact Monitoring Project has... assessed that March 2025 marked the highest monthly casualty count in Yemen in almost two years, tripling the previous month, with a total of 162 civilian casualties."
"If these reports of civilian casualties are accurate, they should come as no surprise," the senators said. "Using explosive weapons in populated areas—as these intense strikes appear to do—always carries a high risk of civilian harm."
"Further, reports suggest that the Trump administration plans to dismantle civilian harm mitigation policies and procedures at the Pentagon designed to reduce civilian casualties in U.S. operations," the letter notes. "And the Trump administration has already dismissed senior, nonpartisan judge advocates, or JAG officers, who provide critical legal counsel to U.S. warfighters, especially when it comes to the laws of war and adherence to U.S. civilian harm mitigation policies."
"The Defense Department also recently loosened the rules of engagement to allow [U.S. Central Command] and other combatant commands to conduct strikes without requiring White House sign-off, removing necessary checks and balances on crucial life-and-death decisions," the senators added. "Taken altogether, these moves suggest that the Trump administration is abandoning the measures necessary to meet its obligations to reducing civilian harm."
The senators asked Hegseth to answer the following questions:
- Has the Department of Defense (DOD) assessed the number of noncombatant and combatant casualties in each of its strikes inside Yemen?
- What has DOD's process been for assessing the acceptable civilian casualties for individual strikes inside Yemen, and assessing estimated levels of civilian harm and collateral damage?
- What role have legal advisers, including JAG officers, played in reviewing the legality of U.S. strikes in Yemen?
- What DOD instructions or orders currently govern department civilian harm mitigation and response actions?
- Were the civilian harm mitigation and response experts at CENTCOM and/or at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence consulted in planning for these strikes?
- How does the department plan to engage with the families or communities affected by these strikes, including acknowledging civilian harm and exploring avenues for potential redress?
Last month, Hegseth
announced that the Pentagon's Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Office and Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which was established during the Biden administration, would be closed. Hegseth—who has
supported pardons for convicted U.S. war criminals—lamented during his Senate confirmation hearing that "restrictive rules of engagement" have "made it more difficult to defeat our enemies," who "should get bullets, not attorneys," according to his 2024 book The War on Warriors.
Asked during his confirmation hearing whether troops under his leadership would adhere to the Geneva Conventions, Hegseth replied, "What we are not going to do is put international conventions above Americans."
During his first administration, President Donald Trumprelaxed rules of military engagement meant to protect civilians as he followed through on his campaign pledge to "bomb the shit" out of Islamic State militants and "take out their families." Thousands of civilians were killed during the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria as then-Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis announced a shift from a policy of attrition to one of "annihilation."
Meanwhile, noncombatant casualties soared by over 300% in Afghanistan between the final year of the Obama administration and 2019.
Overall, upward of 400,000 civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen have died as a direct result of the U.S.-led War on Terror, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
In Yemen, the U.K.-based monitor Airwars says U.S. forces have killed hundreds of civilians in 181 declared actions since 2002. Overall, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing and blockade.
The U.S. bombing of Yemen has not received nearly as much coverage in the corporate media as the scandal involving Hegseth's use of Signal chats to share plans for attacking the Middle Eastern country with colleagues, a journalist, and relatives. However, critics say the mounting backlash over the high civilian casualties there is belying Trump's claim of an anti-war presidency.
"President Trump has called himself a 'peacemaker,' but that claim rings hollow when U.S. military operations kill scores of civilians," the senators stressed in their letter. "The reported high civilian casualty numbers from U.S. strikes in Yemen demonstrate a serious disregard for civilian life, and call into question this administration's ability to conduct military operations in accordance with U.S. best practices for civilian harm mitigation and international law."
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