The prose of war is written in numbers. 555 deaths in two and a half days of attacks on Iran by Israel and the US, according to Red Crescent data. Among this trail of corpses are Ayatollah Khamenei (a tyrant who deserved his end) and a good portion of his regime's leadership, but the majority are civilians, including a large number of children, such as the 85 girls who died when a primary school in the city of Minab was bombed. "People die in wars. These things happen," Trump asserted, while broadcasting his propaganda messages for Operation Epic Fury (the names of American military interventions in other countries are always as pompous as they are ridiculous, and could fill an anthology). It's the same thing he said when he received the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi: "These things happen," Trump remarked.
In Gaza, the Israeli army admitted to having reached 70,000 deaths during its offensive. Of that number, at least 20,000 are children. The behavior of Israeli troops continues to rely on torture and rape as instruments of domination, and the supposed peace agreement presented by Trump last October—with Western leaders pandering to him—has been a mere excuse for the US and Israel to continue destroying the country without having to endure any consequences.
In Ukraine, according to the Center for International Strategic Studies, 1.2 million Russian soldiers and some 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died, in addition to some 15,000 civilians, including more than 800 children. Millions of Ukrainians have also fled the country, with the consequent decline in the birth rate and the impact on the country's demographics. In Venezuela, the invasion at the beginning of the year left about eighty dead, according to data provided by the newspaper The New York Times.
As Trump himself said in his State of the Union address, Venezuela (still under the Chavismo(but without Maduro) has supplied 80 million barrels of oil to the US. Regarding Gaza, he has already announced plans to build one resort Tourist destinations, and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described Gaza as "a great real estate deal" and "a gold mine." Ukraine has enormous reserves of minerals and rare earth elements, in addition to its production of grains and other agricultural products. As for Iran, according to OPEC data, it possesses crude oil reserves estimated at 208 billion barrels (the third largest in the world, behind only Venezuela and Saudi Arabia) and is key to controlling the Strait of Hormuz, through which between a quarter and a fifth of global production passes. These are called spoils of war, and they are the reasons that, for most world leaders (Europe has done what it always does and is rushing Iran at the pace dictated by the US), justify the massacres of innocents around the world.
