Nicolas J.S. Davies

Nicolas J.S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

Can the World’s Second Superpower Rise From the Ashes of Twenty Years of War

While our government’s war propaganda has convinced many Americans that we are powerless to stop its catastrophic wars, it has failed to convince most Americans that we are wrong to want to.

Anti Iran war Protest Feature photo

February 15 marks the day, 17 years ago, when global demonstrations against the pending Iraq invasion were so massive that the New York Times called world public opinion “the second superpower.” But the U.S. ignored it and invaded Iraq anyway. So what has become of the momentous hopes of that day? The U.S. military has not won a war since 1945,

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CODEPINK Ranks the 2020 Presidential Candidates on War, Peace and Military Spending

Medea Benjamin and Nicole Davies of CODEPINK look at a new crop of presidential candidates and examine their views – and, when possible, voting records – on issues of war and peace.

Elizabeth Warren | foreign policy

Forty-five years after Congress passed the War Powers Act in the wake of the Vietnam War, it has finally used it for the first time, to try to end the U.S.-Saudi war on the people of Yemen and to recover its constitutional authority over questions of war and peace. This hasn’t stopped the war yet, and President Trump has threatened to veto the

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Deaths from the War on Yemen Have Been Underestimated by 5 to 1

No effort to count the dead by reviewing media reports, hospital records, and other “passive” sources, no matter how thoroughly, can ever fully count the dead amid the widespread violence and chaos of a country ravaged by war.

Saudi School Bus bombing Yemen

An NGO responsible for reporting on war deaths in Yemen has acknowledged that it has underestimated the casualties in the three-year-old conflict by at least five to one. Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project had originally estimated that about 10,000 people had been killed in the war in Yemen, roughly the same number reported by the

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The Persistent Myth of U.S. Precision Bombing

U.S. media routinely repeat Pentagon talking points about the accuracy of U.S. bombing, but how precise are these attacks, asks Nicolas J.S. Davies.

An aircraft lands after missions targeting the ISIS in Iraq from the deck of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf. For weapons manufacturers, the nonstop pace of airstrikes targeting ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria, as well as Saudi-led bombing of Yemen’s Shiite rebels and their allies, means billions of dollars more in sales.

Opinion polls in the United States and the United Kingdom have found that a majority of the public in both countries has a remarkably consistent belief that only about 10,000 Iraqis were killed as a result of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in 2003. Estimates of deaths in Iraq actually range from 150,000 to 1.2 million. Part of the reason for

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Calculating the Millions-High Death Toll of America’s Post-9/11 Wars

In the third and final part of his series, Nicolas JS Davies investigates the death toll of U.S. covert and proxy wars in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen and underscores the importance of comprehensive war mortality studies.

A relative of two children and their mother, who died after a NATO bomb fell on their home, grieves during their funeral in Zlitan, Libya, Aug. 4, 2011. (AP/Dario Lopez-Mills)

In the first two parts of this report, I have estimated that about 2.4 million people have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, while about 1.2 million have been killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a result of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.  In the third and final part of this report, I will estimate how many people have been

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How Many People Has the U.S. Killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan Post-9/11?

The numbers of casualties of US wars since Sept. 11, 2001 have largely gone uncounted, but coming to terms with the true scale of the crimes committed remains an urgent moral, political and legal imperative.

A U.S soldier of 82nd Air Borne walks as villagers sit near the grave of three young boys killed in airstrike in Chinar village of Ghorak district of Kandahar province Southern Afghanistan, March 14, 2007. (AP/Rafiq Maqbool)

In the first part of this series, I estimated that about 2.4 million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the illegal invasion of their country by the United States and the United Kingdom in 2003. I turn now to Afghan and Pakistani deaths in the ongoing 2001 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. In part two, I will examine U.S.-caused war deaths in

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How Many Millions Have Been Killed in America’s Post-9/11 Wars?

The numbers of casualties of U.S. wars since Sept. 11, 2001 have largely gone uncounted, but coming to terms with the true scale of the crimes committed remains an urgent moral, political and legal imperative.

How Many Civilians US Killed

How many people have been killed in America’s post-9/11 wars? I have been researching and writing about that question since soon after the U.S. launched these wars, which it has tried to justify as a response to terrorist crimes that killed 2,996 people in the U.S. on September 11th 2001. But no crime, however horrific, can justify wars on

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