Forever End Times: GWOT in Three Parts

There is a number that does not make sense to me. As of August 2021, the number of dead from post-9/11 wars stands at 929,000, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.1 It is a conservative number that does not account for the enormity of the violence. When I first looked at this number after a November 2019 report, the number was 801,000. I have been calling it at least a million. I am not only concerned about the number as a murder toll, but I also want to be able to describe the scale of the devastation. These numbers are a hint at the upheaval in terms of warfare on the ground, yet what remains unimaginable are the consequences of the loss of life and livelihood; shifts in everyday life, mobility, social structures; and the transformations to language, thought, and social practice that are difficult to convey.2 The number is astounding. Not only as a number but for the story it begins to tell.