America’s ‘Horrifically Damaging’ War on Terror Has Displaced at Least 37 Million People, Says Report

Since the 9/11 attacks nearly 19 years ago—and particularly in the last four years—U.S. administrations have hardened against the idea of welcoming refugees. The cruel irony is that the wars fought by the U.S. since 2001 terror attacks appear to have forced the displacement of millions upon millions of people. For the first time, Brown University’s Costs of War project has calculated the total number of people displaced by wars fought by the U.S. since 2001. According to The New York Times, the report found that at least 37 million people have been displaced as a direct result of those wars. However, the real figure may be anywhere between 48 million to 59 million. David Vine, a professor of anthropology at American University and the lead author of the report, said the works shows the wars have been “horrifically catastrophic, horrifically damaging in ways that I don’t think that most people in the United States, in many ways myself included, have grappled with or reckoned with in even the slightest terms.”