You have to remember the adage of lies damn lies and statistics. Often times numbers like this are big and shocking and can be true in an absolute sense but can also not tell the whole story.

I have done no research into this I am just playing the devil's advocate because again simple number like this can convey something that the author wanted to put into the reader's mind but does not give a comprehensive view. The 9/11 attack was 22 years ago looking at the number of deaths that they attribute on a per year basis to post 9/11 wars the number comes quite small viewing it that way. That's not an attempt to trivialize anyone's death but when you point out that around 9 million people every year die of hunger and hunger related causes 220,000 isn't a very big number.

Additionally what was the consequences of those wars? Did they stabilize the region or did they introduce additional instability? That is a very complex question and very difficult to answer without a lot of research and sometimes decades of time. Because wars can be fought where hundreds of thousands of lives are lost even millions of lives are lost but over the long term more lives can be saved. When you look at the statistics of governments that have slaughtered their own citizens in the 20th century that number exceeds 100 million people. That was not done by war that was literally done by governments wiping out undesirable portions of their population. If post 9/11 wars deposed some of those governments then reporting the simple death numbers of the war does not really show the number of people saved.

So it is always a very difficult question and certainly taking a cold calculating attitude of it was better that these people die so that more of those people can live is a harsh perspective. It also relies heavily on the unknown of the future. I think really what needs to be weighed is the deaths caused by wars versus the history of deaths of these people at the hands of their own government or not to being protected by their own government. All of these countries are notoriously unstable. Any kind of change means you're changing the stability from one group of people to another group of people. Each will have their own perspective on if it was good or bad. Cultural change comes very slow to many people and many regions of the world.

If anything, my opinion is that four and a half million is an estimate on the (very) low side. (Iraq alone was possibly more than a million, then there's Libya, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, various nations in sub-Saharan Africa, various places in Latin America, Afghanistan, etc, etc).

And forget the excuse "Sanctions aren't really a war." Sanctions are Economic War and cause real deaths.

And forget the excuse "Proxy wars aren't official wars for us." Proxy wars such as that in Ukraine are real wars with real deaths also.

What is your opinion on these claims? I am looking for trustful resources to get an objective overview of the issue. I am generally an optimist and I believe these wars were started with good intentions. The article's narrative is like the people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan would be better off if US didn't intervene. I don't really believe that. Do you have any good objective resources on these matters?

When the US intervene they're criticized for acting like the world policeman. When they don't they get called out for staying on the side line instead of fixing the problem.