Overwhelming force
Military strategists love talking about “asymmetric warfare” and “overwhelming force”.
Even if you believe the official U.S. government story of 9/11 (which I don’t), the American “War on Terror” response to 9/11 has killed so many Iraqis and Afghans that all 9/11 deaths and subsequent U.S. soldier deaths combined look like a rounding error in comparison.
My heart totally goes out to every American who died on 9/11 and to every soldier who has died in Iraq or Afghanistan… and to their devastated families. None of them should have died. Each such death is a tragedy. And soldiers' willingness to place their lives in jeopardy for their nation is most admirable and heroic. My point is, in terms of total deaths, we have inflicted more than 100 deaths on Iraqis and Afghans for every one we lost 9/11 and in Iraq and in Afghanistan!
Even worse, virtually no one we killed had anything to do with 9/11! Even if the U.S. government’s story were true, virtually none of the Iraqis and Afghans we’ve killed had anything to do with 9/11. The Bush Administration even confessed that Saddam Hussein and Iraq — where most of those we killed in the name of fighting “terror” — had NOTHING to do with 9/11.
You can quibble with the body counts. I actually think the evidence suggests far more than 1,000,000 Iraqi civilian casualties. (JustForeignPolicy.org estimates 1,366,000.) But whether we’ve killed 50 foreigners or 100 foreigners or 200 foreigners for every American, Americans have barrels of blood on our collective hands. We’ve killed way too many people, almost none of whom were involved in any attacks on America… at least until after we invaded and occupied their nations.
Posted by James on Monday, September 13, 2010