…those 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11, let us also have a proportionate amount of memorializing the 2,000,000 Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, Pakistanis, Somalis, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Libyans, etc. murdered by the U.S. military in the name of 9/11. It’s only fair.
At one day per 3,000, it’ll take us nearly two years of memorials…but look at the bright side: construction of and sales of kitschy souvenirs at all those statues and gardens will jumpstart the economy.
4 Comments.
Sadly, I read the comments on the site where you publish your editorial cartoons. One commenter is a Truther. Others say the US saved at least 9 million lives: that fanatic Muslims have killed most of the million dead Iraqi and Afghani civilians (not US bombs), and, had it not been for US peacekeeping, they would have killed at least 10 million.
Both positions are ridiculous, but widely held.
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One ‘official’ count of civilian deaths from the wars is 100,000, and this is often used by anti-war writers as the most conservative estimate, but it is fairly obviously far too low if one counts those who died from drinking contaminated water after the US destroyed the water treatment plants, and other casualties caused by the US military efforts.
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The lamestream media all agree that the War on Terror has been an unmitigated success. The collateral damage (i.e., the civilian casualties) were unfortunate but unavoidable. Since 2001, there has not been a single attack on the World Trade Center in New York, while, had it not been for the War on Terror that disrupted Al Qaeda’s Command and Control Structure, there would have been many more such attacks with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that were far more devastating.
Which just goes to show that the lamestream media have no idea how difficult it is to a) construct a WMD that could do such damage, and then b) get it into the US.
But who are you going to believe, common sense and Occam’s razor, or the ‘experts’ from the US government who know what they’re talking about, and are quoted as reliable by the lame stream media???
Also, the Lancet study about Iraq appeared years ago. So it doesn’t include subsequent deaths, and obviously not those in Afghanistan.
The fatal flaw in this argument is that it assumes that all human life is equal. Some are more equal than others.
If we factor in opportunity cost, the cost in terms of American lives should be greater. The money spent on the war could have been spent on universal healthcare.
The FIRST million+ Iraqis were killed by pappy Bush’s excellent oil adventure and the ensuing “economic sanctions,” half the victims of which were children. The ONLY impeachable offense of Clinton’s was presiding over the major part of this atrocity that was still in effect when Bush/Cheney invaded.