I think all Americans share the lifelong experience of perceiving the U.S. as this extraordinarily good country that is the moral compass for the whole world. But, in the wake of the carnage from the post 9/11 wars, is there any reason to continue believing that?
If we look at the facts about Afghanistan and Iraq, that these were both crippled 3rd world countries that the U.S. crossed the ocean to attack, and I keep saying that about "crossing the ocean" to emphasize how unilateral the starting of the wars were. They were wars of choice, wars of aggression that the U.S. wholly started. Every claim that was made about Saddam Hussein to justify attacking Iraq proved to be false, and afterwards, it simply became that "he was a brutal dictator anyway; he gassed his own people; so we had every right to do it." But actually, even the claim that he gassed his own people is in doubt.
https://advocatesforpeaceandsocialjustice.wordpress.com/iraq-the-truth/iraq-committee-info-usa/david-hungerford-the-myth-of-the-anfal-genocide-saddam-hussein-did-not-kill-the-kurds/
With Afghanistan, there was only one claim, that the Taliban had harbored Osama bin laden, giving him a platform for his terrorist training camp. But, isn't the fact that Donald Trump is paying the Taliban to negotiate a peace deal with us which will certainly put them, the Taliban, back in power, to a great extent, in Afghanistan, proof that nobody really believes it? Because if the Taliban had done that, if they had actually supported and facilitated the 9/11 attacks, how could that possibly be forgiven? On the basis of what? Promising not to do it again?
Our government can't forgive Lori Loughlin for paying a college admissions bribe that didn't kill anybody. And I'm sure she is promising never to do it again and giving assurances that she won't. Yet, our government is throwing the book at her, threatening to put her prison for 20 years- or longer. And yet, we claim the Taliban gave sanctuary to the 9/11 terrorists, but as long as they give assurances they won't do it again, they can resume power? Is that how it works, Donald Trump?
I don't believe Osama bin laden had anything to do with 9/11, but, even if our claims about him were true, that he did plan the 9/11 attacks, it was still terribly wrong to start a war over it. And that's because we knew that a war would get thousands of innocent people killed, yet, we did it anyway. We just didn't care. We assumed the right to kill those people in order to get to him. And when I say "we" I mean our government, which is to say, the George W. Bush administration.
It has parallels with World War 1 in which the whole world went to war over the death of one man, the Archduke Ferdinand, and 40 million people were killed. In this case, Osama bin laden was alive and it was a matter of us acquiring him, and over that, we started a war which killed hundreds of thousands. Note that at the time, Afghanistan did not have an extradition treaty with the United States; and even though we refused to show them any evidence against him, they did agree to turn him over to a third country for trial.
Why the heck didn't George Bush accept that offer? If bin laden were incarcerated in a third country, he would have been neutralized, right? Furthermore, once the Taliban released him to that third country, it would have been between us and them. We might have been able to prevail on them to turn him over to us. Once the Taliban turned him over, he would have been out of their hands. They'd have lose control. We are talking about something that would have prevented the whole 18 year, no end in sight, Afghanistan War from ever happening. Again I have to ask, how is it that George W. Bush is still walking around a free man? We're talking about putting Lori Loughlin in prison for 20 years but not him?
All right, so let's talk about the numbers. Johns Hopkins researchers reported in The Lancet in 2006 that 600,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the war. The Physicians for Social Responsibility confirmed it, then reported in 2011 that the number had risen to 1,000,000 Iraqis dead. Then in 2015, they hired Nobel Prize winning researchers who determined that in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the death toll from the wars was at the very least 1.3 million and as many as 2 million. There have been naysayers, but the lowest body count I have seen is that of Iraq Body Count which claims only 288,000 Iraqis dead. However, they are counting only the direct deaths from the violence and not any of the secondary deaths related to the war. For instance, if a water treatment plant gets blown up, and water-borne diseases start spreading and kill some people, those are considered secondary deaths from the war.
Note that the number of civilian deaths vastly outnumbers the number of combatant deaths on both sides.
And finally, I will mention the Brown University study which came out last November which claimed 500,000 deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan from the "War on Terror" but again, not including any of the secondary deaths, which they admit usually outnumber the primary deaths, and not including any of the deaths from any attribution from the wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere.
The point is that no matter who is right about the Math, a very great human catastrophe has occurred that is high on the list of historical catastrophes, judging by the numbers.
The highest number of fatalities I have seen reported from the U.S. War on Terror is 4 million. This is by the think-tank Global Research:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/global-war-on-terror-has-killed-4-million-muslims-or-more-do-the-math/5467349
And they stress that it was 4 million Muslims who were killed.
The point is that we, as Americans, in light of this, can't go on acting like everything is normal, like nothing has happened, like nothing has changed, like we're still the same country we were before 9/11. There has never been a reckoning about this. There is barely any awareness of it.
So, what about you? Do you care? Are you OK with all this killing by your government? Because: I am not OK with it, and I want to network with people who are not OK with it.
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