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Judging from media accounts, the deaths of 50 people in London are exponentially more important than the almost
In almost four years since 9/11/2001, at least 67,371 people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
That's roughly 22 people killed, for every American killed on 9/11.
It's more than twice as many people as have been killed by terrorist attacks, in the nearly four decades since records of terrorist attacks have been kept.
And of course, these are the people American and coalition forces are "liberating."
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| daily reports of death by the dozens in Iraq.
The deaths in London were tragedies. Prime Minister Blair and President Bush said so. On talk radio and talking head TV and in newspapers' op/ed pages, pundits and ordinary people are still expressing their sad and angry opinions.
Me, I'm trying to figure out why these dead people matter so much more than other dead people.
I'm guessing that most of the dead in London weren't wearing those funky turbans. They were presumably white,
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Christian, and spoke our language, English, albeit with that odd English accent. So these dead Londoners were, by all accounts, important victims.
Meanwhile, here's 45 more who don't matter at all, at least not to Bush & Blair. Just some more dead Iraqis. And with that report published, their snuffed-out lives won't be mentioned again in American media. Dozens more Afghans and Iraqis will probably be killed this week, but Nightline won't devote half an hour to their memories, and nobody on CNN or Fox will debate how we should respond to their deaths. The British Prime Minister and American President will have no official response:
Despite widely-published prattle about "liberating" the Afghans and Iraqis, "Democracy on the march," and setting the Arab world "free" from "a brutal dictator," nobody in any high American office cares at all about these people. As a national policy, America doesn't give a third of a rat's turd about dead Arabs and Muslims.
Oh, if you ask Condoleezza Rice off the record, she might agree that they're human, but we all know they're not the sort of humans we give a damn about. They speak a different language, worship a different God, and eat off a different menu. For all practical purposes, the dead might as well be hedgehogs or heads of cabbage.
But with these "coordinated strikes" in London, ooooh, terrorism has struck terror into our hearts. And now, properly terrorized again, the Americans, the Brits, and the western world will continue killing Iraqis at a ferocious pace, or perhaps the pace will pick up a bit.
Because when we're discussing casualties that aren't American or English, we're talking about cabbage.
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The National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT, for short) is a non-profit organization, originally established in 1999 as an on-line memorial for victims and survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing.
As part of their mission, MIPT has collected data from reputable sources, and set up a searchable database of terrorist incidents, dating back to 1968, when terror first became a part of the daily news cycle.
There have been, according to MIPT, 22,234 terrorist incidents since 1968 (through July 10, 2005, when I wrote this; you can click here to repeat the all-time search at a later date).
29,347 people have been killed in these terrorist attacks, and 74,429 people have been injured. Our dratted foes, al Qaeda, have killed 3,521 people, and injured 6,476.
And this goes without saying, but still I'll say: Obviously and sincerely, behind each of these deaths and injuries is a tragedy.
In almost four years since 9/11/2001, at least 67,371 people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's roughly 22 people killed, for every American killed on 9/11. It's more than twice as many people as have been killed by terrorist attacks, in the nearly four decades since records of terrorist attacks have been kept.
And of course, these are the people American and coalition forces are "liberating." But you know, I know, and they know that nobody in the Bush and Blair administrations cares about them in the slightest. Nobody mourns shredded cabbage, and nobody's "liberated" by being bombed, machine-gunned, imprisoned, and tortured.
Al Qaeda, remember, has killed 3,521 people, and terrorism worldwide has killed almost 30,000.
Want more numbers? The Rwandan genocide of 1994 left about 800,000 people dead, while the world's so-called civilized nations did nothing in response. The U.S. killed about two-million people, during its war on Vietnam. Pneumonia kills about 2,000,000 children every year worldwide, and diarrhea kills another 1,900,000. Every year.
And it goes without saying, but obviously and sincerely, each of those deaths are tragedies, too, to the families, friends, and countrymen of the dead.
But we don't declare war on pneumonia. No, it's terrorism we must fight, and we can't fight terror the way we fight other crimes, by detective work and arrests and trials and imprisonment. No, terrorism is too terrifying for such tactics.
We must fight terrorism by surrendering our civil liberties, submitting to random searches and x-ray scrutiny, lining up in queues to be wanded before entering any government building, authorizing federal agents to track us, bug us, eavesdrop on us, search our homes, and know the books we've read, and of course, by attacking whole nations and beginning wars that can never end.
America's leaders have set aside the longstanding rules of war, made excuses for torture, held prisoners (including U.S. citizens) without charges, without lawyers, without court dates, all because terrorism is so very scary. It's so scary that to defeat it, we the people will obediently submit to anything, and cheer on the occupation and subjugation of as many nations as it takes.
The war on terror is more important than the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights, so those documents have been superceded, and no longer apply.
The Geneva Conventions don't apply at Guantanamo, or Abu Ghraib, or America's several super-secret prisons.
The rules of war do not apply in this war.
And the rules of God have been modified, as well. "Thou shalt not kill" is now more "nuanced." What God meant was, Thou shalt not kill American businessmen in the World Trade Center, or American soldiers in the Pentagon, or passengers in American jets. But killing Iraqis or Afghans, Arabs or Muslims, hedgehogs or heads of cabbage, is not the same. It's OK, or even a good idea, to kill people who live in the wrong country, worship the wrong god, or speak the wrong language. Why, if God didn't want 'em dead, He wouldn't have made 'em so easy to kill.
So kill 'em all. Kill them without pause, without conscience, and without end. And remember, no matter how many of them are killed, it's never wrong and it's never terrorism if America does it.
What America does to them is downright heroic -- it's "defending freedom," "spreading democracy," and "fighting against terrorism."
What they do to America, and what they did to London last week, is shocking, savage, barbarian, and inhuman. It's terrorism, and it must be violently avenged.
Anyone who'd say otherwise, anyone who thinks it's wrong to kill the people we're liberating, why, anyone who'd say such a thing must be a cabbage sympathizer.
© by the author.
What do you think?
Violence leaves 45 dead in Iraq
by Andy Mosher and Naseer Nouri, Washington Post
July 11, 2005
At least 45 people were killed Sunday in violence in Iraq, including 29 in two attacks in the capital: a suicide bombing at a military recruiting center and a massacre of a sleeping family in a residential neighborhood.
The Baghdad bombing occurred just before 9 a.m. at Muthanna airport, a former government airstrip near the city center that has been converted into a facility for processing army recruits. According to witnesses and police, a bomber detonated an explosive belt near a crowd of men waiting to enter the recruiting center.
According to the Defense Ministry, the explosion killed 21 people and wounded at least 34 others, which would make it the deadliest bombing in Baghdad since June 19, when a suicide bomber killed 23 people in a restaurant popular with Iraqi policemen. Medical workers quoted by news services put the death toll in Sunday's attack between 16 and 25 people. ...
As originally published
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I can't afford therapy, but boy do I need it. So as an affordable alternative, I've decided to start pounding my anger into a weekly column here.
Fair warning: My parents were repressed -- using any bad words would get my mouth washed out with soap, literally. I still remember the sickly flavor of DoveTM. So as an adult, vulgarity helps with the healing. If naughty language offends you, beat the rush and get offended now.
This page is for my own good, not yours, so you may not like it, but I don't care.
About the authors
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Helen and Harry Highwater have published Unknown News since 1997. We're a married couple sharing a byline à la Lennon and McCartney, and "I" can be either of us, or both of us. If you're consumed by curiosity, it's safe to assume the more boisterous and aggressive bits come from Helen, and anything ladylike or demure is probably Harry's work.
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Al Qaeda, remember, has killed 3,521 people, and terrorism worldwide has killed almost 30,000.
Pneumonia kills about 2,000,000 children every year worldwide, and diarrhea kills another 1,900,000. Every year.
But we don't declare war on pneumonia. No, it's terrorism we must fight, and we can't fight terror the way we fight other crimes, by detective work and arrests and trials and imprisonment. No, terrorism is too terrifying for such tactics.
We must fight terrorism by surrendering our civil liberties, submitting to random searches and x-ray scrutiny, lining up in queues to be wanded before entering any government building, authorizing federal agents to track us, bug us, eavesdrop on us, search our homes, and know the books we've read, and of course, by attacking whole nations and beginning wars that can never end.
America's leaders have set aside the longstanding rules of war, made excuses for torture, held prisoners (including U.S. citizens) without charges, without lawyers, without court dates, all because terrorism is so very scary.
It's so scary that to defeat it, we the people will obediently submit to anything, and cheer on the occupation and subjugation of as many nations as it takes.
The war on terror is more important than the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights, so those documents have been superceded, and no longer apply.
The Geneva Conventions don't apply at Guantanamo, or Abu Ghraib, or America's several super-secret prisons.
The rules of war do not apply in this war.
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