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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 9/29/11

Mirror Mirror On the Wall, Who Are the Most Ruthless Terrorists of Them All?

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I hope this is all registering, because from here the plot thickens considerably. Not only did 9/11 serve as a pretext for the warmongering Bush cabal to deceptively set their imperialist war machine in motion, but it turns out that the pretext itself was seen as a hopeful, if not wholly necessary, part of those plans. It was recognized in these early pre-9/11 and pre-Bush presidency PNAC war plans that in order to get the war machine rolling "some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor" -- would be needed to rally public support and secure congressional approval. This "new Pearl Harbor" that had yet to materialize was described in these early war plans as "the opportunity of ages." And, when that "opportunity" presented itself with the crashing down of the Twin Towers and the crushing deaths of nearly 3,000 innocents, the media latched onto that "new Pearl Harbor" storyline with a fury. But, of course, not a word about the pre-9/11 PNAC source of that metaphor.

Never Forget

The terror, the horror, that ensued from all of this is almost unimaginable. The best estimate to date is that nearly 1.5 million Iraqis have been killed as a result of America's 2003 invasion, most of whom were women and children (and here). If America had been subject to this kind of terror, with a population 12 times that of Iraq, the equivalent number of American civilian deaths would be more than 18 million. 18 million! -- that's 6,000 9/11 tragedies. Spread out over a period of eight years, that's 750 9/11 tragedies per year, or two 9/11 tragedies each and every day.

Just imagine if only hours after the Twin Towers fell a second terrorist attack killed another 3,000 people. Further imagine that the next day two more terrorist attacks occurred killing another 3,000 people each. Imagine this continuing every day for eight years -- two terrorist attacks each and every day taking the lives of 6,000 Americans each day. If you can imagine the enormous suffering -- the pain, the fear, the horror, the terror, the destruction -- that invariably accompanies such a tremendous loss of life, then you'll begin to have some idea of what America's unprovoked invasion of Iraq has done to the Iraqi people.

But wait, there's more. At the very least, twice the number of Iraqis killed were wounded, many of whom have been maimed for life. And we can add to this another 4 million Iraqis who left their homes in fear for their lives (2 million seeking safety in bordering countries, and another 2 million internally displaced). So that's approximately 8.5 million Iraqis that have either been killed, wounded, or made homeless (not to mention the many thousands who have been wrongfully imprisoned and tortured). Again, if America had been subject to this kind of terror, the American equivalent of these 8.5 million Iraqis would be 102 million Americans. That's approximately 1 out of every 3 Americans either killed, wounded, or made homeless.

As difficult as it may be to imagine such a horribly grotesque reality, take a few moments, if you will, and allow this to sink in. Because this, too, was part of America's response to 9/11, and this, too, should never be forgotten.

Unfortunately, most Americans have already forgotten. Correction: most Americans have yet to even acknowledge the ruthless terror America unleashed on Iraq eight years ago. Somehow it escapes us that each of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who lay dead was someone's loving mother or father, husband or wife, son or daughter, brother or sister, or dear friend. And the same can be said for the many more who survived the holocaust and continue to suffer. America spills the blood and guts of these innocents without batting an eyelash. It hardly even registers.

This is not the America that the vast majority of Americans imagine for themselves. But the facts don't lie. This is, indeed, America. This is America at its worst -- America taking what was very obviously a great evil and creating from it a far greater evil.

We all must share in the responsibility for this. No one escapes culpability. While the guilt is not evenly distributed, as a collective this is our doing.  It's the quality of America's collective consciousness that created the kind of incoherent and disordered atmosphere in which atrocities such as this are made possible. We vote into office the politicians who shamelessly do the bidding of their war-profiteering corporate benefactors. A vote for Bachmann, Perry, Romney, Obama, or anyone else who makes it through the corporate vetting process as a viable candidate, is a vote for more bloodshed to feed the corporate bottom line. We are not citizens of a democracy. We are shareholders in Murder Inc.! And the shareholders are getting screwed. 

How could we have ever let this happen? When it comes to the value of a human life is there a distinction to be made between Americans and Iraqis, or Americans and Afghans? If there is I fail to see it. And I thank God for my blindness.

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Short Bio: Rob Quinn taught Philosophy for ten years at the University of Oklahoma (OU), and the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO). Prior to this he worked as a therapist in an in-residence psychiatric facility for disturbed young children. (more...)
 

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