Unless you're a racist, for every second you spend thinking about 9/11/2001, you should spend twice as much time thinking about 9/11/1973. That's the day the democratically elected leader of Chile was murdered in a US sponsored coup. This resulted in the military dictator Pinochet coming into power and murdering more than 10,000 and keeping the majority of the people in seatshop conditions. If you give a damm about people other than Americans, you should hang hour heads in shame about what your government did! 9/11/2001 doesn't mean shit in comparison. Some more comparisons: Died in 2001 US plane hijackings 9/11 thanks to earlier US support of Bin Laden in Afgan War: not quite 3,000 Died in East Timor 1975 thanks to the US: Roughly 200,000 out of a total population of 800,000 Died in Nicaragua 1978-1989 thanks to the US: 10,000 plus and also forced extreme right wing economic policies which have had the usual effect Died in Grenada 1983 thanks to the US: 400 out of a population of 110,000. Plus the US brought in authoritarian right wing rule. Panama: US admits to killing 500 in attacking the man they propped into power, Noriega. Less biased estimates are in the thousands. Iraq 1991: We lured them into attacking, then refused to give them time to retreat, then killed 50,000 badly overmatched like it was a video game. Iraq 1992 to 2002: Conservatively killed 500,000 children with the sanctions, possibly 2 million. El Salvador: 75,000 civilians deaths plus the US spent 6 billion dollars on this proxy war. Haiti 1987-1994: US sponsors coup of the elected president in 1991. It starts looking quite embarrasing to the "liberal" Clinton. US lets elected president back into office in 1994 as long as we can keep the country a sweatshop. Haiti 2004: Rightfully elected president Aristide raises the minimum wage. US forces kidnap him. Iraq 2003 to present: 5,000 at least. 10,000 plus is far, far more likely. Unfortunately the US doesn't even pretend to count how many they kill these days. So everytime you think about those poor Americans who died. Think about the Chileans, the Nicaraguans, the Salvadoreans, the Haitians, Iraqis, the Panamanians, the Grenadians, etc ,etc. The US 9/11 doesn't mean shit in comparison. Except in that it's being used to justify yet more killings across the third world.
People will always die due to war/conflicts. I think that some people believe " the nerve of them to attact a powerful nation like the US." But I agree with you. We should be more aware about other nations.
Wow, i am stunned. I am not very politically informed but i have always had an idea that the used has done acts of violence such as this but... I never really knew the numbers. Fucking disgusting...
I agree with you, too. Our crimes against humanity make 9-11 pale by comparison. Seen objectively, 9-11 was a stroke of tactical genius. It combined two highly visceral human fears (fear of flying and fear of tall buildings) and brought them in living color to every television in America. About a year after 9-11, I happened to be interviewed by a local newspaper for my reaction to the event over that year. I said that having lived in other countries where political killing was commonplace, 9-11 seemed more familiar to me than shocking or unbelievable. Just on a larger scale, that's all. I added that our reaction seemed slightly disproportionate - after all, more people die in three weeks in car accidents in the U.S. than died on 9-11, yet no "war on car accidents" seems warranted. I was sternly rebuked by many people for those comments. I think that the American people are very much like children, or perhaps adolescents. We don't have a clear understanding of the world around us, we overreact to perceived threats while ignoring much larger, real threats, see ourselves as victims, and have a tendency to oversimplify every issue. Our leaders, of course, are more than willing to use this fear and this immaturity to instill a siege mentality that allows them to pretty much do whatever the hell they want. Personally, I think that we have lost our democracy and that our leadership is taking us down a path that will demolish America as we know it. Though it will cause a lot of death and suffering while it happens, I think it will be best for the world as a whole if the U.S. is forced by circumstance and our own bumbling efforts to assume a more proportionate station among the powers of the earth. So I say to the Bush Administration - "Bring it on" - wreck our Constitution, destroy our criminal justice system, finish off our reputation in the world. Perhaps from the ashes of this abomination of a country we can build something new and sane. But I doubt it.
I firmly believe that Bush (or perhaps Cheney, he's the one with a three-digit IQ) had a hand in bringing about 9/11. It was too weird that they let an entire planeload of Saudis, including members of the royal family, take off later that day when every airport in the country was locked down. This siege mentality is just what they want in order to be given free rein to spit on the Constitution on a scale that makes FDR look like Thomas Jefferson. You're right about the scale of casualties not being so great in historical context. Even as a military issue it's a trifle compared to Pearl Harbor or the Civil War, because there was not much chance of a follow-through by the enemy. The reason that it continues to resonate for so long is not the loss of life, but the still-visible physical damage and the magnitude of the effort required to clear it from our sight. Yes, the USA has a lot of downright evil deeds to answer for. For the most part they were all chess moves in the Cold War. We'd prop up a government that was friendly to us in one country, no matter how unfriendly it was to its own citizens, and the Soviets would do the same thing in another country. With the Cold War over, you'd think there'd be nothing stopping us from overhauling our international image. Instead, the government went to a lot of trouble to engineer the abuse at Abu Ghraib (nobody can convince me those were just some crazy, undertrained reservists letting off steam, and it wasn't unorthodox interrogation because that would have been done by interrogation specialists in secret), to take hundreds of photos of it (nobody takes that many photos of themselves doing something they know in their hearts is that wrong), and to make sure that those photos saturated every communication medium on Earth for weeks (this from a government that can magically cover up just about anything it wants to). It's as if this administration is deliberately trying to make us look like the Great Satan that Muslim extremists have always said we were. It has all the trappings of a genuine holy war. This is the fifth redneck from the Bible Belt that we put in the White House; it was bound to happen eventually. He really wants to restart the Crusades. Lincoln should have just cut the South loose, and Grant should not have let them back in. Slavery would have fizzled out without having to fight a war, just like it did everywhere else in this hemisphere except Haiti -- another country where things worked out horribly wrong. And we wouldn't have had to suffer LBJ's getting us mired down in Vietnam, nor the Middle East idiocies of the Bush Dynasty.
That is true. My point, however, is that they are both equally preventable, and equally indiscriminate - so why does one generate so much hand wringing and the other not? Many people would reply that the death toll on the highways is an acceptable and necessary price to pay for our desire for personal transportation. This may be so, but then one should consider whether the death toll in New York, Iraq and Afghanistan is also acceptable and necessary. If so, then let's stop crying about it and treat the occasional terrorist attack as equivalent to repeatedly building one's home on a shore frequented by hurricanes or in an earthquake zone. Kind of like a cost of doing business. If it's somehow less acceptable, then let's not loosen the lug nuts on the SUV of our foreign policy.
CounslerCoffee: "Car accidents are accidents, flying planes into buildings isn't." Does a person come about a state of mind on purpose, especially the sacrificial true believer? I don't think so. How many car accidents are because a person was in a state of mind of little care? How many speeders do you see every day? What are the dynamics of transportation? Are there things that could be done to prevent many of those accidents that are not being done? Aren't legal actions pursued in the cases of auto accidents to determine relative blame and accountability? I bet many car accidents are individual acts of terrorism. When do they not invoke terror? I see absolutely no difference at all. Acts of terror are accidental in nature including the circumstantial conditions that are allowed to occur that lead to desperate people surrounded by death who lose the idea of the sanctity of life. That is an accident of their environment. War is by accident. Violence is the unintelligent application of force. Groups of people with great power are allowed to be out of touch, couched in ivory towers or sequestered within slums. How much intelligence comes to play from these limited perspectives? How much stupidity is promulgated by people weilding power over something they can not see? Nation states are by accident. When you ascribe blame rather than attempting understanding, you shut out the solutions and become a part of the problem. CounslerCoffee, You are a moderator of one or more threads here at sciforums?
Well then your definition of terrorist is any one that willfuly breaks a law. Are you suggesting that you are a perfect person? Just because you've decided that the apointment you're about to be late for is more important than human life causes you to be a terrorist. The way I see it is that a terrorist has no respect for life, and thus would not care about the apointment, but rether killing/ injuring as many people as possible.
Funny how you forget to list the crimes of the Soviet supported Governments that we replaced. Your list is a joke. Died in Nicaragua 1978-1989 thanks to the US: 10,000 plus and also forced extreme right wing economic policies which have had the usual effect The usual effect such as a higher standerd of living. The Sandinistas where such saints..... Died in Grenada 1983 thanks to the US: 400 out of a population of 110,000. Plus the US brought in authoritarian right wing rule. How many of that 400 were Cubans? This was about the Cuban government trying to influence Grenada. Once again nothing wrong with Capitalism- if you would like to compare the successes of Capitalism vs Socialism by all means..... Panama: US admits to killing 500 in attacking the man they propped into power, Noriega. Less biased estimates are in the thousands. Any how many people did Noriega kill? You suggest he was some benevolent person... Iraq 1991: We lured them into attacking, then refused to give them time to retreat, then killed 50,000 badly overmatched like it was a video game. More crap. Iraq attacked Kuwait because Saddam couldnt repay the war debt from the Iran/Iraq war. "Refused to give them time to retreat" *LOL* This is war! You want to give them "time" to retreat so they can form a counter-attack? Get a clue. Iraq 1992 to 2002: Conservatively killed 500,000 children with the sanctions, possibly 2 million. Ohh so instead of 500,000 Civilians, now they are all 'Children'? Propaganda. Funny how Saddam could afford to Spend BILLIONS on his palaces and his own Baath Party members, army, republican guard were fed. Saddam could have fed his people. El Salvador: 75,000 civilians deaths plus the US spent 6 billion dollars on this proxy war. Yet another Central America right vs left proxy war supported by the Soviets and the Americans. Of course you label all 75,000 civilian deaths to the Americans which once again is bullshit. Nice slandering though. Haiti 1987-1994: US sponsors coup of the elected president in 1991. It starts looking quite embarrasing to the "liberal" Clinton. US lets elected president back into office in 1994 as long as we can keep the country a sweatshop. Haiti 2004: Rightfully elected president Aristide raises the minimum wage. US forces kidnap him. 1) We didnt kidnap him, He left before he was going to be shot in the street. 2) While he was elected, the entire country was revolting against him and he refused to step down or hold new elections (or did you conviently forget to mention that the entire country was turning into a revolutionary bloodbath?) Who stablized the country? US Marines. So everytime you think about those poor Americans who died. Think about the Chileans, the Nicaraguans, the Salvadoreans, the Haitians, Iraqis, the Panamanians, the Grenadians, etc ,etc. The US 9/11 doesn't mean shit in comparison. Once agian you suggest that it was the U.S. who killed all of these people which is Bullshit. You fail to mention the governments that killed them. Typical Leftist BS. Should we list the MILLIONS that the left has killed? How about the Russians (25,000,000 Stalin), Chinese (Cultural Revolution anyone another 25,000,000), Vietnamese, Cambodians (Pol Pots 1,000,000 deaths from starvation), Loations, Hmongs, Cubans, Chileans, Columbians, Afghans, Salvadorians, Ecuadorians etc...etc...etc...etc..etc..etc...etc... I guess the 50,000,000+ people the LEFT has killed is Ok with you?
Ah, I was wondering, where does existentialism fit in? To think that a terrorist doesn't have their reasons while a reckless driver might is to attribute a person's inclinations are sometimes separate from their conditions and at other times not. Here ya go, it falls into place now, the real terrorist is the one who considers people as not a part and result of their environment. If there are no reasons then there are no solutions short of killing the killers. That is the mistaken belief of the terrorist. How does it feel Enigma'07?
Terrorists intentionally target civilians. Revolutionaries attack military and government targets. There is the difference.
emphryio, you made a mistake with that post, not referencing your sources. Gave crazy151drinker much liberty to do the same. Oh well.
Indisciminate? Cars don't kill for a purpose, they only serve one. People who board a plane and kill the passengers; they kill for a reason. "Oh, I think I'll crash into a wall today," cars can't wake up in the morning and think this, people can. Mr. Chips, Cars do not kill for a reason, people do. You cannot compare cars and people. I can make the connection, but it's a ludicrous one—and faulty. I'm a moderator of this board, yes. WE&P and Scifi.
emphryio, I'm sure you carefully analyzed all major world events and world leaders, weighing the relative responsibility of all players in contributing to death,suffering, and destruction; so tell us, what is the result? Who on earth has been or can be a careful and responsible steward of the human species?
this makes me laugh. what an obvious strawman. the last question in particular, is breathtaking in its disingenuity. the attempt to belittle and troll emphyryio's post sickens. allow me to to sum up the point of this thread. *americans should not pretend INNOCENCE nor profess IGNORANCE. *neither should you EVER claim the moral high ground. *the state sponsored TERRORISM as practiced by the usa make others, PALE IN COMPARISON. kapeesh?
CounselerCoffee: "Cars do not kill for a reason, people do. You cannot compare cars and people. I can make the connection, but it's a ludicrous one—and faulty." Are you addressing something I said or intoned? Good that you are admitting that people kill for a reason. Find those reasons and you have a handle on how to prevent people from killing. Enigma'07: "Let's go on a world-wide killing spree then." No blame does not mean no responsibility. Only from alienation and ignorance could you suggest such is the consequence of seeking to alleviate the suffering of others so that they do not visit that suffering upon more. Sure there must be consequences we pursue against those who usurp the rights and welfare of others but avoid the clarity of seeking real solutions other than targeting murder and mayhem upon those who are lumped into the blame and you become the terrorist. Yup, existentialism, anomie, is common and a tough egg to crack but until we do, the violence will continue and grow.
How about this? No one in control of any country is innocent of causing death and destruction. Nations require armies, armies are controlled by people, people make mistakes that result in innocent people getting killed. Look at the Cuban Missile crisis, ostensibly rational leaders from three modern industrialized nations brought the world to the brink of total nuclear holocaust. Modern nations are built on the ability to wage war and war is the most immoral thing people can do. Therefore the modern nation-state is inherently immoral, the US just has a larger budget for mischief, and also a larger chance of doing good.
