Saturday, March 20, 2004
This is success?
W and the boys are constantly telling us that we’re succeeding in the war on terror. Now, I’m not a counter-terrorism expert or anything but, given administration spin, isn’t it about time to think about just how many people have died in terrorist attacks since 9/11? Wouldn’t that be a way to gauge how well we’re doing in the war on terror?
Let’s just do some basic arithmetic, shall we?
Bali Bombing 182 killed
Turkey Bombing 20 killed
Madrid Attack 199 killed
Saudi Arabia Attack 17 killed
Iraq Suicide Bombings (over the past year) 660 killed
If you get out the old calculator, that’s 1078 killed in terrorist attacks since 9/11.
(Have I missed anything? If so, let me know on the comment boards. I’m just getting these numbers from media accounts via basic google searches, so I could be wrong but I’m probably undercounting the numbers rather than the other way around.)
The most frightening thing is that 660 of those killed by terrorist attacks are in Iraq. Would you care to wager whether we’d be seeing those sorts of numbers if we hadn’t invaded Iraq? It’s pretty shocking to realize that more than half of those killed in terrorism since 9/11 have taken place in the country we were supposedly helping out through an invasion, isn’t it? To sum up, our invasion of Iraq (that was presumably supposed to assist us in the war on terrorism) is now directly responsible for more than 60% of those killed by terrorism since 9/11.
That’s a bit of an eye-opener, isn’t it?
Now, just how is this a success?
And, by the way, we’ve also lost 27 U.S. soldiers in Iraq just this month – in addition to 549 others since the war began of course. If you add those numbers up, in the name of the “war on terra” we’ve had half the death toll of 9/11 since 9/11 – and more than 1,200 of those are courtesy of the Iraq War.
And, I’ll remind you, I’m not even including the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians killed in the war in that total. If I did that there’s a very good chance that more innocents have died during George W. Bush's "war on terror" since 9/11 than died in the horrific 9/11 attacks themselves.
Again, this policy outcome is considered a “success?” Really? How so?
I’m beginning to understand just why W and Rove are getting concerned. If anyone (hello, U.S. media?) does the basic arithmetic our “success” begins to look like anything but success.
And the war in Iraq, as I feared it would be before the war, has turned out to be an utter disaster with regard to stopping terrorism in the world.
Let’s just do some basic arithmetic, shall we?
Bali Bombing 182 killed
Turkey Bombing 20 killed
Madrid Attack 199 killed
Saudi Arabia Attack 17 killed
Iraq Suicide Bombings (over the past year) 660 killed
If you get out the old calculator, that’s 1078 killed in terrorist attacks since 9/11.
(Have I missed anything? If so, let me know on the comment boards. I’m just getting these numbers from media accounts via basic google searches, so I could be wrong but I’m probably undercounting the numbers rather than the other way around.)
The most frightening thing is that 660 of those killed by terrorist attacks are in Iraq. Would you care to wager whether we’d be seeing those sorts of numbers if we hadn’t invaded Iraq? It’s pretty shocking to realize that more than half of those killed in terrorism since 9/11 have taken place in the country we were supposedly helping out through an invasion, isn’t it? To sum up, our invasion of Iraq (that was presumably supposed to assist us in the war on terrorism) is now directly responsible for more than 60% of those killed by terrorism since 9/11.
That’s a bit of an eye-opener, isn’t it?
Now, just how is this a success?
And, by the way, we’ve also lost 27 U.S. soldiers in Iraq just this month – in addition to 549 others since the war began of course. If you add those numbers up, in the name of the “war on terra” we’ve had half the death toll of 9/11 since 9/11 – and more than 1,200 of those are courtesy of the Iraq War.
And, I’ll remind you, I’m not even including the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians killed in the war in that total. If I did that there’s a very good chance that more innocents have died during George W. Bush's "war on terror" since 9/11 than died in the horrific 9/11 attacks themselves.
Again, this policy outcome is considered a “success?” Really? How so?
I’m beginning to understand just why W and Rove are getting concerned. If anyone (hello, U.S. media?) does the basic arithmetic our “success” begins to look like anything but success.
And the war in Iraq, as I feared it would be before the war, has turned out to be an utter disaster with regard to stopping terrorism in the world.
