BitWhys
Religious fundamentalism practiced by fanatics inevitably changes many things. The western promise of wealth and prosperity, “democracy” and freedom holds some allure…. Particularly if your nation is subjected to the too often-cruel attentions lavished on citizens when religious fanatics secure power in any nation.
It doesn’t appear to matter to the enormous body of self-described “Christians” living in JesusLand U.S.A that “good” people sent to wrestle “freedom” and “opportunity” for the people of Afghanistan from a fanatic movement have demonstrated a proclivity to barbarism akin to that shown by those identified as the “enemy”.
I’d be curious to read a study or report that could provide some metric to the level of attention exercised by Canadians regarding Afghanistan prior to Sept. 11/2001. I’d speculate that like most American’s, the average Canadian wouldn’t be able to point to Afghanistan on a map of the world. This might indicate a weak education system or it might reflect the fact that before the American people went seeking revenge, only geographers and historians had any inkling regarding this area of the planet.
Frequently contributors to forums will plea for “balance” or offer that someone’s stated opinion is so extremely bias that it un-intentionally reveals a perspective so skewed as to command at a minimum, outright dismissal.
I’m struck by the rancid odor of disingenuousness sometimes but more often attribute this perverse thinking to simple ignorance.
If “balance” as notion warrants our passionate embrace when examining things, might we find this expression of “balance” in examining the precursors and predicates contributing the situation in question?
“Just less than 3,000 people were killed in the September 11th atrocities. At the time, many of the relatives of the victims, including Irish relatives, pleaded that not one more innocent life would be lost in retaliation for these crimes. Unfortunately, this plea went unheeded. The present civilian death-toll in Afghanistan is at least 4,000 and could be as high as 8,000.”
Any “balance” is subject to interpretation of course, “conditional”… if you would, regarding whose claim to justifiable moral outrage permits of “committing evil to do good” as Robert S. McNamara once excused the immolation of four hundred thousand Japanese civilians by the United States. (Firebombing Tokyo and two nuclear bombs Nagasaki Hiroshima)
“The lowest casualty estimates, based on the now-renounced North Vietnamese statements, are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995 that a total of one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been challenged. 58,226 American soldiers also died in the war or are missing in action. Australia lost almost 500 of the 47,000 troops they had deployed to Vietnam and New Zealand lost 38 soldiers.”
58,000 American soldiers ------ 4,000,000 Vietnamese civilians….
Or let’s try to find this “balance” a little closer to home….
“Though U.S.-backed armies and paramilitary forces eventually quelled the leftist peasant rebellions, the cost in blood was staggering. The death toll in El Salvador was estimated at about 70,000 people. In Guatemala, the number of dead reached about 200,000, including what a truth commission concluded was a genocide against the Mayan populations in Guatemala’s highlands.”
Approximately 300,000 casualties of U.S. intervention in Central America.
“The muted press coverage that the U.S. news media has given these atrocities as they have come to light over the years also showed the residual strength of the “perception management” employed by the Reagan administration. For instance, even when the atrocities of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt are mentioned, as they were in the context of his defeat in Guatemala’s Nov. 9 presidential elections, the history of Reagan’s warm support for Rios Montt is rarely, if ever, noted by the U.S. press.”
“The following year, the U.S. deployed forces in the Persian Gulf after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which turned Washington against its former Iraqi ally Saddam Hussein. U.S. supported the Kuwaiti monarchy and the Muslim fundamentalist monarchy in neighboring Saudi Arabia against the secular nationalist Iraq regime. In January 1991, the U.S..and its allies unleashed a massive bombing assault against Iraqi government and military targets, in an intensity beyond the raids of World War II and Vietnam. Up to 200,000 Iraqis were killed in the war and its imemdiate aftermath of rebellion and disease, including many civilians who died in their villages, neighborhoods, and bomb shelters. The U.S. continued economic sanctions that denied health and energy to Iraqi civilians, who died by the hundreds of thousands, according to United Nations agencies. The U.S. also instituted "no-fly zones" and virtually continuous bombing raids, yet Saddam was politically bolstered as he was militarily weakened.”
Estimates range from 250,000 to 580,000 Iraqi people killed through American involvement in the Persian Gulf.
Even with these sub-totals from different areas of the world, “balance” seems to require that we embrace the “necessity” of millions of civilian deaths as “acceptable” when its Canada and the United States doing the killing.
And this perspective follows from only five of hundreds of “interventions” that have taken place at the behest of the United States of America.
So when you hear pleas for “balance” just remember that what you’re most likely to be hearing is actually a suggestion that you conveniently ignore the staggering amount of death and destruction practiced by western nations, and consider only the actions of those “enemies” as informed by our politically controlled media…
