It's just, you know, that airstrikes always kill civilians. That's what they do. They aren't that accurate. They can't distinguish between a wee little lad and the big bad Taliban fighter who lives next door. Not to mention, killing civilians doesn't earn us the "hearts and minds" of said civilians.
It's a proud day for Canadians. Murdering Afghan people without justification.
Happy Canada Day.
7 comments:
Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf made exactly this point when he was interviewed (by CNN I believe) last month in answering questions about whether or not he was "doing enough" to help in the war on terror.
In blunt words he pointed out that his country has lost more people in the (so named) war on terror than any other country because their forces went in on the ground instead of bombing from a mile up, the work was harder, but the civilian death toll was a lot lower, and their government considered that important.
Western countries give lip service to the need for reducing civilian lives, others actually do it.
It would be interesting to calculate how many civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have occured as the result of Mr. Bush's war on Terror, and compare that to the number of civilians who died in on 9/11, the event that launched it. If nothing else, that ratio would give us a sense of the value Mr. Bush places on lives outside the US. What do you figure? Ten furriners is worth one American? A hundred?
Well as of January this year there were somewhere between 17 times and 217 times the number of Iraqis dead compared to Americans in Iraq. I made a pretty graph at the bottom of this post. I didn't include the deaths fr 9/11 since I didn't think that was relevant to the post, but you could imagine doubling the little sliver that represents 3015 American deaths and it would be pretty accurate.
I like your graph; it reminds me that at http://www.moiz.ca/coffin.htm there is a great illustration of how unfair a fight the recent conflict in Lebanon was.
Here's another comparison. Worldwide, from all "terrorist" attacks combined, in that last thirty years, approximately 50,000 civilians have died. In Iraq alone {according to the more accurate lancet estimate), from the Crawford Criminal's war, in under five years approximately 650,000 civilians have died. Who is the worse terrorist?
Canada Day never did start with peace.
I would like to say that the "proudness" should not go the Canadians. It's the Americans that are conducting the airstrikes.
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