01000101 wrote:
So that makes it an insignificant/unimportant happening?
Didn't say that. I just think it's blown out of proportion because it's been so traumatic for the US ("attacked on own territory").
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I believe a more critical point would be to say that the first count was a national tragedy...
100% agreed.
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...the second and third were an act of preserving national freedom...
I disagree. Knowledge today indicates that Iraq and Hussein - a person brought to power and armed by the US government - had little to nothing to do with 9/11, and didn't pose a significant threat to the US or its allies at the time.
And, while I can't root this in statistical fact ad-hoc, personally I feel the hostility towards, not only the US but the "western world" as a whole, has
increased with Iraq and Afghanistan. This goes hand-in-hand with a number of security laws passed in many western "democracies" that I enjoy to believe would have resulted in an
outrage back in the good old times when "we" were the "good ones" (free, liberal, progressive) and the "bad ones" (restricted, censored, oppressive ones) were the USSR.
You see, I tend to take a rather differentiated view on the whole thing.
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...the last is a completely unrelated fact that has many reasons behind its high count...
How big is...
- the chance that your kid is killed by terrorists?
- the chance that your kid grows up in a much more restrictive, censored, and state-controlled environment than you did?
- the chance that your kid is run over by a careless driver?
- the amount of tax money spent by your government to alter those chances?
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In my opinion, that was a very large stretch for the sake of perspective.
Everything is a matter of perspective. That is a view that denies you any easy answers, but it's also a view that allows you to put things
into perspective.
@ abushraf:
I did not quote
those numbers on purpose, as they are too controversial in my eyes. For example, most sources do not distinguish between civilians killed by US troops as "collateral damage", those killed by what the US calls "insurgents" as "collateral damage", and those deliberately killed by terrorist bombings / shootings. Too many categories to be put into one number and layed at the feet of those who - justifiably - mourn their losses of 9/11.
That, too, is a matter of perspective.