Today's News: The Figures Are In. The USA Wins.

[infrogmation]

Two items from today's news:

From CNN: "The death toll from the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center has been revised down to 3,050, the New York Office of Emergency Management said Saturday. "
Source(at bottom of page)

From CommonDreams: "More than 3,500 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan by U.S. bombs, according to a study to be released December 10 by Marc W. Herold, Professor of Economics, International Relations, and Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire. "
Source

So, apparently, we've killed more innocent civilians in a nation with less than 1/10th the population of the USA than the terrorists killed on 11 September.

Do we get to declare victory now?

Will I be forgiven if I decline to wave a flag and shout "USA! USA!" in celebration of this news?

Comments

[pootrootbeer.livejournal.com]

I'm glad Professor Herold is keeping track of this stuff, although I'm not yet too confident in the accuracy of his numbers. Remember, the WTC numbers originally stood at about twice what they are now, but 3 months of checking and rechecking has removed scores of duplicate and erroneous listings.

In Afghanistan, I don't think anyone will ever be able to achieve that level of accuracy. Even in Prof. Herold's own data, reports vary considerably. Did that bomb kill 17 or 70? The other bombing reported that "many civilians" had been killed -- what did he count that as?

It's easy to ignore the civilian deaths when they happen only a few at a time -- 5 people died? Acceptable losses. But those nickles and dimes add up. Using very conservative estimates of Prof. Herold's data, I tallied up about 2,000 dead just in the last 4 weeks of October.

Will we hold our military responsible? I'm not a big fan of the "we didn't kill them ON PURPOSE, therefore we didn't really kill them" defense.

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

Good points.

Another thing to remember is that these are estimates of civilian casualties in Afganistan, not total casualties. "Pro-Taliban" troops & personel, the folks the military is trying to kill on purpose, have presumably (if Our Military has been doing its Job) been killed in much greater numbers than the civilians.

And as odious as the Taliban regime was, the bulk of the "non-civilian" Afgans were poor ignorant s.o.b.s who had nothing to do with the 11 Sept terrorist attacks.