Observations

[pictor]

How many casualties do you figure the Iraq war wll produce in total?
How will this number compare to the number of deaths during 9/11 (obstensibly the event that set the ball that became this way in motion)
I would suspect the death toll on Iraq's side has already surpassed 9/11

How are the 2 scenarios that different....I mean really.

One side initiates an action, which that side believes to be a justified action against a state it views as a threat and an enemy, causing the deaths of thousands of people that are, what it gets down to it, doing their job and hoping to see tomorrow.

Ok, the biggest differences are as follows
-This time around the aggresor is a recognized sovereign state
-The majority (but not all) of deaths this time around are on military targets.
-Iraq knew it was coming

Do any of these points make the war more acceptable (more acceptable, leave off the arguement of how acceptable)?

Now the kicker. I am falling for it. I watch the news, I read the paper, and I feel this war is unfortunate, even repugnant, but the 9/11 attacks were much worse. I'm just not sure I can explain why. I'm not actually try to preach a viewpoint here, just musing about what makes one scenario worse than the other. The western world universally condemned 9/11, but there are those in the arab world that supported it. And you know full well there are people in the States, and probably Canada, watching explosions rising above Baghdad, and cheering their hearts out, KNOWING that under the explosion is a unknown number of people whose life just got extinguished with the same surety as the workers in the twin towers. Are they different than the those of the middle east that cheered 9/11? So what defining "thing" quantifies 9/11 as so much worse?

It's possible that the mentality is the dividing factor here. I have faith that the coalition does not actrively desire the deaths they cause, but view it as neccesity, while the pilots of the planes actively saught as large a volume of human death as they could manage. Now that I write it, this seems like the most notable difference between the two.

Ok, that's enough typing, I could wander in circles here. Back to work

Comments

[eala-dubh.livejournal.com]

I think what made 9/11 "worse" was it happened at once. It wasn't a long, dragged out affair. It happened all in the span of a few hours. As well, it's "worse", because this is something relatively new to us here in the Western world. yeah, weve seen the aftermath of a terrorist bombing in Israel or somewhere else, but not in America the "Immaculate", and not to the extent it was. Finally, it was visible for all to see - it was live. From the second air-plane hitting WTC, to the people falling out of the windows, to the final tower falling.

The war - it's been played out over and over in the media, long before the first shot was fired. We've become numb to it because it's overplayed. There is no longer a visceral shock. Oh yes, we'll get the occasional one, like the images of the American POWs, or the bodies of dead Iraqi soldiers beside a white flag, but it's still long and drawn out. The shock has passed. Only the numbness remains.

[am-nesia.livejournal.com]

Proof that the media is effective...could go on and on about the framing of each action to explain your response...I don't think for a minute that (some) of the soliders and Bush don't want to cause massive casualities.

And don't worry, they don't look like us, and are far away from us, and it couldn't happen to us, and we're right, right? hmmm...