On September 11, let's set hypocrisy aside to mourn victims in the US as well as the many more massacred by American retaliation
Yonden Lhatoo laments the lack of memorials for the hundreds of thousands of innocent victims killed in the US response to the 9/11 attacks
Sorry, it’s September 11 and I know I’m treading on hallowed ground here, but today I’ll be mourning so much more than just the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Yes, those innocents died horrifically 14 years ago and their devastated families continue to feel unimaginable loss and pain.
But I don’t see why the rest of the world, egged on by the mainstream media, treats it like the only sacred cow around. If we must mourn victims of horrendous mass murder, let’s put the facts into perspective.
After the George W. Bush administration declared its so-called “war on terror” following 9/11, it slaughtered up to 20,000 Afghans in the first four months of bombing the country. That figure surges to hundreds of thousands, factoring in the US-led invasion that followed.
Where are the memorials for them?
Even worse was the Iraqi catastrophe after 9/11, when the US bombed the country, once a cradle of civilisation, back into the Stone Age on the pretext of removing a dictator and looking for weapons of mass destruction that never existed. The Iraqi body count within the first four years of the American invasion was anywhere from 500,000 to more than a million.
The same goes for Iraqis. Now that the US has destroyed their country, they’re at the mercy of terrorist groups and warring militias that didn’t even exist before the Americans “liberated” them.
Their September 11 is still going on. I don’t see anyone lighting candles or staging laser shows for them.
It didn’t happen. Instead, I heard people clap when she said she would do it all over again if she had the chance.
A couple of brave students put the audience to shame by staging a protest in the auditorium and reminding Rice that she had blood on her hands.
They were quickly kicked out and the audience applauded when she said something to the effect that it was thanks to Washington’s “war on terror” that they were able to hold such protests. That same old nonsensical rhetoric about terrorists attacking the West because “they hate freedom”, and how the US is bombing babies so that ingrates such as myself have the “freedom” to write articles like this.
If it’s going to be business as usual, I’m running out of tears.