isen.blog

In a comment on a recent isen.blog posting, my usually insightful friend JTH writes,

While I will grant regret at civilian deaths... anywhere, I will as[k] the question : Do the Americans celebrate civilian death?

He cites a statement from a radical Islamist website that takes credit for the coordinated London bombings of 7/7, calling them a "blessed raid."

How widespread is this celebration? Muslims around the world have repeatedly and forcefully condemned violent acts of extremists. Here's a broad compilation of Muslim commentary on the London bombings, for example.

Virtually all of the world's people condemn civilian death just about all the time. Only a tiny minority perpetrate it. In some cases this minority forms underground Muslim cells. In other cases, these few rule nations.

Derrick Z. Jackson, writing in the Boston Globe, invites Americans concerned about deaths of innocents -- JTH and the rest of us -- to look in the mirror. He writes,

. . . every invoking of the innocents also reminds us of our despicable, cowardly killing of innocent Iraqi civilians.

Or perhaps you forgot about them. That was by design. We have rightfully mourned the loss of nearly 3,000 people on 9/11. We have begun mourning the loss of about 40 people in London. We have mourned the loss of 1,751 US soldiers, who, bless them, were following orders of their commander in chief. But to this day, there has been no major acknowledgement, let alone apology, by Bush or Blair for the massive amounts of carnage we created in a war waged over what turned out to be a lie, the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

These innocents never existed, either in Iraq or Afghanistan. ''We don't do body counts," said both General Tommy Franks, former Iraqi commander, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. When Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt was asked about the images of American soldiers killing innocent civilians on Arab television, Kimmitt said: ''My solution is quite simple: Change the channel. Change the channel to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda. And that is lies."

The leaders of the U.S. piously declaim civilian death wreaked by bombs on busses, but direct us to ignore over 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, mostly by U.S. bombs from the air. "Change the channel," indeed! Is ignoring civilian death better than celebrating it?

For every news article and blog posting mourning last week's London tragedy, where's the one for Falloojah, for Mosul, for Kirkuk, for Baghdad . . . ?

The other comment on this posting was about Darfur . . .

Technorati Tags: Iraq, London, War