By Jonas E. Alexis on
October 2, 2017
We
need to hold our breath for a moment and start asking basic fundamental
questions. Have warmongers, the Neoconservatives, and the Zionist media been
fair to the thousands upon thousands of civilians in the Middle East, people
who have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism? You see, less than one
hundred people die in Las Vegas and the entire world has to know about it and
sympathize for us.
…by Jonas E. Alexis
Look
around you. Turn on your television. Turn on your computer and go to the New
York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC,
and any media outlet in America. What do they all place on the front page of
their news outlets?
Well,
they are all reporting about the incident that happened in Las Vegas. It has
been reported that the incident has taken the lives of more than fifty people
died. The New York Times itself called the incident “one of
the worst U.S. mass shootings.”[1] The Washington Post called
it “the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.”[2]
Sudden
death is indeed a frightening thing, and mass shootings, in particular, always
bring pain and suffering. Our heart goes out to the families of those who find
themselves in the middle of the Las Vegas debacle.
But
we need to hold our breath for a moment and start asking basic fundamental
questions. Have warmongers, the Neoconservatives, and the Zionist media been
fair to the thousands upon thousands of civilians in the Middle East, people
who have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism? You see, less than one hundred
people die in Las Vegas and the entire world has to know about it and
sympathize for us.
But do you know how many
civilians die in Iraq last month due to perpetual wars? Have the New
York Times and other outlets been talking about this? Did you know that
more than three thousand people die in Iraq last month alone?[3] Did you know that the Trump administration
is trying “to lift restrictions on military drone strikes”?[4]
Did you know that more than 200
civilians die every month in places like Iraq and Afghanistan? Did you know
that more than 1.4 million
Iraqis have lost their precious lives due to the Israeli wars in the
Middle East? Listen to this:
“The
number of civilian deaths in the Afghan war has reached a record high,
continuing an almost unbroken trend of nearly a decade of rising casualties.
“The
number of deaths of women and children grew especially fast, primarily due to
the Taliban’s use of homemade bombs, which caused 40% of civilian casualties in
the first six months of 2017, according to UN figures released on Monday.
“Child
casualties increased by 9% to 436, compared with the same period last year, and
1,141 children were wounded. Female deaths rose by 23%, with 174 women killed
and 462 injured. US and Afghan airstrikes also contributed to the surge in
civilian victims, with a 43% increase in casualties from the air.”[5]
Did you know that the United
States has supported Saudi Arabia in starving at least 542,000 Yemenis to
death?[6] Did you know that Israel and the
United States have been playing video games in the Middle East for decades? Did
you know that the United States has a history of doing
the same thing in places like Vietnam?[7]
The estimate of lives lost in
the war in Iraq alone is between 100,000 to 600,000, including thousands of
civilians. In 2003, at least 12,000
civilians lost their lives. The first three years of the war produced
between 104,000 and 223,000 civilian deaths.
When it was over, 2.3 million
Iraqis had been forced to flee their homes and towns; by 2008, another 2.7
million Iraqis were displaced, and nearly half a million civilians ended up
losing their lives.[8] Thousands upon thousands of other
people went missing by 2008.[9] This is out of a total Iraqi
population of about 30 million people![10]
When the war was over, sectarian
violence and car bombings were rampant—almost every day. When Mark Kukis went
to Iraq to report on what happened, he said he heard two to five car bombs
every day.[11] The Iraq war, says Kukis, shook the
entire nation and created havoc even by 2006.[12] Factions of society that once
coexisted were dismantled.
In a nutshell, Iraq was in
exponential decay. Buildings and farmlands were destroyed.[13] And the fringe benefits of the war?
Between 300,000 and 360,000 veterans returned home with brain injuries,[14] some of which went untreated.[15]In 2005, more than 6,000 suicides took
place among our soldiers serving in Iraq.[16]
By 2012, more soldiers committed
suicide than died in combat,[17] making it the year with the highest
suicide rate since 2001.[18] Do you see why precious lives
matter in the Middle East as well? Do you see why politicians need to stop
fooling themselves? Do you see why these people need to stop listening to the
Israeli regime, which now wants the United States to get into a bloody war with
Iran? Do you see why every decent American has to resent perpetual wars in the
Middle East?
[1] “Suspect Found Dead After One of Worst
U.S. Mass Shootings,” NY Times, October 2, 2017.
[2] Heather Long, Mark Berman and Derek
Hawkins, “At least 59 killed in Las Vegas shooting rampage, more than 500
others injured,” Washington Post, October 2, 2017.
[3] Margaret Griffis, “3,129 Killed in
Iraq During September,” Antiwar.com, October 1, 2017.
[4] David Millward, “US set to ease curbs
on drone strikes,” Telegraph, September 22, 2017.
[5] Sune Engel Rasmussen, “Afghanistan:
civilian deaths at record high in 16-year war, says UN,” Guardian,
July 17, 2017; see also Aria Bendix, “Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan Reach a
Record High,” Atlantic, July 17, 2017.
[6] Gareth Porter, “When Did Congress Vote
to Aid the Saudi’s Yemen War?,” American Conservative, October 2,
2017.
[7] For a scholarly study on this, see
Rebecca Gordon, Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the
Post-9/11 United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
[8] Mark Kukis, Voices from Iraq:
A People’s History, 2003-2009 (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), xvii.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., xii.
[12] Ibid., xiv.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Gregg Zoroya, “360,000 Veterans May
Have Brain Injuries,” USA Today, March 5, 3009; Denise Grady,
“Brain Injuries Are Seen in New Scans of Veterans,” NY Times, June
1, 2011; “Mental Health Injuries Scar 300,000 U.S. Troops,” MSNBC,
April 17, 2008.
[15] Lizette Alvarez, “War Veterans’
Concussions Are Often Overlooked,” NY Times, August 25, 2008.
[16] Armen Keteyian, “VA Hid Suicide Risk,
Internal Emails Show,” CBC News, July 30, 2010.
[17] Allison Churchill, “The Military Is
Losing More Troops to Suicide than Combat,” Business Insider,
October 25, 2012; Helen Pow, “More U.S. Troops Committing Suicide Than Being
Killed Fighting in Afghanistan in ‘Tough Year’ for Armed Services,” Daily
Mail, October 24, 2012.
[18] Kelley Vlahos,
“Surviving War, Falling to Suicide,” American Conservative, January
1, 2012; for other similar stories, see also James Dao and Andrew W. Lehren,
“Baffling Rise in Suicides Plagues the U.S. Military,” NY Times,
May 15, 2013
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