Since I no longer own a television, I forgot (for most of the day) that it was the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. But while visiting a friend who had her image-making machine running on the evening of September 11th, 2011, I was once again exposed to presentations of our cultural propagandists. I saw the 9/11 images... again, the media frenzy... again, and, I saw the dream of perpetual fear-based violence... yet again. One source puts the 9/11 innocent civilian death toll at 2,977 - 2,606 of them at ground zero in Manhattan. Another source puts the post-9/11 death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan (civilian and military on both sides) as high as 919,967. The number of seriously injured in both 9/11 reactions is currently at 1,739,547 according to that source. Who do you trust for numbers like this? Does it matter?
Presuming these number are accurate, how does killing 919,967 additional people (mostly Iraqi and Afghan civilians) over a ten year period either make up for the 2,977 initial deaths OR prevent additional terror attacks?
Personally, I don't believe that killing makes up for killing regardless of the numbers - nor do I believe that terror prevents terror. It seems an obvious fact that terror only breeds more terror. Fearlessness is preferable.
Now that ten years has gone by since the dramatic 9/11 attacks perhaps it's time to get radical. Perhaps it's time to let it go and work for peace instead of war.
"The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness. The means of war are not the means of peace, and what the warlike would remember is not love." (A Course In Miracles, T-23,I,1:1-3)
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