Thanks Chris for this haunting reminder: "25,000 Iraqi civilians killed in this war."
3,000 US civilians were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Since the start of the Iraq war, more than 8 times that amount of innocent civilians have been killed over there. Can you imagine 8 times the rage and indignation of the US after 9/11? And if some country had inflicted an attack 8 times worse than 9/11 upon the US, would people call it a liberation, despite the nice language or intention? Even worse, I've heard that 25,000 is an extremely conservative estimate and that the number is properly more around 100,000.
A conservative body count site.
I still don't understand how this 'liberation' can be seen as Christian in any sort of way. Where does loving your enemy come into play here? Or is that yet another one of Jesus' comments that we write off as merely something Jesus did because, well, he was God or something? This was one of the most central things to Jesus' ministry: loving those who were not 'easy' to love.
1 comment:
Now in the circles you run in I might get shot for such a posting... but first let me say i am not pro-war... but once i spoke with an iraqi refugee in thailand while visiting some thai prisoners and i asked him his story. he told me that his house was demolished and that now they had only their uncle's house because his uncle's whole family was already killed. So i asked him, "You must be opposed to the war then, right?" and he answered, "What's the difference? Before the war, everyday many people are dying. Now the war is started and still people are dying everyday. Before, there was no hope that the dying would end [being under regime]. Now at least there is hope."
for me and my pacifist nature, it did give me new perspective. I know that the intent of the war was not really to help Iraqi people...but still we must look at the situation not from our reason but from the perspective of the Iraqis. also the death count cannot be attributed in entirety to Americans. Suicide bombers and Iraqi civilians are also responsible for the death toll...
You should check out the book "Mayada" if you want insight into Iraq with Saddaam. It's written by a close friend of Saddaam who although he had given her awards and so forth, still was sentenced to imprisonment under his regime.
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