Comment on Iraq War was preceded by the largest worldwide non-violent protests in history and the war happened anyway.

rational_lib@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  It was also preceded by a violent act of terrorism

  Its so easy for people to forget the decades of violent acts committed in and around the Saudi Peninsula, and fixate instead on a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests. The Battle of Mogadeshu, which involved Black Hawk helicopters obliterating Somali mosques with hellfire missiles. The brutal occupation of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, from 1992 to 2001 as a US-backed narco-state. The entire Iran-Iraq War, sponsored by US arms dealers and double-dealing diplomats, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arab and Persian young people. The occupation of Saudi Arabia by a western-backed military dictatorship going back nearly a century. The violent overthrow of democracies from Indonesia to Egypt in pursuit of neoliberal international trade policy.

  9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum any more than the Brian Thompson assassination or the aborted coup in South Korea. These have long historical tails that trace back to a geopolitical policy that’s racked up a staggering death toll.

  To quote Mark Twain:

  There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

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  • PugJesus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Jesus fucking Christ. Utterly unhinged.

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    • ochi_chernye@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Old underpantsweevil’s hinges are certainly quite wobbly, but in this particular comment they’re simply providing some historical context for the 9/11 attacks. I don’t know how fair it is to describe the NA regime as brutal, relative to Afghanistan’s current and former governments, but that’s a pretty minor quibble.

      They’ve stopped short of claiming that the attacks were justified, and the assertions made are broadly true. What in particular do you find objectionable, if I may ask?

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      • PugJesus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        and fixate instead on a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.

        Downplaying 9/11 as one of ‘a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.’

        The Battle of Mogadeshu, which involved Black Hawk helicopters obliterating Somali mosques with hellfire missiles.

        Not even vaguely what fucking happened.

        The brutal occupation of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, from 1992 to 2001 as a US-backed narco-state.

        Fucking all of this.

        The entire Iran-Iraq War, sponsored by US arms dealers and double-dealing diplomats, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arab and Persian young people.

        That we sold to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War is undeniable; the idea that the war itself was our fault and that 9/11 is just ‘blowback’ for that is fucking insane.

        The occupation of Saudi Arabia by a western-backed military dictatorship going back nearly a century.

        Christ, I don’t even know where to begin.

        The violent overthrow of democracies from Indonesia to Egypt in pursuit of neoliberal international trade policy.

        We were involved in the violent overthrow of many democracies throughout the years, this I agree on. But funny enough, Egypt isn’t one of them. So this had potential to be a good point, but failed by being posted by someone utterly detached from reality.

        9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum any more than the Brian Thompson assassination or the aborted coup in South Korea. These have long historical tails that trace back to a geopolitical policy that’s racked up a staggering death toll.

        'Whatabout’ing 9/11 by implicitly arguing against it as a ‘violent act of terrorism’ as originally quoted, and then trying to justify it by the implicit comparison of 9/11 with the French fucking Revolution of the oppressed lower classes finally striking back against their oppressor.

        Do you really not see any of these as objectionable.

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  • yamanii@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Let them cook.

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• SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Oh yeah because I forgot they totally proved Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were secretly the same person.

  Iraq had zero to do with that terror attack but was used as a pretext for war based on the lie that the two were connected somehow.

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• SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Very large* act of violent terrorism.

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