Why do so many people living in industrialized western societies, particularly America, seem to believe that we get a free pass from atrocity?
Most of us on this site don't think this way, so don't feel like this is aimed at you if you're one of the many.
Let me make a few things clear right up front.
1.) I do not support any religious extremist. Not Osama and not Falwell or Roberts.
2.) The aims of al Qaeda - the establishment of a Muslim Theocracy - are indefensible in my view.
Having said that, I can't help but wonder why the murder of 3,000 innocent Americans, who didn't draft American foreign policy, is any less outrageous and brutal than the murder of untold thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, who also didn't draft their government's foreign policy.
Or any policy for that matter. After all, they were living in dictatorships. If anything, that makes them less culpable for the crimes of their governments than the average American.
From a purely ethical point of view, it doesn't matter if the deaths are intentional or not. Innocent people - that is to say people who are not directly responsible for the actions of their government - die in both scenarios. Is a widowed Iraqi woman any less tragic than a widowed American? Is a mutilated Iraqi baby any less horrifying than a mutilated American baby? Even if we were to go so far as to blame the adults of a nation for the actions of their government, how do you assign blame to children and babies? If Osama thinks of the deaths of American citizens as collateral damage in a war, is that any different than our government thinking the same about Iraqi civilian casualties?
Yet, we don't seem to care as a society about the thousands of innocent people who have died as the result of our actions.
If our government can mislead us into a war, that in all likelihood was waged for some form of personal profit, and in the process destroy the lives of thousands of innocent people by dropping bombs on their cities, how is that different from a group of religious extremists who turn airplanes into bombs and destroy the lives of thousands of innocent people in our cities?
Both agendas are bullshit. And both agendas have resulted in the deaths of innocent people.
However, there is a potentially glaring difference. Muslims, as a whole, cannot be expected to prevent al Qaeda from striking. It's impossible for some Muslim living in Iraq to control the actions of some Muslim living in Afghanistan.
On the other hand, Americans, as a whole, can be expected to inform ourselves, ask important questions of our government, exercise our right to vote and dissent, and in doing all of these things, prevent our government from waging unnecessary wars and dragging our nation into the muck of militarism and domination on a global scale.
As barbaric and tragic as 9/11 was, can we continue to pretend, as a society, that we are innocent?
If we are attacked again, can we honestly argue that we didn't have at least some of it coming?
I know I'm not the first to wrestle with these questions. I also recognize that sometimes there simply is no easy decision or moral high ground. Sometimes world leaders have to choose between the lesser of two evils. It's at least somewhat possible that Afghanistan falls into that category. But with everything we know about Iraq, it is clear that it cannot be so easily justified. The sad reality is that we, as Americans, inhabit a country that has killed thousands of Iraqi civilians, and in all likelihood, it will have been for nothing.
Where does that leave us?