Local lefties and 9/11

 


This page was last updated on September 12, 2011.


I didn’t intend to write a piece for 9/11, but a post on a local lefty’s Facebook wall changed my mind.  Linked to a pie chart entitled “Casualties of 9/11, the War on Terror and the Invasion of Iraq,” Local lefty (a self-described Marxist and a leader of local lefties) wrote, “One chart, one thousand words.  For those of you whom have studied St Thomas on just and unjust wars, this is only one of his arguments as to why Iraq and Afghanistan are unjust wars.  And for those of you who think St Thomas matters, it’s a special call for you to resist injustice.”  Though my experience with the accuracy of lefty-supplied data is poor, in this case the accuracy of the figures doesn’t matter so I didn’t vet them.

I’ll get some shots about what follows, but bear with me.  For you Star Trek fans, you may remember an episode in which an alien species doesn’t understand the concept of good and evil so their representative sets up a battle between good and evil.  On the “good” team were Captain Kirk, Spock, and representations of Abraham Lincoln and a Vulcan of similar stature.  On the “evil” team were representations of Genghis Khan and three murderous figures from Earth and elsewhere.

When the good team refused to fight, the alien representative determined there must be an incentive component in the battle of good and evil.  As a result, the alien representative threatens to destroy the Enterprise and its crew if the good team fails to prevail over the evil team within a short period of time.  Naturally, the good team eventually won, but the aliens still didn’t understand the difference between good and evil because both teams used some – but not all - of the same tactics.  At this point, Kirk or Spock told the aliens the incentives for each team explained the difference.  In the case of the evil team, they were promised power and/or personal survival.  The good team’s incentive was to save the lives of others, the crew of the Enterprise.  At this point, the aliens said they now understood the concepts of good and evil and released the Enterprise.

OK, let’s return from the fictional future to the real present.  You’ll note the subject pie chart, its originating article, and Local lefty didn’t address who killed the civilians and whether the deaths were intentional or accidental.  That’s because these folks want us to believe we are responsible for the civilian deaths, including those on 9/11.  While coalition forces undoubtedly killed some civilians by accident when attacking terrorists, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein loyalists (as unfortunately happens in every war), the vast majority were killed intentionally by terrorists hoping to scare civilians into opposing the coalition and/or provoking them into a civil war.  Civilians (and their families) known to support the coalition were also targets.

Finally, here’s a “blast from the past” quote of Local lefty from 2004 to give you an idea of his frame of mind: “As for state-sponsored terrorism, if we are honest, we have to say that the U.S. government, at least over the past 50 years, has been the chief terrorist and sponsor of terrorism in the world.  We can never forget that our government has the blood of a million Vietnamese on its hands.  Most Americans do not even know that ours is the only country actually convicted of terrorism in a world court, for the atrocities of the U.S. sponsored Contras in Nicaragua.”  As for Local lefty’s claim “that ours is the only country actually convicted of terrorism in a world court,” not exactly.  While the International Court of Justice (ICJ) convicted the U.S. of illegally helping the Contras, the ICJ summary appears to show the U.S. was neither charged with nor “convicted of terrorism.”  “Gilding of the lily” is my experience with Local lefty’s presentation of alleged historical facts.  I’ll go out on a limb and guess someone will assert that even if the word terrorism wasn’t used, that’s what Nicaragua and the ICJ meant.

In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity.


© 2004-2011 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.