A View From the Range

I was saying back in September 2001 that someday soon the three thousand civilian casualties of the Twin Towers & Pentagon bombings would begin to seem... not quite so impressive. Actually, I believe I said they would seem "a drop in the bucket," and we would someday come to wish there had only been three thousand.

The verified civilian body count in Iraq, as of today, is somewhere between 21,000 and 24,000.

Perhaps if the Iraqis or even Saddam Hussein had been involved in September 11th, this might be somehow understandable and excusable. But they and he weren't and these dead are as dead as our dead. Dead as an M.R.E. hamburger. The only difference is the September 11th attacks were over in a matter of hours, whereas we are now looking down the sipping straw at more, more and yet more war in which civilian casualties outnumber "insurgent" deaths by a factor of five or more. Years of war. More civilians dead, not to mention mounting casualties among our own brave boys and girls, who will now reside more or less permanently in the line of fire.

Yeats said "too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart." I ask you, who is doing the sacrificing here? What sleazy corporate raider in the Bush administration? What CEO?

This terrorism song and dance has been a real boon to the industrialists, I'll tell you. The real winners of 9/11 were Osama Bin Laden, George Bush, and the Fortune 500. Exxon for example has 40 billion in cash and is worried where to put it all. Profits are booming, with record high productivity.

Meanwhile, thousands of People are losing their pensions, their savings, going into debt to pay for medical care, not getting medical care, despairing of ever getting out of debt. We are yet again debating the teaching of evolution in schools as the civilized world stands by and laughs. To this add the steady day by day drip drip drip sound in the background as our our children are being picked off or blown to bits a handful at a time by "insurgents" in Iraq.

When shall we wake up? Will our Democracy die in its sleep? It seems a reasonable question for our current predicament. Perhaps we should be teaching de-evolution in the schools, which is what is taking place in the social fabric of our country.

My advice to my fellow citizens, the ones who supported the atrocious US hostilities in the first place, in case you decide to go out later: wear the red shirt with the long sleeves; it works to obscure the blood on your hands.

A true friend and supporter,

the GTL