Simple Math

Watched that clip from the Daily Show again yesterday and on the way home I was thinking: Bush took questions, unscreened questions, at a press conference of some sort and was asked how many he thinks have died so far in Iraq. He casually put the number of dead in Iraq (the way one would estimate the number of jelly beans in a jelly bean jar, is how Jon Stewart put it so well), to date, including civilians (though when he answered he said "the number of civilians" alone) at 30,000!

Let's overlook the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and go on the assumption, as horrifically ridiculous as it is, that the reason the US is in Iraq is to somehow prevent another 9/11 (remember when it was about weapons of mass destruction and not freedom? And all that other blah blah blah?). Okay, so how many died at the WTC? Officially it's put at 2,986, including the hijackers. So, by their logic, in order to "prevent further deaths" the Bush administration has killed over 30,000 people, mostly civilians, even by their own admission. So...Um....does anyone else's brain instantly scream WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!

And does anyone else not feel the earth trembling with an angry vibration as the victims of 9/11 collectively roll over in their graves? I mean, the suffering created that day from that attack is now being felt in Iraq on a scale that, even if we just do simple math, get yer calculators out if you need em, (30,000 divided by approximately 3000), is ten times greater! Justice? Righting a wrong? Highly debatable. The most obvious way to look at it is that the Bush administration is -by a calculation a grade school student could do with one eye on his/her PSP- 10 times more violent, cruel and just plain deadly as those who committed the 9/11 atrocities. At least by my reckoning. Not to mention that the deaths continue unabated in Iraq and show no signs of decreasing any time soon. Let's face it, this isn't a one day only event like 9/11 was. Also, a terrorist event is done outside the law and yet is somehow, on a very odd level, more honest: they may be wrong and crazy but at least you know they meant to do the damage they did, that they wanted to inflict maximum carnage. With Bush and co., they say one thing, do another; they spout ideology that isn't reflected in their actions. It is all the more maddening for being so out of touch with logic and reality and just common human decency. In my opinion anyway. If I could choose, I'd rather have an enemy tell me he hates me and try to flat out kill me rather than one that tells me and those around me that he's helping me and has my best interests at heart, even as he hacks my family into pieces and then looks up with a you're-next-gleam in his eye.

And it all ain't even over yet.

For everyday in which more people die Bush et al get further and further ahead of the actual terrorists in the "I'm more capable of dealing out death than you" game. Of course this is nothing all that new (though one can wish that by now it would be getting a little old for our species). Most times when one country goes after another, the eye for an eye mentality goes a little haywire and an exponentially higher number of people suffer revenge for something that was originally a little smaller in scale. Ah but no one counts coup anymore the way the supposed "primitives" used to do in less civilized times.... Anyway, the war is just so wrong on so many other levels that perhaps this simple mathematical exercise is pointless or redundant. But I'm just saying that even on the simplest level, this ain't even an eye for an eye...and besides, if one really truly values life, then there would be no way in the world they'd allow harm to come to an innocent, an Iraqi family that they are trying to "free" for example. The equivalent, on a personal scale that would seem utterly insane to most (I mean all those not already considered insane) would be to try to go after someone who has wronged you, gravely, "an eye for an eye", then take the eye of the next person you bump into because he was in the way of your getting to the person from whom you really want to carve out that orbit! And then keep doing this until, no matter how many sightless innocent folk you leave in your wake, you maybe, if you're not too exhausted by the time you reach him, get to the guy who maybe deserved your wrath but who most likely should go on trial, just to keep things a bit more within reason and civil and well just plain lawful between us all, regardless of the arbitrary value one might like to place on the colour of a skin, a nationality, or one's just plain not being an American.

Argh!