Monday, September 25, 2006

CBS: War Casualties Pass 9/11 Death Toll

It begins:

(AP) Now the death toll is 9/11 times two.

U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now surpass those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America's history, the trigger for what came next.

So what? I'm sure that in the offices of CBS and the Associated Press it is believed that there is some sort of equivalence here that is in need of heralding, but I just don't get the point. Are they trying to tell us that if, after 9/11 we had just retreated into a shell maybe, just maybe we could have limited our losses to only the 2,973 people that were lost on 9/11? How far does one have to reach to find moral equivalence between the indescriminate murder of civilians and the loss of American troops in a war, whether you find that war justified or not?

The only thing that these two groups have in common is their killers - fascist Muslims, and on that point, I will agree. I am sure, however, that this is not the equivalence that the AP and CBS had in mind.

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