Yesterday, the nation paused to remember the horrifying attacks of September 11, 2001, and the victims whose lives were cut short by the brutal calculations of those who place a higher value on their self-centered geopolitical theories than on human life. Well, at least one percent of the victims were so honored.
While the death toll of September 11 is officially 2977 not counting the 19 hijackers, with all the victims identified and their family histories and personal relationships accessible to the public, the true toll is far higher, and cannot be limited to the dead on “American soil.” Over the last decade, our response to that attack was to launch major wars of supposed retaliation in two countries that have taken many times the number of lives lost on 9/11. Unlike our own dead, we have no reliable count of the anonymous hundreds of thousands whose lives were cut short by our bombs, bullets and artificially imposed shortages of the necessities of life. Estimates of Iraqi dead range from about 100,000 to 1,000,000; those honored yesterday are a tiny fraction of those totals. In addition to the staggering number of corpses on our ledger, in Iraq alone, our aggression has caused millions(!) more to flee their homes in terror. Today, the killing continues unabated, and our wars have expanded into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia.
And yet we remember only “our victims,” and not the much higher number of “victims of ours.” We painfully recall the heroic last acts of first responders, hear the desperate telephone messages of good people simply going about their daily business when they were suddenly confronted with their impending death, and tearfully sympathize with the struggles of those left behind to cope with their unimaginable losses. The necessary foundation of this national catharsis is a refusal to recognize that there is a similar heartbreaking story in every one of the human beings whose lives we have cut short halfway around the globe.
The mindset behind this is quite simple. We count and they don’t. This is all about what “they” did to “us” and never the other way around. The very moving Vietnam War memorial in Washington lists the 58,000 U.S. military victims of politicians’ folly while ignoring the millions of anonymous Southeast Asians killed defending their countries against our invasions or caught in the crossfire while desperately trying to escape it. Even legitimate and sincere antiwar activists often display such national bias. Many who attended antiwar rallies in the 1960’s and 70’s sported black armbands inscribed with numbers like 30,000, 40,000, 45,000, representing the approximate number of American soldiers killed at the time. Today one often hears criticism, heartfelt and sincere, of our ongoing wars only in terms of lost American servicemen and women and loss to the American treasury.
The worst consequence of this tunnel vision is its role in enabling the continuing carnage. We must establish ourselves as a “victim” rather than “aggressor” in order to adorn our military actions, by far the most destructive in the world over the past 65 years, with the imprimatur of righteous self-defense. But if we recognize equal value in the lives of a Cantor Fitzgerald broker or secretary and an Afghan villager or Iraqi doctor, we would be as repulsed by our own actions as we are by al-Qaeda’s. Politicians who swore not to commit such crimes would be elected in a landslide, and those responsible for “legalized” mass murder would serve the remainder of their days in a miserable prison. So we do not. Our dead are precious and their dead insignificant footnotes to what they force us to do to “them.”
There is no reason to believe this self-imposed myopia is peculiarly American. It is universally human. The Japanese have been stubbornly resistant to acknowledging the awful crimes their parents and grandparents committed against neighboring countries in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The Turks persecute and prosecute anyone who publicizes the crimes of their ancestors against Armenians nearly 100 years ago. One can add any number of examples to this list.
The sentiment on display yesterday – commemoration of a large number of our own dead while refusing to acknowledge our indefensible wanton slaughter of many more – is symptomatic of the evil we supposedly are trying to eradicate. Indifference to the suffering of others is an awful human characteristic, made far worse when we are indifferent to human suffering we are actually causing and are able to stop.
Many WWII movies add Americans to the plot lines as in the actual history they were not the key figures. Americans lose interest for some reason if it is not about them.
Good observation, LanceThruster. So many of the films people here take as WWII truth are complete fabrications. Canadians lost 10% of their population in WWII. I was up there on Nov 11 once in the 90s. Poppies on everyone everywhere. The WWII Vets come out in force on their Vets Day; it’s still highly emotional for them. I stood near a group of them railing against Clinton for claiming US victories that never happened (whatever they were, I don’t remember), and they were shouting we did it, not the bloody Americans, the Vets were really angry. I mean, it was visceral.
If we relied on Hollywood for learning history considering the amount of literary license they take on true events, you could see a WWII movie and who won could be considered a “spoiler.”
Who would take claim for another’s valor?
Speaking of Canadian memorials, the best quote I ever saw on one was theirs and I can’t relocate it. And they’ve got an entire wing of govt dealing with that their memorials. I’m an atheist and I was moved because god wasn’t referenced, just young men who sacrificed and the beauty of all around was lost to them as they are gone. You would have any leads on that, would you?
“So many of the films people here take as WWII truth are complete fabrications. Canadians lost 10% of their population in WWII. I was up there on Nov 11 once in the 90s. Poppies on everyone everywhere. The WWII Vets come out in force on their Vets Day; it’s still highly emotional for them. I stood near a group of them railing against Clinton for claiming US victories that never happened (whatever they were, I don’t remember), and they were shouting we did it, not the bloody Americans, the Vets were really angry. I mean, it was visceral.”
Sure sounds like the Canadian War Veterans. They are no better than the Jewish community in San Francisco when it comes to exhibits they don’t like to see, and uncomfortable truths they don’t want to acknowledge. From 2007:
______
The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa has decided to “adjust” its plaque about Bomber Command during the Second World War in response to veterans’ complaints. This is a great mistake. The offending plaque says the following:
“The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command’s aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions of German war production until late in the war.”
If we are to believe Canada’s National Council of Veterans Associations, these sentences are offensive and inaccurate. They are offensive because they accuse veterans of committing “war crimes” or “war atrocities” and they are inaccurate because, to quote Cliff Chadderton, the chairman of the Council, they “[go] against all of the books that have been written on Bomber Command.”
Either Mr. Chadderton has not read those books, or he has read them very badly.
The statements on the plaque are supported by the official British, American and Canadian histories, by all serious studies of Bomber Command, including those sympathetic to its accomplishments, and by Canada’s most esteemed historians — Desmond Morton, Margaret MacMillan, Jack Granatstein.
Arthur Harris, the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, defined Bomber Command’s goal as: “[T]he destruction of German cities; the killing of German workers; and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany. It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale; and the breakdown of morale are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.”
A basic part of this strategy was the killing of civilians. It was one that Harris himself relished. In his words, “What we want to do is to bring the masonry crashing down on top of the Boche, to kill Boche and to terrify the Boche.”
The numbers are also not in dispute. Official statistics put civilian deaths at 593,000. Civilians were burned, boiled, crushed, drowned and asphyxiated. Most died cowering in cellars, and most were women, children or old men. Some 60 German cities — Dresden, but also Frankfurt, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Hannover, Darmstadt, Pforzheim and many, many others — were obliterated. Nonetheless, German war production increased year on year until the autumn of 1944, after which it fell rapidly (when Germany was beginning to implode, making it hard to quantify bombing’s contribution).
In short, all of the statements made in the museum’s plaque are accepted historical fact. Given this, the veterans can have only two objections: they do not like the conclusions or the conclusions do not say enough. As the former is absurd, it has to be the latter. Specifically, the veterans believe that more needs to be said about how bombing contributed to the end of the war. In the words used in their suggested revision, bombing (a) “bled off resources from the enemy’s campaign against the Soviets” [fighters over Berlin weren't over Stalingrad], “involving massive amounts of manpower and material diverted from their primary combat commitments” and (b) destroyed “the enemy defences, oil resources and transportation networks.”
Here the veterans have a point. These effects did weaken Germany (though it is hard to know by how much). The first point is, however, terribly exaggerated, because the resources that the Allies used to bomb Germany were also “bled off” from other fronts (bombers over Berlin weren’t in the Battle of the Atlantic), meaning that resource transfers cancelled each other out. Point (b) is true. The problem is that this bombing mostly wasn’t British and Canadian: it was rather American. Throughout the war, some 46% of all Bomber Command bombs were dropped directly on the centre of German cities. Harris wanted the figure to be much higher. By contrast, only 6% of American bombs fell on cities. During 1945, at the peak of the bombing war, the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped 50% of its bombs on transportation targets; the figure for the RAF was 13%. The result for civilians was clear: Bomber Command killed three German civilians for every one killed by the Eighth.
The Canadian War Museum, therefore, can legitimately highlight the bombing’s accomplishments (indeed, on another plaque, it already does). But if the museum wishes to retain a shred of historical integrity it will also have to emphasize that those accomplishments were largely American; that the role played by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force was minor; and that the part it did play was bitterly resisted by Arthur Harris, who only wanted to destroy cities. As Albert Speer (I have the document on file) said, “the American attacks were by far the most dangerous. It was in fact these attacks which caused the breakdown of the German armaments industry.” Is this really what the veterans want?
So much for substance. The process followed over the last year has been at best unfortunate, at worst farcical. At first, museum officials insist that the plaque is accurate; that they will not make changes; and that to make changes would be caving to pressure. Then, an ill-advised Senate intervention adds, intentionally or not, wind to the veterans’ sails. Finally, the museum executes a volte-face, which, by its own standard, can only be understood as caving to pressure. Since then, the veterans, who are not historians, have appointed themselves judge and jury in a matter over which they have a vested and highly emotional interest — as Chadderton put it, “We’ll look at [the new plaque] and decide whether it’s fair. If it is, then we’ll accept it.” This outcome is more than regrettable. It is a national embarrassment.
-Randall Hansen is associate professor and Canada research chair at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Fire and Fury: the Allied Bombing of Germany.
link to canada.com
“Canada lost 10% of its population in WW II.”
That would be more than a million people and is absurd. The total population of Canada in 1939 was about 11 million, the military casualties (there were no civilian casualties) were about 45 000, or, 0.4%
See Wikipedia WW II casualties
Then Wikipedia amounts are wrong (no surprise). Robert J. Beattie, a high official with the Bank of Canada, instituted some kind of kid $ thing per month for all the families in Canada as a result, post WWII. I can’t remember what they called it, but I saw all this in a museum. 45,000 is not the amount of dead. The Canadians were in the war starting in 9/1939, almost two years before we got into it officially.
Apparently, after the war, each family got a check from the government depending on how many kids there were in the household because so many men were lost during the war.
MRW
I’m not saying Wikipedia and/or official figures are always right. However, here are the numbers confirmed by the Canadian government:
“Over 1,159,000 men and women served in the Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War (1939-1945); 44,093 lost their lives.”
link to collectionscanada.gc.ca
According to your figures, ALL men and (non-combatant) women in the Canadian military (i.e. about 10% of the total population) from 39-45 were killed in Europe or the Pacific. Who then are the hundreds of thousands of survivors (and I’ve met quite a few of them over the years) and veteran groups who wield sufficient political power in post-war Canada to censor museum exhibits more than 60 years after WW II?
As for Canadian women in WW II, all you have to do is listen to this to understand that they apparently had the time of their life:
link to archives.cbc.ca
I’d also like to know when and how Germany or Japan threatened the ‘Canadian home-front and Canadian way of life’ (or American for that matter) in 1939? Canada went to war because Britain mobilized its entire Empire and the ‘colonies’ to declare war on Hitler and Germany for invading Poland – a threat to British hegemony. Britain had always sided with the second strongest power/army on the continent to maintain a balance of power in its favor. It was Prussia against Napoleon, and Poland against Hitler. There was never a threat to Canada in either conflict.
The invasion and bombardment of Germany by France and Britain (and allies) in September 1939 is called the ‘phony war’. It did nothing for Poland, and not much damage to Germany. It did, however, turn a regional conflict into a global one, and only served to escalate the war and to eventually ensure German retaliation against B and F, as well as the occupation of other Western European and Scandinavian countries. The Germans had every reason to overreact to the British blockade:
link to mises.org
Much of what has been written and said, and what is still widely believed regarding the origins and crimes of WW II are cranial-rectal inversions of history. As with WW I, Germany was presented as sole aggressor and war criminal, having unilaterally caused WW II and being held responsible for all the devastation it brought, while the ‘civilized nations’ (victors) whitewashed their own contribution to the conflict, not to mention their crimes during and after the war.
Here is but one example:
link to worldaffairsbrief.com
As for casualty figures, the highest I have seen on the German side were provided by a Canadian journalist/novelist James Bacque.
link to en.wikipedia.org
He keeps complaining about his Wikipedia page being edited by people who misrepresent his views and arguments to discredit his findings, which caused quite a stir in Canada and elsewhere.
link to whale.to
The NYT printed a review by the director of the Eisenhower Center at the U of New Orleans, Ambrose, who praises Bacque for having made a major discovery (what took so long, and why didn’t the professional historians make it?), then calls his book, methodology and conclusions garbage, claims that Eisenhower had no choice but to starve German POWs due to the European food shortage and overcrowding of the camps in the post-war period. The Nazis made the same claim re high casualty rates in concentration camps in Germany (to be distinguished from death camps), and were nevertheless executed for it. As Chomsky pointed out a long time ago, if Nuremberg principles had been applied to US president since WW II, all of them would have to be executed, including Eisenhower, and not just for the role he played in Germany and WW II.
But why would the director of the Eisenhower center want to tarnish the memory of good old Ike? At any rate, even Ambrose’s low figure of 56 000 German POW starved to death AFTER the war is higher than the total number of Canadian casualties DURING WW II.
So, to conclude, for a 10% casualty figure (total population) you’d have to look at Germany, not Canada, at least according to Wikipedia figures and other corroborating sources.
Several years ago, I visited the battle grounds of WWI and WWII. Places in northern France, for example, are littered with cemeteries of fallen soldiers.
Memorials erected for Canadian, Belgian, British, and Dutch soldiers speak of the death toll of those wars. Yet, none left a lasting impression on me as the enormous number of gravestones I saw. At one place I found a bench on which to stand. Then I looked as far to the horizon as my eyes could see, and all I saw were gravestones covering the terrain like dominoes, neatly positioned in rows.
When I visited Washington DC, standing at the foot of the Washington Monument, I looked west toward Arlington Cemetery. From that distance, the hills of the cemetery looked almost grey as the gravestones merged together from that distance to form one large indistinguishable mass.
And yet, despite all this sorrow and misery that riddles human history, all that death, loss and pain, despite it all there are those who will stand in Europe, or stand in the US and cheer for more war and more destruction – so long as they get to stay away from all the violence.
Sometime in 2007 I watched a documentary that described the landfills outside Baghdad. The landfills were filled with yet-to-be identified body parts, like mass graves. These were the victims of the US invasion, unidentified, anonymous, nameless, voiceless and forever silenced victims.
Avi very moving. Yesterday, in the midst of all the tearful remembrances of lives lost, I thought of the millions of soldiers who died in WWI. Just a thought. Couldn’t really connect it to the present. We lost 3 thousand souls, ten years back. France lost, as an example, about 60% of all males born in the year of ca 1892 as killed in action or permanently disabled. All the other European nations have similar stories to tell.
WWI was supported by the people of Europe completely in 1914. Now that was a war frenzy among the populations that have not been witnessed since. But after 911 there was a definitely a frenzy here in the US (especially among those who didn’t have to fight unlike what happened in Europe a century ago).
As I said before, not sure what lessons we can draw from these comparisons but at an emotional level they feel similar.
This is the worst thing about America. And many people seem so oblivious to it.
David Samel,
You wrote the contents of my head in your entire article. This is so true.
And then we blather on about unintended consequences. But we shall reap what we sow.
this reminds me something helena cobban wrote.
If you asked someone why we were attacked on that day, many are still bewildered. A couple of years ago, someone said to me something along the lines of, ‘because of our freedom, we were attacked’. That answer was cooked up by the government/media for people to easily digest. It’s a sad knee-jerk answer that shows the shallow reflections of society. I mean, inside they may know inside it’s bigger than that,
but we are left with some canned & shallow answers on the surface. Added, the president of the US at the time and his cabal of pro-war hawks didn’t help, and channeled the hysteria into war with Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is troubling that the last decade has lured us into a dark & foggy reality, without any sense of national reflection, and 9-11 memorials are used to consecrate this mentality. That is, we only reflect on what happened to us and our tragedy, but avoid everything else that we have done (promoted mainly by politicians and the media).
It makes me think of our special ally and the bubble in which they exist. Israel cannot take responsibility for the damage it has brought to the Middle East, and is primarily focused on their historical suffering and re-population. So they fail to see the inherent problems of occupation and borderline fascism that exists within. Lots of parallels can be made here.
Currently our nation’s lacks vision and leadership. It’s causing us to become crippled, added with the deficit problems we face. And given the presidential contenders we are seeing, including our current president, I don’t see much promise on the horizon.
For whatever reason, what stuck in my mind most at the beginning was pictures of the already poorer than dirt Afghans having to flee the American invasion– trecking over the mountains, barefooted some, no food, leading their occasional donkey, carrying small children, all headed to find some camp outside the border for saftey.
I kept seeing this in my mind and thinking this is what Americans have never experienced and need to have to go through and experience to understand the reality of war and consquences of their actions.
Nothing more appropiate than Twain to expose the sickness.
The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
It was a time of great exulting and excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest depths of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast doubt upon its righteousness straight way got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams – visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! – then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:
“God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!”
Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory –
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there, waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
“I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import – .
Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them!
With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead;
help us to drown the thunder of the guns with shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain;
help us to lay waste their humble homes with hurricanes of fire;
help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;
help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it –
for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”
“Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.”
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said
Beautiful!
Just read this now David. I really appreciate your eloquence. Thanks for this.
Thank you David Samel.
Excellent post, Mr. Samel.
>> Indifference to the suffering of others is an awful human characteristic …
Yes, it is. Which is what makes so thoroughly despicable comments such as this one:
>> The nakba that occurred in 1948 was accompanied by the independence, the liberation, of the Jewish community. So, I primarily celebrate …
“Unlike our own dead, we have no reliable count of the anonymous hundreds of thousands whose lives were cut short by our bombs, bullets and artificially imposed shortages of the necessities of life. Estimates of Iraqi dead range from about 100,000 to 1,000,000″
This is standard. Estimates range widely, and the high and low figures are often politically motivated. There are only two exceptions to this rule I can think of: Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and the victims of 9/11. Every child can (and must) cite ’6 million’ (though controversial) or ’3000′ (uncontroversial). How many people died in Hiroshima or Dresden? Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands? Nobody knows.
9/11 is the American Holocaust. Both crimes, the Holocaust and 9/11, have been used and continue to be used to justify the past, present and future victimization, oppression and exploitation of other people, under the pretense of seeking justice for the victims, and to prevent any such tragedy from ever happening again. It’s pure lunacy
Good point Antidote. I was just thinking about the connection between the Holocaust and 9/11.
In particular, I was thinking about how the memories of those who died in 9/11 have been used to justify so much more murder, and how effectively I feel dirty even mourning for those people. It’s a terrible disservice to them, what’s been done.
It all reminds me of Norman Finkelstein’s “The Holocaust Industry.” I haven’t read it, but I have heard a number of his lectures. Anybody read it?
Antidote,
“9/11 is the American Holocaust.”
And how pathetic that we would make it that.
9/11 was a shock to the system that we would get some payback for what we were doing to others for five decades.