The Other Innocent Victims of 911

River is back on line at Baghdad Burning with a somber assessment of 911 from the perspective of the other innocent victims of that al Queda terror attack, the people of Iraq.

"For the 3,000 victims in America, more than 100,000 have died in Iraq. Tens of thousands of others are being detained for interrogation and torture. Our homes have been raided, our cities are constantly being bombed and Iraq has fallen back decades, and for several years to come we will suffer under the influence of the extremism we didn't know prior to the war.

As I write this, Tel Afar, a small place north of Mosul, is being bombed. Dozens of people are going to be buried under their homes in the dead of the night. Their water and electricity have been cut off for days. It doesn’t seem to matter much though because they don’t live in a wonderful skyscraper in a glamorous city. They are, quite simply, farmers and herders not worth a second thought. Four years later and the War on Terror (or is it the War of Terror?) has been won..."

Can any American feel satisfaction over what we have done in Iraq? A petty tyrant has been overthrown and replaced with dozens of other petty tyrants. A nation and society have been destroyed and are being replaced along the fault lines of ethnic, religious and tribal rivalries and animosities that reach back into the dim recesses of history.

The Bush neocons decided to attack Iraq, not because of 911, but because they could. Because the people of a great and free nation believed that their government wouldn't lie to them about something as terrible and as traumatic as 911.

The people of American were wrong.