For most people who have lost innocent loved ones to violence, the means of their relatives’ demise is completely irrelevant; a senseless death is a senseless death. It doesn’t matter if innocent civilians are killed as a result of terrorism, civil unrest, a civil war, or an American caused human catastrophe; a needless death is exactly that, a needless death.
Over the past couple of days Americans, including Trump, have made an issue over the deaths of innocent Syrians, and displaced Iraqis, allegedly killed by the Syrian military using chemical weapons. Of course it is a big issue, but while the Americans and the international community are outraged over the deaths of an estimated 86 innocent civilians in Syria, no-one is the least bit concerned, much less outraged, over the estimated 1,472 civilian casualties, all Muslim casualties, in the month of March alone and all at the hands of the United States of America under the Trump regime.
One can fairly say it would be a sure and safe bet that none of the family members of either the 86 innocent Syrian civilians or 1,472 innocent Syrian and Iraqi civilians really care about how their innocent loved ones were massacred; they just know their loved ones died. And yet all the attention is being focused solely on the 86 deaths by chemical weapons as opposed to 1,472 civilians killed by American-made and delivered bombs in the month of March alone.
As an investigative journalist who heads a British monitoring group, “Airwars,” Chris Woods reported:
“This is worse than anything we have ever seen from the coalition, and it’s up there with the levels of allegations we saw against Russia a year ago. Something is shifting — a lot more [innocent Muslim] civilians are dying, and it’s happening on Donald Trump’s watch.”
It is believed by many international experts and a few American pundits unafraid of being labeled “un-American” that the “dramatic jump in civilian casualties” is the direct result of a Trump order to change the “risk/reward calculations” when determining how many innocent civilians, innocent Muslim civilians, are acceptable casualties when America launches airstrikes against what it certainly knows are heavily-populated civilian areas.
It is worth reiterating that Trump pledged during the campaign that if he was controlling America’s military, he would direct them to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS’; in Trump-speak ISIS means Muslims. And, it is noteworthy to mention that despite the outrageous numbers of innocent Muslim civilians killed as a result of Trump “bombing the shit” out of “them,” neither he, his administration’s spokespeople, or Republicans have uttered even one word about the catastrophic deaths of innocent civilians under Trump.
It has not been the case in Trump’s America, but internationally the innocent civilian death toll under Trump has been increasingly covered by the media since the ill-planned and “botched Jan. 29 raid” in Yemen that claimed the life of a Navy SEAL and at least 23 innocent civilians, including children. Although ignored in Trump’s America, the international community has rightly blamed the United States for “a string of high-profile attacks” resulting in innocent civilian casualties in Syria and Iraq in its never-ending war in the Middle East that created the dreaded ISIS.
It is important to note, yet again, that prior to America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, there was no such thing as ISIS or civil unrest in Syria that its President Assad predicted would happen shortly after Bush invaded Iraq in 2003; an invasion that even Bush admitted paved the way for the rise of ISIS.
Assad rightly predicted that there would be a flood of Iraqi refugees fleeing into “safe” territory in Syria and would destabilize the country, cause civil unrest and attract religious extremists to organize a revenge war against the Iraqis that chased them out of the country straight into Syria. It was America’s ill-advised invasion that allowed Iraqi Shias to purge the nation of minority Sunnis and send them fleeing, by the millions, into Assad’s Syria seeking sanctuary from revenge-minded Iraqi Shias. Those beleaguered “refugees” fleeing Bush’s war, including Saddam Hussein’s former Baathist military leaders, joined forces with religious extremists and became ISIS; a goal-oriented group intent on reclaiming their homeland in Iraq.
Innocent civilian deaths are unacceptable, few people would argue otherwise and they likely do not make a distinction between the means of destruction when expressing their outrage. However, the deafening silence from Americans that their incompetent leader is responsible for massacring at least 18 times more innocent Syrian and Iraqi civilians in one month than an alleged Syrian chemical attack is revealing. It doesn’t matter how many innocent Muslims America under Trump slaughtered with bombs and missiles, but they are outraged at the news that an American and Israeli-created civil war destabilized Syria and claimed 86 lives.
As this piece was being finished, reports were that America launched “dozens of missiles” at Syrian targets leading one to believe there will be more civilian casualties. And it will be acceptable because the innocent civilian deaths were caused by American missiles instead of chemical weapons. Shortly before that a highly-respected retired 4-Star General, Barry McCaffrey, said Trump’s “reckless rush to war was a political stunt,” and it may appear that he is correct.
However, there is some news that General McCaffrey is almost certainly aware of; Trump has been sending American military personnel into Syria and Iraq since he moved into the White House to start America’s new war in Syria. His action may appear to be a so-called “political stunt,” but it is as many pundits, at least one Democratic Senator, and opinion columnists predicted a “reckless” rush to start another Middle East war that began in late January 2017, not early April.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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