Guilty Vs Innocent: Examining The War On Terror
A few years back, the Associated Press sought to finally get around to examining the amount of people who have been arrested under anti-terror laws and put behind bars.
They looked at roughly 100 countries and filed a number of requests under the currently existing freedom of information laws. They also included various interviews and went on to gather any relevant information that might help them to find an answer.
They discovered that about 35,000 people in the world have been convicted as terrorists since the Sept 11th attacks.
They note that not every one of those individuals was arrested because they had engaged in some violent activity, some of them were detained for blogging or protesting as well; prompting some to suggest that the war on terror is being used to stomp out political dissent.
Also, we can't know exactly how many terrorists have been killed but it probably wouldn't be much more than those who have been detained, let's give a high estimate and say maybe 100,000 people in the world since Sept 11th have been “terrorists” and either killed or detained.
Now Let's Look At How Many Innocent Victims
Since the war on terror began, a number of countries have been targeted and destroyed in many ways. And likewise as with the difficulty in knowing accurate numbers of criminality, it's also difficult to know exactly how many innocent lives have been lost due to the war on terror.
Conservative estimates claim that the war on terror has caused the deaths of well over at least 1.3 million innocent people in the world.
Does this seem like a fair trade? Does it seem justified to kill over 1 million people in order to find even 100,000 violent ones? Is it ever okay to kill even one innocent person in order to try and find a potential terrorist? I don't think so. When you engage in the activity of bringing violence upon innocent people then YOU become the terrorist.
These deaths are just shrugged off as "collateral damage," as if each and every single one of those lives wasn't deserving to live free from any violence inflicted by others.
It truly is astounding to think of the amount of death that has occurred in the world, because of a belief that is held in the minds of so many. The definition of terrorism also differs from country to country, as today there still isn't any one consensus that has been agreed upon as far as the definition for the word. Some countries use the anti-terror laws in a much broader manner than other nations too, and they have seen their efforts backfire with the uprising of protests from the people in the face of any arbitrary abuse of authority.
The war on terror is a war that cannot ever be won and the evidence shows that in the last decade+ it has caused far much more damage than any sort of good it might have brought about.
Pics:
Pixabay
Source:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44389156/ns/us_news-9_11_ten_years_later/t/rightly-or-wrongly-thousands-convicted-terrorism-post-/#.WLYwX3S7qpo
http://www.newstalk.com/The-War-on-Terror-has-killed-13-million-people-report-finds
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051
https://www.ippnw.de/commonFiles/pdfs/Frieden/Body_Count_first_international_edition_2015_final.pdf
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Governments are in the fear and terror business. They use terror as a means of control over their populations. 😄😇😄
You are absolutely right: The war on terror is a war of terror, most often against the innocent.
Another great post! I am afraid as long as there are great profits to be gained from war, wars will continue
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"Does it seem justified to kill over 1 million people in order to find even 100,000 violent ones? "
An interesting proposition. Would you mind if in the future I did a post concerning this? (Ill give credit to you)
feel free :)
Thanks!