We’re all kind of used to the mourning of the whole world for the victims of the 11th September attacks. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s terrible but seems a little bit exaggerated. About 3000 people died and two big buildings collapsed. But there have been much higher losses in the history. E.g., I’m sure that there were many days during WWII where more people, more innocent people died.
The thought of the day in farliblog is along those lines: “Why do more media commemorate the victims of Sept. 11th than they did on Aug. 6th”.
What was on Aug 6th? No idea? Right, I didn’t either before I did some research. It was the day when the first nuclear weapon was used to kill hundred-thousands of innocent people. Yes, not three-thousand but more than three-hundred thousand (including people that died later)! Hmm, so what was the difference between those two events? One “ended” a war (that was over anyway) and the other started a war. So what if the bad “terrorists” were a legal nation in a declared war with the US? So would this be ok then? Is there any other difference? Hmm, the methodology was pretty similar – both sneaked in with tactical maneuvers (the airplane carrying the bomb was camouflaged as a harmless scouting plane without weapons). The targets? Both attacks killed mostly civilists, and this was known in advance.
And the best is, the US did never apologize in any way for those attacks.
But this is of course absolutely nothing against the war crimes of the Nazis :-(.
I conclude that war is terrible … just something to think about!