Musings: Tit for Tat

As expected, President Obama came out strongly yesterday against the botched Christmas Day airline bombing, saying:

Those who would slaughter innocent men, women and children must know that the United States will do more than simply strengthen our defenses. We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the US homeland.”

And then I read:

The United Nations reports the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan jumped by ten percent during the first ten months of 2009. The UN says at least 2,038 civilians died during that period.

Try as I might, I just can’t understand why it’s OK for us, but not for the other guys, to slaughter innocent men, women and children.

Yes, the report indicates that insurgents — the people who are fighting to get us out of their country — killed most of the civilians. But we killed plenty, too:

UNAMA said that 468 deaths were caused by pro-government forces, including NATO and US-led forces, and 166 by "other actors".

And that's just how many have been counted.

Now the conflict will escalate as we send in more troops, and the toll on civilians will increase, too. Don’t we bear at least some responsibility for the deaths that will result from a build up that we initiate, for objectives that remain unclear, even if it’s not our troops doing the killing?

Al-Qaeda has reportedly claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing, saying it’s in retaliation for American air strikes against the group in Yemen, a place where the U.S. is strengthening its presence:

Defense and counterterrorism officials say the United States has quietly been supplying military equipment, intelligence and training to Yemeni forces to root out suspected al Qaeda hide-outs.

So just how long does this deadly tit for tat go on before we try another approach?

Meanwhile, the American public remains as oblivious as ever to what’s really going on, and as suggestive as ever to the risks of foreign threats. As a result, they’re willing to go to the airport 2.5 hours early for a flight, tolerate increasingly invasive screening measures and keep an eye peeled for “suspicious” people, saying it makes them feel more secure — even though the measures already imposed failed to protect the airlines from an attack.

The reality is, those tourists at the Honolulu Airport are a lot more likely to drown on Kauai or die in a car wreck while driving to or from the airport, then get blown up by a terrorist. Yet for some reason, they see the terrorist as the greater threat.

How many, I wonder, are even aware that their own government is daily taking actions that contribute greatly to world instability, and thus their own insecurity — even as they look to that same government to enact measures to protect them?