Where were you when the planes hit the Twin Towers?
I was in the fifth grade, oblivious to why half of my class had been picked up from school early that day by their parents. We were kept in the dark, too young to comprehend the tragedy that had just struck our nation in the form of four airplanes.
Ten years later, we as a nation seem to have a pretty firm grasp on why 9/11 happened. A group of angry men who believed they were doing God’s will decided to kill as many innocent civilians as they could, along with themselves. Some people would call them radical Islamists, but they don’t deserve to be called Muslims, because no man or woman of God would do what they did.
According to the 9/11 Commission report, more than 2,600 people died at the World Trade Center, 125 died at the Pentagon and 256 died on the four planes. In total, that’s more than 3,000 dead, including the attackers.
In hindsight, 9/11 could have been prevented. With the security measures we have today, such as increased airport screening, locked cockpits, air marshals, international cooperation from foreign airports and a much more alert populous, an attack by plane would be much harder to conceive.
Knock on wood.
Since 9/11, the United States has been involved in four separate foreign campaigns, all of which are predominately Islamic nations. Undoubtedly, our presence is the heaviest in Iraq and Afghanistan, but let’s not forget about the one-two punch we threw in Libya before tapping out and letting France and Britain take over. Also, Pakistan was none too happy about our wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am with bin Laden.
As of 2009, more than 110,000 Iraqis had been killed since the 2003 invasion by the U.S. and coalition forces, according to the Associated Press. While there is some discrepancy on how many of those killed were insurgents, it’s believed to be a mere fraction of the total number.
According to the Department of Defense, there have been 4,408 U.S. military casualties in Iraq since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and 56 more subsequent deaths since the start of Operation New Dawn. In Afghanistan, the DOD reports 1,643 U.S. military casualties since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom.
The operation has multiple fronts, of which the death toll is another 100 U.S. servicemen, who lost their lives in either “Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen”, according to the DOD.
As you can see, we’ve been busy.
Since 9/11, an attack that killed 3,000 people, we have lost roughly 6,200 servicemen on various fronts. We have also killed thousands of insurgents, those who undoubtedly share a similar ideology as the 9/11 attackers but most likely did not have any direct involvement, financially or as co-conspirators.
The major incongruity that sticks out to me is that just because 19 men from different countries came and killed 3,000 of our own in an act of cowardice does not excuse the fact that our bombs and bullets killed thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East, regardless of our intent, simply because they were accidentally caught in our crosshairs.
Through our actions, we’ve taken al-Qaida, a group of wicked and ideologically warped individuals and made them look like the good guys. Through excessive civilian casualties, many individuals only see the U.S. as the country that killed their parents or their kids. On our current track, we are doing nothing but breeding a new round of recruits for radical organizations like al-Qaida. It’s pure common sense.
Collateral damage from American weapons is preventable. If we think — because we rarely know for sure — a Taliban leader is hiding out in a house in Kabul, don’t send an unmanned drone to do a man’s job. The suspect may be having sex with his wife or hosting a block party, all of which would result in civilian casualties.
America is undoubtedly the most powerful nation on Earth. We are capable of great and terrible diplomacy. Killing civilians and orphaning children, whether accidentally or as an accepted sacrifice for the greater good, is unacceptable, regardless of what was done to us on 9/11.
As difficult as it may be sometimes, it may be time for us to turn the other cheek.
Parker Cramer is a 20-year-old political science major from Houston. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_PCramer.
 
 
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Contact Parker Cramer at [email protected]