On 9/11, The Question Is:
  
What Are We Forgetting?

  
By Hank Edson

Less than 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001, the culmination of a criminal conspiracy that was years in the making.

According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2005, 16,885 people died as a result of alcohol-related car accidents in the United States. Thus, the annual death toll resulting from a culture of alcohol addiction, callous disregard for personal responsibility, and a consumer industry that markets intoxication as happiness is over 5 times the death toll arising from terrorism in the United States in the worst year ever recorded for terrorism in America.

In 2005, handguns killed over 30,000 people in America. This is 10 times the worst ever annual death toll for terrorism in America. Like the culture of Alcohol, we deliberately sustain a culture of violence and gun-love. The very politicians who have postured for six years over the tragedy of 9/11 take bucket-loads of blood soaked money from the lobby of the National Rifle Association, which irresponsibly resists all efforts to address the carnage. Our politicians talk bravely about capturing Osama bin Laden, but they cower at the prospect of devising realistically sophisticated handgun regulations in accordance with the 2nd Amendment’s requirement that the right to bear arms be “well regulated.”

In 2006, the Center for Disease Control reported that “Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking. In fact, one in every five deaths in the United States is smoking related.” Thus, the annual death toll of “the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States” is 133 times greater than the worst ever annual death toll caused by terrorism in the United States. Meanwhile, 47 million Americans are without health care.

Since March 20, 2003, 1,035,964 people have been killed as a result of the war in Iraq according to the political action organization, Just Foreign Policy. Statistics consistent with this estimate were reported a year ago in Europe’s most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, The Lancet. Dividing that horrendous number by 4 and ½ years makes the annual death toll of America’s unprovoked war of aggression for oil under the guise of responding to 9/11 a mind boggling 230,214 people killed annually for more than an entire presidential term.

1,035,964 preventable violent deaths resulting from politically initiated, state sponsored violence against a foreign nation which showed no active hostility toward the United States.

On the Sixth Anniversary of the September 11th Attacks, the question is not what are we remembering in marking this tragedy. The real question is: What are we forgetting?

After six years of fear mongering by the war hawks in the Bush administration and the Republican Party—after six years of cowardly conduct by the Democratic Party—we are forgetting to put terrorism in its proper perspective. Terrorism, like all violence, is horrendous and scary, but, as the above numbers demonstrate, it is not a statistical threat to our society.

Bad things happen. Terrorism happens. We can guard against it to some extent, but the real vigilance in life, in politics, and in society comes from self-control, not from control of others. Our response to 9/11 and our attempt to control the Middle East has caused far more American grief and human grief than the 9/11 hijackers ever did. Our failure to focus on our own self-destructive behavior is the real tragedy this day should come to represent. So let us remember all those who have died, all of them.

If we stopped drinking, shooting, smoking, and bombing, our society would be a much safer place to live. If we stopped allowing big corporations and the politicians their lobbyists corrupt to sell us booze, guns, cigarettes, and war, our society would be a much safer place to live.

As of today, 3774 Americans have been killed in Iraq as a result of George W. Bush’s war, more than killed by Osama bin Laden six years ago. That’s one more statistic we should be remembering.

Copyright © Hank Edson 2007