By Professor Marc Murphy of the Brandeis School of Law

  • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    What you write sounds very emotional, and that is precisely the issue.

    There are for times as much drunk driving related deaths in the US every damn year than died in the 9/11 attacks. Of course it is a tragedy. But it has been used, and is still used, as a tool for emotional manipulation.

    The attacks have been used as justification to destabilise a whole region to this date, uprooted the lives of millions, directly resulted in the death of countless civilians. Not to mention that it has been used to erode civil rights in a manner that was unthinkable for a liberal democracy before.

    But if you try to mention this, the switch flips in people’s head, and you become the enemy. It is emotional manipulation, plain and simple.

    Hiroshima had a lot of deaths as well, so had Tokyo or Dresden. There are very real ethical questions in there. But let’s not forget that the axis powers did the London Blitz first, the total war, the trains and death camps and the mass graves in Russia, China and Korea and countless other crimes.

    Besides, it is accepted to discuss the ethics of the WW2 bombings now. I distinctly remember doing so in school. But 9/11? No. They conditioned the US to believe that the end justifies all means, even if the means are bombs on hospitals and civilians dying of starvation.