[you can just mash these comments into one]

We all die in the end; but there is a difference between dying peacefully with loved ones around you and being gunned down aged 12 in front of your school because you’re wearing a traditional robe.

Food for thought.
For a $5 mosquito tent you can save one person for 20 years from Malaria. This may seem like a bad investment for some, but if you consider the effect of a lowered child mortality rate, e.g the birth of less children, countries just might be able to get themselves back on the feet again. And to cover the entire African continent would be a lot less than a war in Iraq.

In Europe the United States is often thought of as a toddler with a gun.
I “recently” read through world history and by analogy there is no way we learn from the past. You are the Roman empire of today (and Western Europe too) with all that it entails. As a power in world politics you don’t need to understand the world, you can just impose your own world-view. Which is exactly what USA is doing, and what Al Quaida is trying to do.

But is there another way to see this than the implicit moral debate we’ve raised now? What if we are just another species in an environment of many species doing what species do? The competition is fiercest among individuals of the same group.
Sorry, I’m reading Darwin at the moment and nature becomes a standard measure:)

All I’m really saying is that the logical fallacy is that #dead in X random event is not the same as #dead in targeted political violence. Your net risk of dying is the not the end all be all in the soup of decision making. I think 3000 killed by targeted terrorist violence is not less than 40,000+ killed each year in car accidents in the US. How does it compare? Is it worse, or marginally better? I don’t exactly know how to quantify it. But I don’t think that the raw numbers of dead folks tell the story.

Darfur obviously is targeted terrorist violence AND in large numbers, which makes me wonder why the “war on terror” isn’t being waged there. *shrug*. But what would you say if more people died of malaria and mal-nutrition in Darfur than violence? Would you then conclude that worst thing happening there at the moment is the unfortunate accident of famine and disease?

Violence and terror are problems vastly greater than the absolute numbers of dead would indicate.

Iraq is just a major fuck up on all accounts. I don’t even know where to begin. I keep going back to, “we just should have never gone there.” Our problem in America is that we are basically a good-natured but powerful and ignorant people. We just don’t travel enough, know enough about the world, or care.

Look how fucked up Latin America is. It was our fault, because we ignorantly supported “our friends” who just happened to be the sons-of-bitches who butchered “terrorists” and “communists” who, in the end, were just poor, indigenous and disenfranchised. Ditto for Vietnam.

Maybe someday we’ll learn. Perhaps THIS generation is the one that will usher America into the adult world where we all work together rather than throw tantrums.

Oh, and I don’t think they are logical fallacies. *Cue smug look*.
I think you are criticizing the premises that lead to this conclusion. But are you taking the premises of your authorities into account? You can largely locate them by following the trail of money/power.

I found this video Why We Fight by professor Chalmers Johnson to be quick and informative. Of course you must take it with a grain of salt.
I haven’t researched it, but given the loose definition of terrorism that we operate with today I think the American government would be the largest terrorist in the world had it not been for the fact that it’s a sovereign state. And NATO? Sheesh.

But all of the above is history and politics.
What about people alive today in cities like Baghdad, Kabul, Khartoum etc. etc.?
What struck me most during my short stay in Darfur was how deeply the small communities, like villages, were impacted by territorial/fanatical violence. I was given several accounts from those who dealt with security about flat out gutting of small children. You can’t call it politics and history will soon forget about it.
It was just madness. Fanaticism is what I fear.