Our First Anniversary Since The Tenth [The 9/11 Decade Plus One, and On, Anon…]
2,996 people were dead, to begin with.
Dan Rudy, PORTLAND
Once more unto the breach, Dear Dirty Americans! I can’t believe it’s already been a year since last September; my flag pin has hardly had time to gather dust in the interval, it seems. But rather than vent and rage and ponder, I instead thought it interesting to look up a few figures:
Since September of last year, an estimated 3,956 people have died in Iraq due to violence. In the same time frame, 263-376 people were killed by Western drone attacks in Pakistan. And since the latter half of last year to the present, about 1,600 people have been reported killed in Afghanistan as well. Conservatively figured, we can presume between 5,800-5,900 have been killed in total since the tenth-year anniversary, nearly double the number killed on Day Zero.
At 3,907 days since 9/11, with a grand estimated total (depending on whose tally one takes) of violent deaths (excluding Pakistan) of approximately 187,000 (say), that would give us about 48 deaths a day, every day for eleven years. Which would imply another September 11th sized loss of life has happened once every two months; less time if one opts for a less stringent numbering. If one were inclined to stack each body atop the other (defying gravity, these would stay in a single column of horizontal dead) you would have a pile of bodies the equivalent of 84 Freedom Towers, which is slated to rise to a symbolic 1,776 feet. If that’s not a monstrous figure, I’m afraid for the future of humanity.[i]
Bearing these images in mind, it sort of seems a silly bit of rhetoric delivered today upon the White House lawn:
“This anniversary allows us to renew our faith that even the darkest night gives way to the dawn,” Obama said at the Pentagon, where 184 people died when one of four hijacked planes slammed into the iconic building symbolizing U.S. military might. “As painful as this day is and always will be, it leaves us with a lesson that no single event can ever destroy who we are, no act of terrorism can ever change what we stand for,” Obama said, adding: “When the history books are written, the true legacy of 9-11 will not be one of fear or hate or division. It will be a safer world, a stronger nation, and a people more united than ever before.” – CNN
[i]On that topic, the number of hot dogs America consumes each year would end-to-end each other 10-billion feet; about eight times the distance from Earth to the Moon.
