I’m tired of hearing claims that the Bush administration’s war has been victorious in keeping us safe because we haven’t had a single death in the US since 9/11. To me, this is just insulting to the Americans in Iraq. We’re celebrating the fact that we haven’t had any deaths on American soil when in fact we’ve let almost as many American’s die on the terrorist’s own land.

It’s really sad what we mean by ‘safety’ in this context for those of us on American soil. ‘Safety’ is really just knowing that others (not you) will die to reduce the already very remote chance that you’ll ever get hit by an attack. And even that reduction in risk is questionable. By sending troops there, we’ve basically just relocated the target of attacks off our own soil.

How staunch supporters of the war can call the thousands of 9/11 deaths a tragedy and the thousands of troop deaths (plus tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths) a victory is beyond me. It’s amazing what we’ll convince ourselves of so that we can feel ‘safe’.