An excellent post by Steven Berlin Johnson (author of Emergence)

From The Body Count: Shouldn’t there be a national debate over how many innocent deaths we’re willing to tolerate for the hope of planting democracy’s seeds in the country? Is it appropriate, for starters, to kill more innocents than Bin Laden did on 9/11? We don’t know, because even raising questions like these might undermine morale. To that I say: if we’re not grownup enough as a nation to confront these questions and still support our troops, then we’re not grownup enough to be starting elective wars in the first place.

Certainly it is not appropriate to “shield us”; this only adds credence to the charge (and rightfully so) that the Bush administration hold the public in the absolute lowest esteem; and reminds me once again of the disgust I feel when Bush’s campaign commmercial starts with his saying : “I’m optimistic about the future becuase I believe in the American people”, all the while leading the most censourous government in modern media times. The question Johnson asks about whether it is right to kill more innocents than 9/11 did; that is one that not too many pro-war Americans even consider. Many of them don’t even feel that “Iraqi” life is as important as American life, nor do they consider how many Iraqis are not only NOT terrorists, but , like us, do not approve of that; are appalled by that.