US-NATO Counter Attacks More Catastrophic Than 9/11

The world’s most powerful country, the United States remembered the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks last Saturday while Sri Lanka, supporting the remembrance, expressed solidarity with the US. Significantly, the truth that emerged from the post9/11 wars; in terms of deaths, of refugees and of those who benefitted from the wars that the US-NATO launched in response to the attacks, are absolutely shocking when compared with the figures relating to 9/11!

- M M Zuhair PC

Clearly the US-NATO counterattacks appear unbelievably more catastrophic than the 9/11 attacks, blamed on US-educated Saudi businessman Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda. In four coordinated attacks, 19 hijackers working in four groups, wantonly targeted the Twin Towers and the Pentagon with hijacked planes leaving in all 2, 977 persons dead. According to Newsweek as at April 2021, the subsequent US-NATO-led counter-attack invasions left an additional 7,442 persons dead from the US and allied forces plus American contractors. The invasions took away exactly two and a half times more US lives than those lost on 9/11! “I don’t know why!” would have been the likely response of Sri Lanka’s famed singer late Sunil Perera!

What about the destruction on the side of the attacked? No clear record or estimate of the number of Afghans, including civilians killed in the US-led war, is available from Afghan sources but Western estimates place it, at between 1/4 to 1/2 million deaths! According to Nicolas Davies writing for Mint Press News, the Bush-Blair aggression in Iraq, without Security Council approval, caused an estimated 2.4 million Iraqi deaths!

Davies wrote, “But no crime, however horrific can justify wars on countries and people who were not responsible for the crime committed, quoting former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz” of the United States.

The US, Watson Institute of International & Public Affairs has disclosed 30,177 suicides among US services personnel and veterans who returned after war assignments post 9/11, citing among others difficulties in re-integrating to civilian life. 30,177 suicides versus 7,442 deaths in combat are shocking figures, indeed! Today elements within the Taliban, after confronting 43 years of wars and foreign occupation are struggling to re-integrate back to civilian life!