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September 11, 2004

Peaceful Tomorrows on 911

Three years ago, families of victims of 911 created September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows to promote the idea that war and killings overseas was not the solution to prevent further killing by terrorists globally.

Here is their statement on the third anniversary:

Nearly three years ago, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows was born out of a shared belief that America’s military response to the 9/11 attacks which took our loved ones’ lives would result in the deaths of countless innocent civilians and increase recruitment for terrorist causes, making the United States, and the world, less safe and less free for generations to come.

Today, as we commemorate September 11, 2004, we find that our worst fears have been realized. The terrorism of September 11th has been neither neutralized, nor ended, by the terrorism of war.

Since our bombing and military action in Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of more than 130 American troops and an estimated 4,000 civilians – and compounded by our failure to rebuild that broken nation--we have seen the return of Taliban warlords, the departure of relief agencies, and the continuing deaths of American service people and innocent civilians. . .

Our illegal, immoral and unjustified invasion of Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks, has cost the lives of 1,000 American troops and an estimated 12,000 Iraqi civilians, while leaving tens of thousands of others physically and emotionally traumatized. Today, our continuing occupation, our failure to provide basic services like electricity and water, and our torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has turned Iraq into a focus of anti-American sentiment where a new generation of terrorists is being recruited from around the world. . .

That all of this has been done in the names of our loved ones who died on September 11th makes the suffering of their innocent counterparts around the world even harder to take.

The hard fact is that the US has now killed more innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq than were killed in the World Trade Center attack. It's not just that this is immoral, but that such attacks breed more and more hardened enemies of the US in the families and friends of those victims of our attacks-- furthering a cycle of terrorist recruitment and attacks on our troops and likely on our citizens over time.

Posted by Nathan at September 11, 2004 08:06 AM