by: Dr. Steven Feldman, Libertarian Candidate US House NC District 10

Twenty-five years ago today, nearly three thousand Americans were killed. Office workers, flight attendants, passengers who fought back. Firefighters and police who ran up the stairs while everyone else ran down, and who kept dying for years afterward from what they breathed at Ground Zero. In the years since, thousands more Americans gave their lives in the wars that followed. They deserve to be remembered on this day, too.

Before 9-11, the United States imposed sanctions on Iraq. Reports in the medical literature said the sanctions caused the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. Perhaps the reports overestimated the number. Maybe it was only 50,000, or maybe only 5,000, still more than were killed on 9-11. In 1996, Lesley Stahl asked Bill Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, about reports that, “half a million children have died…that’s more children than died in Hiroshima…is the price worth it?” 

Albright didn't dispute the number. She said, "This is a very hard choice.  But the price, we think the price is worth it." She went on to become Clinton’s Secretary of State.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iFYaeoE3n4

We are told they hate us for our freedom. Why would anyone hate us for our freedom? Bin Laden told us why he attacked us. He didn’t mention the Bill of Rights — he said children were dying under our sanctions, our troops were in their countries, and we supported what Israel was doing to Palestinian families.

Nothing justifies the violence we suffered on September 11th.

We should not support killing. Not the Americans who died, and not the Iraqi children or other families who died before September 11.

It’s not just the deaths of civilians we should mourn. The young soldiers we sent to Iraq and Afghanistan were not evil, and neither were those who fought them. Soldiers are people willing to sacrifice to protect people they love. That's the tragedy. The violence, the war, isn’t driven or waged by evil people, just really, really good, well-meaning, caring people who think violence is the solution. Bush and Bin Laden both said basically the same thing: I hate violence, but it’s the only thing the other side will listen to. Perhaps that’s why Jesus told us we should be peaceful even in the face of violence.

The lesson I take from this anniversary is that we need to redouble our efforts to be peaceful to achieve peace. It’s an approach we need now, as our country is in another war that is piling up more economic pain, high gas prices, and physical suffering. War is burning, dismembering, and killing children. Every person we kill is a parent, child or sibling of loved ones who will be angry and mourn just as we did on September 11th, 2001. And the war’s cost just adds to the debt we are leaving our children. We need to defend our borders, not kill people in other countries to make them live more like we do. More violence is not the way to leave our children a financially secure country, and it certainly isn’t a way to leave our children a more peaceful world.