Hello everyone,
I'm from Finland, not from the US. I decided to chime in to provide a view people from the other countries have about the election.
In Finland children are taught at an early age in school that violence is horrible, but sometimes necessary to find peace. That's what happened in Finland's war with Russia - we fought a tenacious battle so that we wouldn't be invaded. Considering how Russia is now when compared to Finland I'm very glad that we have independence.
Some people find glory in war, but personally I mostly see death, destruction and lost dreams. People with lost limbs, mutilated family members and worse. I would never want to be in a war, but would do my best in the occasion that we - a peaceful country - were invaded.
I don't really believe that any person is born "evil" or "good". Rather I do believe that people are shaped by their genes and their experiences in life. I believe most people want a peaceful life filled with happiness. When that is forcibly taken away from them, by violence or something else, there's going to be a reaction of some sort.
A lot of what I strongly believe in is found in the UN Declaration of Human rights, which can be found here: Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!! You need to
or
The first point there is "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." This is something I see as a goal for all the people of the world to work towards.
My personal view - and a view of a lot of my friends - is that while the attacks of 9/11 were horrible, they're not really that much compared to the death and destruction caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't mean disrespect to anyone here and certainly not the ones or the family members of those who died during 9/11, but I also really feel for the Iraqi and Afghans who had the same thing happen to them.
Putting it to numbers, Wikipedia says that "Excluding the 19 hijackers, 2,974 people died in the (9/11) attacks." In Iraq War, finding out the number of casualties is not easy, but they range by all estimates in hundreds of thousands. The biggest estimate, by Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey, was conducted August 12-19, 2007 estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths due to the Iraq War (range of 733,158 to 1,446,063.)
The War has also caused numerous other things, again according to Wikipedia. To name a few:
- Some 60-70% of Iraqi children are suffering from psychological problems. I don't find this at all surprising. To quote, "Mothers are appealing for someone to pick up the bodies on the street so their children will be spared the horror of looking at them on their way to school."
- 68% of Iraqis have no access to safe drinking water.
- Malnutrition rates have risen from 19% before the US-led invasion to a national average of 28% four years later.
- Iraq's anti-corruption board reported that official government statistics revealed that five million (or 35%) of Iraqi children were orphans.
- There are more than 3.9 million refugees of Iraq, almost 16% of the population. Two million fled Iraq while approximately 1.9 million are internally displaced people. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated on June 21, 2007 that 2.2 million Iraqis had fled to neighboring countries and 2 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month.
As I understand, 9/11 attacks didn't cause these other things, although they definitely caused a change in the inner politics of the US. All of these things are, in my opinion, horrible. I wouldn't want them to happen to anyone. Whether Finns, Afghans, Iraqi or the Americans.
Concerning the presidential election, I believe that these things would not have happened if Bush hadn't got elected back then. I really am afraid that there will be more war and death if McCain gets elected. I don't know what will happen if Obama gets elected, but as I understand, he's anti-war.
I hope my post hasn't made me any "enemies" in this board. This was certainly not my intention. I just want peace and a happy life to everyone...free of war, cluster headaches or what be it.
- Best of regards and PFDAN to everyone,
Rosa
Home
Pages: 
