The principal reason so little attention is paid to the constant victims
of American violence in the Muslim world is because the U.S. Government
refuses to disclose anything about these attacks and media outlets
virtually never report on those victims (MSNBC
demoted and then fired its then-rising-star Ashleigh Banfield when she returned from Iraq and
pointed out that fact in an April, 2003 speech denouncing the
“one-sided” coverage of American wars: meaning, the invisibility in U.S.
media of America’s civilian victims). It’s easy to cheer for a leader
who regularly extinguishes the lives of innocent men, women, teeangers
and young children when you can remain blissfully free of hearing about
the victims. It’s even easier when the victims all have Muslim-ish names
and live in the parts of the Muslim world we’ve been taught to view as a
cauldron of sub-human demons. That’s why it’s periodically worth
highlighting the actual impact of those drones and the actual people
they kill, as
the BBC did today: