Anyone who says that 9-11 justified the war in Iraq is saying, in effect, that the deaths of 2,801 people (let’s round it up to 3000) justifies the killing of over a million (and here we are ignoring the deaths of US and Iraqi military and Afghan civilians and military). Let’s round that down to 1 million. That’s 3000 to 1 million or 3 to 1000 or 1 to about 333.

What that means is that for each American life, we think killing 333 foreign lives is justified.

Try to translate that into private life. Imagine that you come home and find that someone has killed your son or wife. Imagine that you then feel justified in going into a neighborhood (sort of) close to where your suspected murderer lives and blowing up all the homes there and killing several hundred people.

What do you think the reaction of other people, let alone the government, would be? Wouldn’t you be considered insane? Wouldn’t you quickly be arrested, hauled off to a maximum security jail (with bail set as high as possible) and put on a 24-hour watch?

By contrast, in the world of states, the avenger is allowed to justify himself in public places, create alliances with other neighborhood thugs, threaten new neighborhoods, arm himself to the teeth, threaten even his own family members and feel highly virtuous — even pious — while doing so.
Is there anything more telling about the fundamental immorality, and even lunacy, of the state system? No use just blaming the US government. You can be pretty sure that there are dozens of other governments all over this planet, which in the same place, would do the same…. or worse.

Which leads us to the inescapable conclusion – the state system is a grossly immoral conspiracy against all decency and humanity.