by Jorge Mújica Murias
mexicodelnorte@yahoo.com.mx…
but the rabies won’t go away. Osama Bin Laden is dead, or so President Barack Obama says, and we have to talk about it here. We have to, because of all the damage and suffering that guy created for us, and I mean us in the USA and us the immigrants in México del Norte. His actions resulted in that we all became instantaneously suspects of terrorism just because we were foreigners.
The action of a small group of extremists affiliated with Osama Bin Laden created a amount of numbers (and expenses,) really difficult to grasp and still far from being over. Just to start, their attack on the Twin Towers cost the lives of exactly 2,752 people, according to New York agencies after disqualifying 40 people who could not be proven they had died because nobody could prove they were alive in the first place, needed condition to die. Their problem, as that of many millions of people on this side of the border, was that they did not have immigration papers, were undocumented workers in the Towers, paid under the table so their employers would not be liable for hiring “illegal aliens”.
The Mercantile Exchange also fell, hard, and along with it the aviation industry, needing a 15 billion dollar bailout to keep flying. According to some data, airport users still pay about 8 billion dollars each year for “airport security measures” against terrorism, which have resulted in the arrest of a couple guys who wanted to blow an airplane here and there by exploding their shoes.
Then the oil prices went up when the United States invaded Iraq, despite the fact that Obama was in Afghanistan and none of the terrorists of September 11 was from Iraq. For years, that war cost about half a billion dollars a day, causing the budget defi cits many state and city governments today try to overcome by raising the taxes on cigarettes, destroying social programs and trying to get rid of unionized workers.
And The Numbers Keep Piling Up…
And then the other deaths came. According to the latest numbers at www.antiwar.com, up to last week 4 thousand 452 US soldiers had died, 4 thousand 311 of them after George w. Bush declare “Mission Accomplished”.
Those are soldier’s deaths, but according to WikiLeaks, revealing “secret” US documents on October 22, 2010, base don 54 thousand 910 Army reports, there were at least 109 thousand 032 violent deaths in Iraq between January 2004 and December 2009. Reports are divided in four categories: “Civilians”, 66 thousand 081 deaths; “HostNation”, 15 thousand 196 deaths; “Enemies”, 23 thousand 984, and “Friends”, 3 thousand 771 deaths. Aside of those, it is estimated that over 30 thousand US soldiers were wounded, committed suicide, are incapacitated, mutilated and the lake. It is obvious to point out that 80 per cent of deaths, some 90 thousand, were civilians.
And, according to www.IrakBodyCount.org, the number may be way higher, up to 150 thousand, of which some 122 thousand were civilians. Collateral damage, they are called. Even worse, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University and the London based Opinion Research Business, the real number should be around 1 million 200 thousand violent deaths in Iraq, people who would have not died if the US had not invaded it.
To these numbers we have to add some others. I don’t have the complete date at hand, but in fiscal year 2005-2006, Immigration deported 206 thousand immigrants; in 2006-2007 the number was 276 thousand 912; in 2007-2008 the number went up to 338 thousand, and in the first year of Barack Obama administration it jumped to 387 thousand 790. Last year, the number of deportees was 392 thousand 862, and for this year the stated goal of Janet Napolitano is half a million.
The total number will be about one million 700 hundred thousand people who can blame Osama Bin Laden because they were removed from their houses, their Jobs and their families.
And that’s the point. If Osama is dead, could Obama lift his heave hand
of immigrants? The idea was that maybe we all were affiliated with Osama, but if Osama is gone, why keep punishing us?
I would hope Osama’s death brought that reaction, but I just don’t think so. The war against immigrants and the suspicion of terrorism will not end, as it will not end the “war against terrorism” and deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan will not end, nor raids and deportations and Secure Community programs or the Polimigra.
So, if I may ask, what are we celebrating?
