There Were 60 Times More US Bomb Strikes Than Terrorist Attacks Last Year

2015 US airstrike, location unknown

2015 Bagdad Hotel terrorist bombing

All of us are sickened by reports of suicide bombings and other acts of senseless terror around the world, a total of 389 in 2015 alone. Most of the untold number of victims are civilians.

What gets less media attention is the number of US bomb, drone and missile strikes in the Middle East and neighboring regions each year, an estimated total of 23,144 in 2015, or nearly sixty times the number of terrorist attacks. While our air strikes are aimed at killing combatants, in a war without conventional battlefields the civilian toll from even the most carefully targeted air raids far exceeds that of the more primitive suicide and car bombing attacks.

Regrettably, the human suffering and destruction that results is the same.

Somewhere we have gotten the idea that violence launched from the ground is more deadly and more evil than violence from the air. But bombs are bombs, whether highly sophisticated or very primitive delivery systems are employed to launch them.

It seems especially ironic that a Nobel Peace Prize winning President should be the commander-in-chief authorizing most of this carnage, which in turn is creating ever more vicious and unconscionable counter-attacks.

Ultimately, violence will never be stopped by violence. We should have learned that by now.