Why is 9/11 considered worse than other tragedies?

Just to clarify I'm no defender of the Soviet Union, it was a brutal regime, that imo would have collapsed whether it had got involved in a long drawn out guerrilla war either way.

People talk about the horrors of Stalinism but Stalinism would not have come about if it wasn't for Leninism which laid the ground work for Stalin.
Lenin formed the Cheka, after the October Coup and after the Bolsheviks lost the 1917 election Lenin banned all other political parties including the Mensheviks, Liberals, the peasant based Socialist Revolutionary Party (which Lenin really hated), the Anarchists, The Left Socialist Party, Social Democrats & the Popular Socialist Party, got rid of free press, closed down the workers councils and factory committees, after the Left socialists launched the Third Revolution Lenin began a terror campaign against all political opponents & in 1922 held the first show trials in Russia.

If people are looking for a massive conflict that has been largely ignored in Europe, the Colombian conflict comes to mind. A quarter of a million dead, and about six million displaced from their homes, mostly in the 90s and early 2000s. Irish people only know about it because those three IRA members got involved, and most English speakers have never heard of it.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

If people are looking for a massive conflict that has been largely ignored in Europe, the Colombian conflict comes to mind. A quarter of a million dead, and about six million displaced from their homes, mostly in the 90s and early 2000s. Irish people only know about it because those three IRA members got involved, and most English speakers have never heard of it.

Are you talking about the FARC insurgency in Columbia that's been going on since the 1960's?
I would have believed that was a fairly well known conflict in Europe & one of the better known conflicts in Latin America both for it's sheer brutality from the FARC guerrillas & government death squads, and the cocaine fueling it.

The wars in Central America including the guerrilla conflicts in Guatemala, El Salvador & Nicaragua along with the US attacks on Panama & Granada would be less well known.
The violence of these wars reached their peaks in the 1970's & 80's but they started way back in 1954 when the CIA orchestrated a coup to oust the democratically elected leader of Guatemala, President Arbenz, who they they labelled a "Communist", even tho he was more of a Social Democratic who would have had similar domestic style policies like the SDLP of the early 70's or the British labour governments led by Attlee & Wilson.
And the Guatemalan war culminated in the Mayan genocide of the late 1970's - mid 1980's that left 250,000 - 300,000 Mayan natives dead who were killed by Military Junta death squads & far-right paramilitaries.

And of course there was the whole Iran - Contra affair.

In Honduras there was no real conflict but the Battalion 3-16 (the Battalion of Death) killed & disappeared dozens of suspected people with left-wing sympathies & tortured hundreds more. Just like the Argentine & Chilean Juntas did in South America.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Are you talking about the FARC insurgency in Columbia that's been going on since the 1960's?
I would have believed that was a fairly well known conflict in Europe & one of the better known conflicts in Latin America both for it's sheer brutality from the FARC guerrillas & government death squads, and the cocaine fueling it.

It really isn't. Most people are totally unaware of it and think conflict in Colombia is just cartel violence. Irish people are more aware of it than most because of the IRA birdwatchers, but even there a lot of people haven't heard of it.

Vestiapx wrote: »

We will never have a united island will we ?

Is that a problem?