According to the Costs of War project, which continues to assess the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, the death toll attributable to direct violence from these wars currently stands at 300,000. The death toll from the 9-11 attacks was approximately 3000. This would put the “revenge ratio” at 100-to-1.
While the Nazis were known to protect their soldiers in occupied areas by enforcing a policy of disproportionate revenge killing of civilians, the Kragujevac massacre of 1941 is notable as an example because it was enacted with a 100-to-1 revenge ratio. This ratio was considered by the Nazis who organized it as “particularly harsh.”
While I abhor what happened on 9-11, I cannot believe that any victim of this atrocity would rest in peace knowing that for her or his own death, 100 people – that vast majority of them entirely innocent, and many of them children – would be violently murdered in a multi-year campaign of revenge.