Wait for It
The analogies of the Virginia Tech massacre to Iraq will be starting in three, two, one…now:
Consider the Blacksburg massacre in the context of what happens every day in Iraq. The United Nations reports about 100 civilians a day were shot, blown up, tortured to death or otherwise murdered in Iraqi civil war violence in 2006. A Johns Hopkins study estimates the true toll in civilian killings may be three or four times higher.
…
But this comparison doesn’t take into account that the population of Iraq is about one-twelfth the size of the United States.
If we take that difference into account, we might say the Iraqi civil war is producing the equivalent of 35 Blacksburg massacres, seven days per week, 365 days per year.
…
To say this isn’t in any way to minimize the horror and tragedy of Blacksburg [oh no, certainly not], or to claim that we put too much value on the lives of those who are close to us. Rather, it’s to say that we put too little value on the lives of those who are far from us - including the lives of our soldiers, who are killed and maimed every day as they try to carry out an apparently impossible mission in the midst of a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.
Nor is it to say that leaving Iraq would grant us absolution from the even greater horrors that may unleash.
If it isn’t to say one thing and it isn’t to say another, what is it to say exactly? He doesn’t say.
No argument from me that life is nasty and brutish in Iraq—and such small portions!—but, pray tell, what the fuck does he suggest? He offers nothing, other than that we should feel it more.
Will do. Brows shall be furrowed and countenances clouded—right after we bury our dead. If that’s okay with the professor.
Ethan said,
April 23, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
Mr. Campos appears to be about 12 times more decent and and 47 times more intellegent than the bloodthirsty liberal.