 |
|
Add to My Group
|
April 18, 2007 at 06:59:46
Virginia Tech, George Bush & Iraq by Sherwood Ross Page 1 of 1 page(s) |
|
 
|
At the memorial ceremony for those slain at Virginia Tech, President Bush said today he did not know what the victims had done to deserve their fate. How this nation wept as one when thirty innocent Americans perished and twenty more were wounded! There is almost nothing else on the television news but this tragedy --- not even news from the ongoing slaughter of the war in Iraq. Here we have the sorry spectacle of the man in the White House who made the war on Iraq, where a disaster comparable to the Virginia Tech massacre occurs four or five times a day every day, leading the nation in prayer! Yet when does this man go on television to ask the American people to pray for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have been murdered in the illegal war he launched? And just as the students and teachers who perished at the hands of a crazed killer on the Virginia Tech campus had done nothing to deserve their fate, neither have the people of Iraq committed any crime to endure the unendurable they are suffering at the hands of a president who professed to be “horrified” at the events on a peaceful campus. If a South Korean student is regarded as a berserk killer for murdering thirty people what is President Bush, whose invasion to control oil-rich Iraq has cost nearly three quarters of a million lives, created four million refugees, and plunged the Middle East into turmoil? The American people, including the families of the murdered Virginia Tech innocents, have collective blood-guilt on their hands. I have not gone to jail to protest the war machine, so I am no better than they and probably a good deal worse because I have given the issue some thought. How many of those parents in the audience hearing the President’s words had elected to Congress men and women who voted for lax laws on gun ownership? How many of those parents in the audience had also voted for legislators who backed the president’s illegal invasion of Iraq? Are we, as a nation, too obtuse to grasp the connection between our “gun culture” policy at home and our militarist policy abroad that murders and mutilates human beings at every turn? Practically any one in America can buy a gun, and abroad, any dictator in the world can buy weapons made in America because we just happen to be the world’s biggest arms peddler. What kind of a society has America become? Why do we have two-million men in our prisons? Why, in some cities, is every second or third male either in prison or out on parole? Why is the murder rate soaring in so many cities? Why is there on average more than one killing a day in a city like Philadelphia? Why are our own home-grown terrorists murdering 30,000 Americans each year and injuring tens of thousands more with rapid-fire handguns of the sort used on the Virginia Tech campus? Do we realize, speaking of terrorists, that ten times as many Americans are being killed by Americans each year as all our troops in Iraq? Osama bin Laden is everywhere in America. He has a thousand faces. They are the faces of our own dispossessed, our own poverty-stricken, our own unemployed, our own underclass, our own idolized gangsters, our own youth who grew up in front of television sets that ooze violence and blood.
Who is responsible for the killings in Iraq except the same now bereaved parents of the murdered students at Virginia Tech? It’s not that some of them voted to elect George Bush. Anyone can be deceived, particularly by a notorious liar. But when the president broke the law and invaded Iraq, violating the UN Charter, how many of them protested? Today they are upset that a young, crazed student gunman has ran amok on the campus of a peaceful university, but where were they when President Bush defied the United Nations and ran amok in Iraq? Do they know, as Amnesty International reported on the same day as the Virginia Tech murders, the Middle East “is on the verge of a massive humanitarian crisis” because three-million Iraqis have been “forcibly displaced” by the war the grief-stricken Mr. Bush began? Who do the American people think made this humanitarian crisis in the Middle East if not the American people?
The same parents who weep for their children might consider that they and their neighbors are also spending a half trillion dollars a year so that the Pentagon, just over the horizon from Virginia Tech, can wage a war that is snuffing out the lives of children of other parents just like their own. Thousands of Virginians work for the military-industrial complex. They work for the Pentagon. They work for defense contractors. They work for the Central Intelligence Agency. They are in the business of killing directly or indirectly, yet how many of them are haunted by the consequences of their “jobs” in their dreams at night?
All across America, people who attend church and regard themselves as “good” people, such as the bereaved at Virginia Tech, are working in the plants that make atomic bombs and warplanes and napalm and cluster bombs and are creating new, demonical designs of germ warfare and space-based weapons so vile and horrible they defy description.
America as a nation has become an organized nightmare. Yesterday, the nation woke up to the pain of the kind of killing it has been inflicting widely around the world since its fleets of bombers roared out to destroy Dresden, since it leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, since it laid waste to Vietnam, since it overthrew Chile, and now since it has invaded two Middle Eastern nations in its thirst for oil. Yes, weep for the innocent victims of Virginia Tech, who only wanted to study and live in peace. But weep also, America, for the people of Iraq! If President Bush cared as much for them as he cares for his own, he would have to hold four news conferences a day. He would never stop grieving.
#
(Sherwood Ross is an American writer who covers military and political topics.)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
 Contact Author |
Contact Editor |
 View Authors' Articles |
|
|
|
|
| 11 comments |
|
thnkas for article,Air America did not address war connectio
I was going crazy listening to Air America...They hardly mentioned that every day the People of Iraq have massacres like this several times over..I think this needs to be empasized...Thanks Jean In Oklahoma by mcmahon (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 17 comments) on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007 at 7:36:46 AM  (0+)
|
|
The connection between guns and our wars is obvious
Thanks for article - there is a connection between guns and war. America had better put a stop to the insanity of this administration's war on humans in Iraq and at home. We are in great danger. And we are all passengers on Earth with a mad man at the helm. Aimee DataOptions.com by Aimee (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 100 comments) on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007 at 9:02:45 AM (0+)
|
|
UR DEAD RIGHT
Your piece dramatically underscored why I'm glad I raised my son in Japan where the citizenry doesn't have guns. America has become a Rambo, shoot 'em first, ask questions later society, perhaps not unlike Rome as it descended as an empire. Where in the hell are we going?! by L. RETZACK (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 41 comments) on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007 at 9:29:43 AM (0+)
|
|
A look at it from the other side of the aisle
I share your grief and frustration over the Va Tech massacre. But I do not draw the same conclusions. It's really frustrating that you can blame George Bush for nearly everything. So can Osama. Bush's administration has made several mistakes, but to blame him for the shooting (even in an indirect way) is more than a bit much. To blame America for the massacres in Iraq because the Salafists don't want the Iraqi people to have liberty is disingenuous to say the least. I could be wrong, but I suspect you have never seriously entertained an opposing point of view on this issue. Thus my comments. Gun control was the reason this specific incident happened at Va Tech in the first place. by Frank Staheli (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 37 comments [16 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007 at 10:06:35 AM (0+)
|
|
Reply: Bush, Iraq, and Virginia Tech
Thanks for your letter. I have really failed to make my point in this column if you got the idea I blame President Bush for the murders at Virginia Tech. I do blame him for the killings in Iraq and I think it is incredible he should be invited to participate in a ceremony for slain Americans when he is responsible for killing so many Iraqis. I understand 30 more Iraqis were killed today, April 18, 2007, in a war President Bush started. I thought the column made it clear the American people are to blame for the society we have created at home with its tens of thousands of shootings and the aggression we perpetrate abroad, with its hundreds of thousands of murders. P.S. And I don't have to blame President Bush for everything, as you say, just blaming him for his crimes is sufficient. by Sherwood Ross (222 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 155 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007 at 10:15:47 AM (0+)
|
|
Reply: I apologize
I apologize for suggesting that you accused Bush, even in an indirect way, of causing the Va Tech shooting. by Frank Staheli (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 37 comments [16 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007 at 1:35:27 PM (0+)
|
|
Reply: Re Ross column on VA Tech and Bush
Dear Frank, thanks a gazillion! That's so refreshing! It takes character to apologize! You got it. Sherwood by Sherwood Ross (222 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 155 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007 at 2:01:04 PM (0+)
|
|
Reply: you could be wrong
about Bush and Iraq: the chaos there is because of the invasion which has let extremists gain control -- and if fact the chaos is part of the original plan by at least people in or associated with the administration. As for gun control being the reason the Virginia massacre happened, no -- I don't think it would mattered much one way or another. I think the gun control issue is a red herring, and divert us from the central violence issue, and how violence is part of the culture, and how we don't have good ways of dealing with disturbed people. Bush is not to blame, really; Bush is yet another symptom of the cultural problems we have: violence, consumerism, arrogant nationalism, imperialism, fascism -- all things which have grown over the years. All things which have not had to be resolved in the past because of our relative isolation from the rest of the world and the immense natural resources here: a form of power which has had a corrupting effect -- we could get awy with being uncivilized. But that's no longer the case. by Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 997 comments) on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007 at 1:42:33 PM (0+)
|
|
"Garbage In Garbage Out" is an absolute GARBAGE CULTURE
Excellent article: showing how worse we have turned ourselves into monstors. All we can blame to is "ourselves" only. If we can study the true history of last 100 years: We never listen to our souls. We never obey of what ever the basics of any religion We always listen and let ourselves brainwashed by propoganda machines of media and press We became the worst animals of this palnet by abusing power, money, press, freedom, food, sex, and whatever we touched (We forot That everything is good within limits) We forgot to apply Newton's Third Law in our life, our deeds, our behaviour to others, etc. We forgot that we are humans. ==================================================== I think we have screwed ourselves for decades and it's going to take many many decades to reverse this. But better late than never. ==================================================== Let's start being human again. by Sunil Patel (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments) on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007 at 11:15:42 AM (0+)
|
|
Virginia Tech
To Jean..you must have missed Thom Hartmann this morning. The conversation was exactly what you said you didn't hear. They also mentioned that Bush's speach writer used very poor taste in the message that the puppet read..rather than trying to find something uplifting to say, it had the opposite effect and plunged the grief deeper for those in attendance. How sad that he is so shallow he could not speak from feelings within himself. Personally, I doubt the man is capable of compassion. Gun control is not the answer. Those who want a gun to commit a crime of any kind for any reason would find a way to obtain one no matter what the law was. Consequently leaving the good citizen without the protection of a fire arm if they so chose. Our country and the needs of the people have been so decimated by this pathetic administration and their butt sniffing blind followers it is no wonder that people who need help are unable to get it. No one knows where to turn any longer..Health care is unatainable for many. The stress level of the people at an all time high. Our brave troops being treated with no more thought by these criminals than ordinary road kill. They, and all who so blindly adhere to their policies, carry the blood of not only our dead and wounded but also of those on foreign soil who have met the same fate because of their tunnel vision on taking over the assets of other countries. Sadly, the corruption by corporate money, has rendered our government and far too many of our elected useless. by Rae (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 230 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007 at 2:51:00 PM (0+)
|
|
On the right track, but...
Bush is clearly more maniacal than Cho, a point I don't think you emphasized enough. Instead opening fire at his Yale classmates (which he obviously would have liked to do – given his blood lust), Bush suppressed his murderous urges probably realizing that one day he could kill on a far greater scale. Once in office, he let loose at the first scant opportunity. I'm just surprised more people haven't seen through this smoke screen - the pretense for war, like you have. by Lair (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments) on Thursday, Apr 19, 2007 at 2:23:55 PM (0+)
|
Want to post your own comment on this Article? 
|
||||
|
||||||||||||||
Must Read (0) 
Well Said (0) 
News (0) 
Touching (0) 
Funny (0) 
Supported (0) 
Interesting (0) 
Inspiring (0) 
Valuable (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tell a Friend:
|
Copyright © 2002-2009, OpEdNews |
