A Moment of Silence? Why?
Yesterday on my way home from work, I heard the our Governor was asking for a state-wide moment of silence for the victims of the Virginia tech shooting rampage. Why?
Look, I am just as shocked and horrified by the carnage as anyone else, but you know what? Here’s what happened in Baghdad the past few days, courtesy of Juan Cole:
Guerrillas killed 5 Coalition troops in Iraq– 3 Americans and 2 British, and wounded others.
Guerrillas conducted two major attacks in the capital on Thursday. At Jadiriya in Baghdad they killed 13 and wounded 26. They fired mortar shells at another neighborhood, killing 3 and wounding 1. Police found 20 bodies in Baghdad on Thursday. Salafi Jihadis executed 20 Iraqi security agents and posted the video to the Web.
[snip]
Nearly 300 persons were killed or found dead in Iraq on Wednesday and hundreds were wounded. Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that the smell of blood and gunpowder wafted through Baghdad on Wednesday In the capital alone, Sunni Arab guerrillas carried out five horrific bombings in Shiite neighborhoods that, with some mortar attacks and shootings, killed around 200 persons and wounded many more.The morning began with a guerrilla bombing of a police checkpoint at the gate to the Shiite slum of Sadr City, which killed 41.
Then the terrorists opened the gates of hell, carefully placing high explosives in a Shiite market and detonating them as workers gathered to take minibuses home after a hard day’s work. The blast incinerated or tore apart some 140 persons and injured 150 more, according to Reuters.
Later on, the guerrillas set off two smaller bombs, killing even more Iraqis.
[snip]
Police also found 25 corpses in the streets of Baghdad, victims of death squads and torture. In Ramadi, authorities found 25 more decomposing bodies on Wednesday (they had found 17 the day before). In Mosul, police found 9 bodies.
We are a nation of nearly 300,000,000 people. Thirty-two of our young neighbors were senselessly and needlessly murdered early this week.
Iraq is a nation of nearly 28,000,000 (and falling), and THREE HUNDRED people were senselessly and needlessly murdered on one day. Piles of bodies are found every single day in baghdad, tortured, mutilated, raped, murdered.
I feel sorry for everyone in Blacksburg Virginia, but let’s keep things in perspective. The Iraqis are living in an untenable, insane situation that was largely imposed upon them by the USA.
When do we have a moment of silence for the Iraqis, who never threatened us, never invaded us, never asked to be “liberated”?
2 Responses to “A Moment of Silence? Why?”
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April 20th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
I just found this website and thought you find it interesting: http://www.hometownbaghdad.com/
Watch the first webisode - “Brains on Campus”. The title actually refers to a cement slab on campus that was tiled over because the video host’s friend’s brains couldn’t be washed off.
He nonchalantly tells us that the dean of his school was assassinated.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Finally someone is speaking up about this. To the extent that I blog anymore, this is something that really riles me up and I finally posted about it the other day. It’s sad we had senseless deaths occur on our soil, but it’s also sad that there are senseless deaths in Iraq (in part due to our deeds) and in Africa and all around the world.