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No Sympathy for the Devil

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
by Craig Schott

As the death toll from the Bam earthquake continues to rise, there has been an amazing outpouring of support for the Iranian people. Our own president has pledged "all-out help". Food and other necessities are flooding into the country. A time like this truly does show the best side of humanity - the side that's full of compassion, empathy, and an eagerness to help out fellow human beings who have suffered a terrible tragedy. Unfortunately, this incident also provides a stark contrast to our country's attitude towards those innocent civilians we've been killing in Iraq lately.

Why is it that we can have compassion for those killed by a natural disaster (even ones who were part of the "Axis of Evil"), but not for those lives ended by our bullets, missiles, and depleted uranium? Reports indicate that perhaps close to 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of this war. Do they get any news coverage? Only if you search the web for it -- you won't find it on Fox News. Where is the outpouring of sympathy for those innocent people that have been "collateral damage" (what a compassionate euphemism THAT is) of our illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq? Are we afraid to give sympathy to the Iraqis because that would involve facing up to our own role in having CAUSED their trauma? I know... I can already hear people saying, "But Saddam Hussein caused their trauma!" And I won't go into all the details of how we dirtied our hands helping out Saddam in the first place, but suffice it to say, even if you consider him solely responsible, we have still killed innocent civilians in our pursuit of regime change against a nation with no weapons of mass destruction and no capability of posing a serious threat to us. Why don't we feel sorry for them? Why don't we see images on our news of Iraqis being dug out of the rubble of a destroyed building, as we do in Iran? Would it make Americans question our actions if they had to see that, being the ones who destroyed that building? Even IF they believe those actions are a means to a noble end?

It's my belief that it would. If our soldiers are dying for such a noble cause, why aren't we actually HONORING them? Where are the news reports of our soldiers who were killed in Iraq each day? I mean, there's at least one every day, why don't we hear about it? Why don't we know their names? Why isn't it the LEAD STORY every night?!? Is it because there would suddenly be an outpouring of sympathy for the poor men and women who are stuck in the middle of a poorly planned invasion-turned-guerilla-war 6,000 miles away with no end in sight? An outpouring of sympathy that might lead to more calls to bring them home safely, to more questions about why we're even there in the first place? Is that why we've never seen President Bush attend the funeral of even ONE soldier killed in combat, because it would be a grim reminder of what's really happening over there?

Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm totally off-base here. But it seems to me that people should not only have a right to see what it is they are paying for, voting for, and waving their flags over, they have a responsibility to see it. It's pretty easy to support a war when you don't have to actually fight in it, let alone SEE it. Personally, I don't want to see images of men, women, and children mangled and killed in war -- American, Iraqi, or otherwise. But I feel like I should have to. After all, my country's military fired the weapons, my tax dollars paid for it, and my president started the invasion. We are all responsible for the actions of our government. Unfortunately, I feel like most of the citizens in our country have become incredibly disconnected from the consequences of their actions. We are a largely visual culture. If our news services started living up to THEIR responsibility -- that of informing the public -- and putting a more human face on the madness that's occurring, it might shock more people into the kind of empathy they feel towards those earthquake victims -- the kind of compassion that involves human beings actually caring what happens to one another despite our differences.

Sincerely,

Craig Schott
Redlands, CA

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY