Thursday, November 12, 2009

Ft. Hood...

Thirteen individuals died and thirty-one were wounded at the shooting at Fort Hood. That means thirteen families have had the ultimate wound inflicted upon them. Thirteen mothers had their children torn from them. Thirteen fathers will watch their sons and daughters being lowered into the ground. And thirty-one families will be effected in ways they never could have imagined.

I want this to be kept in mind when we talk about Fort Hood. This idea should be in the foreground, on the tips of everyone's tongues at all times during this discussion. These were real people with real families who are experiencing real, inescapable, undeniable grief.

In the past week or so, I've heard different news organizations talk about this incident in different ways. Some of them haven't gotten past the idea I just mentioned. We're hearing news flashes about what Obama wants to do about it, about what Lieberman wants to do about it, about what the people want done about it. The BBC is reporting on it, and the world mourns with us over the deaths of soldiers on our own ground.

Perhaps we could have prevented it. The guy who committed the crime showed warning signs; he apparently talked to al Qaeda members via telephone and email. We knew about it. Maybe we can talk about how to prevent these kinds of things in the future. Maybe we can talk about what went wrong in this particular incident that made us do nothing in response to the warning signs he gave us. That might be an appropriate place to go with this discussion, and we're seeing it shift in that direction a bit.

What I've seen a lot of, sadly, is news organization using this terrible incident as fuel for their base. It's sensationalized, yes, like all other news stories are; however, I'm seeing that sensationalism turn into ignorance and fear-mongering like what we saw after 9/11. People are starting to blindly attack Islam again, talking about how violent and dangerous it is. They're beginning to turn this incident, one that thirteen families are going to be mourning for years to come, into another log on the fire of the crusade that we've been participating in for decades. It's become politicized, strategized, and mobilized to suddenly be some means to an end.

"It's Obama's fault!" I hear from Hannity and Limbaugh.

"Blame the Islamic extremists!" I hear from Beck.

I suppose this is my point: How does it reflect us as Americans if all we do with tragedies like this is turn them into propaganda for a party or a cause? We're all scrambling over how to use this event to drum up support for our presence in Afghanistan or attack our liberal "victim-loving" president, but thirteen families just want their children back. I see these actions as vulgar. It's repulsive. When are we going to stop being pundits and spinsters and start being human?

My two cents: Things like this are going to continue to happen across the globe until we can stop placing blame, stop going on crusades, stop marginalizing and ignoring people for our "causes" and start being compassionate, empathetic human beings towards each other.

20 comments:

Peter Clothier said...

Good point, Mark! It's distressing to see events of this kind turned into grist for the political mill.

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