Two words: "Madelaine Albright":

On the deaths brought about by the sanctions on Iraq:

Lesley Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it.

-

George Bush and millions of Americans also think the price is worth it, that massacring hundreds of thousands of Arabs, and torturing hundreds of others in secret prisons, at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay, is necessary to protect America from another 9/11.

Cho Seung-Hui merely followed the example set by high-ranking politicians, and by others. Whatever Cho hoped to achieve, he considered the price worth it.

Cho mentioned Jesus Christ. Christ would not, of course, condone mass killings, by Bush or by anyone else. But neither would Christ condemn Cho.

I don't think America, as a nation, can condemn Cho.

Where were the mass protests when we assisted Israel in bombing Lebanon, killing over 1,000 innocent civilians - including babies and children - for no political or military objective? It was a mindless act of vengeance on our part, and, unlike Cho, we carried out this massacre in a calm and collected state.

Perhaps Christ will forgive Cho; I'm not sure he will forgive the rest of us.

All of us are born on a planet of predation where life must devour life to live, but we cooperate to survive. That innate contradiction damns us to endless torment as various individuals and various nations snap under the pressure of trying to serve two opposite needs; and we will never resolve the conflict because both violence and mutual aid are instinctive reactions to being alive, passed down to us by millions of previous generations from the beginning of life on Earth. Yet, we never get used to it, but keep on struggling to make peace on a violent planet. Mercifully it doesn't last forever.

Something else to remember also is that war gets in our subconcious. This attack on Virginia Tech took place during the war in Iraq while the last large college killing which was in Texas in 1966 took place during the Vietnam War. By chance? Don't think so.

Maybe it's just me, but maybe we should take some time to actually think about the people who lost their lives at VT, and not try to draw parallels just yet. People seem to want to turn things like this into other issues, and that really gets under my skin.

The only thing positive about this tragedy is the opportunity to reflect on what may have influenced this utter madness. One is the senseless killing of Iraqis and American troops that the president defends.

Just as the Imus fiasco forced the Black community to demand moral clarity with regard to how black men treat black women and how others then treat black women as a result, the tragedy at VTech perhaps reflects the nations lack of moral compass in how we regard others around the world.

Both the Virginia Tech administration and the local police knew Cho Seung Hui was a stalking, borderline psychopath because they had twice been called by annoyed female students and Cho had already been interviewed by the police and given counseling at the University. So why, after the first shooting, didn't the police notify the entire campus that a killer was loose? Because, like so many American cops, they are crypto-racists and needed a big crime by a non-white foreigner to instigate racial hatred, so they politely stepped aside and let it happen; and their confidence is high knowing they have a fascist President and Vice President to mollify and cover their "big mistake" as O'Reilly calls it. It was no mistake, and Virginia Tech will be lucky to survive the investigations and the many multi-million dollar lawsuits in the coming weeks, months and years.

"This war was planned and executed by rational men and women, none of them deranged". Really!!!

Never underestimate the power of a Google web search. Observe how it offers instant comparisons. With all due respect to "dingarupa," the reader above who said that we shouldn't make comparisons yet, I disagree. Comparisons abound, between this and Columbine, between the Iraq War and the Vietname War, and not to recognize these parallels is to fail to connect the dots. We live in a world that is connected, amidst other humans who are all taught that we aren't connected. Americans seem to be the last people on Earth to recognize how what we do affects the rest of the world, be it waging war against a sovereign nation, or our 5% of the Earth's population producing 25% of its greenhouse emissions.

The discrepancy between us (literally acronymed US) and them (the rest of the world) is what allows Americans to shut out any bad news "over there" in Iraq. Barbara Bush is not the only one who doesn't want to "ruin my beautiful mind" over such trivialities as the wars her own granchildren will never fight in. It is part of the same mentality so rampant in America after the September 11th attacks. Oh no, OUR suffering is so much worse, because we're Americans. But if we massacre a village, we call it collateral damage and wave it off by simply saying, "War is hell," as though that justifies anything we've done. In fact, I remember newspaper commentaries after the September 11th attacks saying, "Give War a Chance." My answer to that is that we have, for centuries, and it hasn't worked, doesn't work, and what we have now is the result.

Let us also consider all the inner-city folks across America who live with violence and bloodshed one day after another. The press doesn't mention this nearly as readily, and when it does, people aren't surprised. Our excesses are connected, and it all comes home to roost. Excessive consumption, excessive force, excessive corruption, excessive government interference. Yet, do we think that the rage at Columbine or Virginia Tech comes out of nothing?!?!?!

Well put, Key89. Your words wrench my heart.

BUSH WEEPS?

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?

Excerpt From
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross04182007.html

"... We WILL DO A FAIR AMOUNT OF KILLING.
We are building an information-based military
to do that killing."

cited from: U.S. MAJOR RALPH PETERS, "Constant Conflict," published in "Parameters" (Summer 1997), pp. 4-14.

As you may see, this reassuring avowal comes to us from a higher up of the United States military, Major Ralph Peters, member of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, author of such novels as "Twilight of Heroes," and, most relevantly on this occasion, professional of violence.

On the hyperactive cultivation of violence in the United States and on its relationship to other aspects of the life and ways of this nation, I highly recommend the reading of the above paper, which may be found at

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/97summer/peters.htm.

For those of you who do not feel like going to the Web site where the article is posted, I have excerpted the following striking passages from it:

"We have entered an age of constant conflict. […] Those of us who can sort, digest, synthesize, and apply relevant knowledge soar, professionally, financially, politically, militarily, and socially. We, the winners, are a minority.

For the world masses, devastated by information, they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is 'nasty, brutish . . . and short-circuited.' […] We are entering a new American century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent. […]

He who warns of the "clash of civilizations" is incontestably right… .[…] More men and women will enjoy health and prosperity than ever before, yet more will live in poverty or tumult, if only because of the ferocity of demographics. There will be more democracy–that deft liberal form of imperialism–and greater popular refusal of democracy. One of the defining bifurcations of the future will be the conflict between information masters and information victims. […]

Contemporary American culture is the most powerful in history, and the most destructive of competitor cultures. […]

Our cultural empire has the addicted–men and women everywhere–clamoring for more. And they pay for the privilege of their disillusionment.
[…]

The films most despised by the intellectual elite–those that feature extreme violence and to-the-victors-the-spoils sex–are our most popular cultural weapon… . They feature a hero, a villain, a woman to be defended or won–and violence and sex. Complain until doomsday; it sells. The enduring popularity abroad of the shopworn Rambo series tells us far more about humanity than does a library full of scholarly analysis. […]

We use technology to expand our wealth, power, and opportunities. The rest get high on pop culture. If religion is the opium of the people, video is their crack cocaine. […]

As more and more human beings are overwhelmed by information, or dispossessed by the effects of information-based technologies, there will be more violence. […] The have-nots will hate and strive to attack the haves. And we in the United States will continue to be perceived as the ultimate haves. States will struggle for advantage or revenge as their societies boil. Beyond traditional crime, terrorism will be the most common form of violence, but transnational criminality, civil strife, secessions, border conflicts, and conventional wars will continue to plague the world, albeit with the 'lesser' conflicts statistically dominant. In defense of its interests, its citizens, its allies, or its clients, the United States will be required to intervene in some of these contests. We will win militarily whenever we have the guts for it.

There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.

We are building an information-based military to do that killing. […]

The informational dexterity of our average middle-class kid is terrifying to anyone born before 1970. Our computer kids function at a level foreign elites barely manage, and this has as much to do with television commercials, CD-ROMs, and grotesque video games as it does with the classroom. We are outgrowing our 19th-century model education system as surely as we have outgrown the manned bomber. In the meantime, our children are undergoing a process of Darwinian selection in coping with the information deluge that is drowning many of their parents. These kids are going to make mean techno-warriors. […]

Hollywood is "preparing the battlefield," and burgers precede bullets. The flag follows trade. […] the image of US power and the US military around the world is not only a deterrent, but a psychological warfare tool that is constantly at work in the minds of real or potential opponents. […] Everybody is afraid of us. They really believe we can do all the stuff in the movies. If the Trojans "saw" Athena guiding the Greeks in battle, then the Iraqis saw Luke Skywalker precede McCaffrey's tanks. Our unconscious alliance of culture with killing power is a combat multiplier no government, including our own, could design or afford. We are magic. And we're going to keep it that way. […]

The advent of this new information age has opened a fresh chapter in the human struggle for, and with, freedom. It will be a bloody chapter, with plenty of computer-smashing and head-bashing. […]

The next century will indeed be American, but it will also be troubled. We will find ourselves in constant conflict, much of it violent."

All this analysis and comparison and reflection is expected, but the truth is, this is a one-off by a kid who snapped. Period.

If any of the "reasons" for his psychotic break were even remotely true, we would have incidents like this daily. Three hundred million Americans all living the same corrupt, decadent, greedy, violent culture; one goes nuts every few years. So what? Over 40,000 innocents die on our roads annually - where's the "war on incompetent drivers?" 100,000 dead from "medial accidents." War on stupid doctors anyone?

Deaths from guns, knives, beatings, etc. do not even compare, and are not the problem. The problem is perspective, which we Americans sorely lack.

Thanks for the contribution eveningland,

That military paper published in that "scholarly" journal of the Army War College repains as apalling a piece of writing as anything Hitler or Goebbels ever wrote.

And yet as someone with a high-ranking military officer as a brother, this is exactly the mentality of the US military elite and their friends in the huge war industry.

This is in response to:

frank1569 April 18th, 2007 2:46 pm:

"All this analysis and comparison and reflection is expected, but the truth is, this is a one-off by a kid who snapped. Period."

Not so fast, Frank!

It only LOOKS to you like "a one-off by a kid who snapped" because you are poorly informed about the level of violence in the U.S.: for instance, there have been about two dozen massacres (not linked to any crime other than that of murdering, by the way) a year in this country since 1999.

See Mike A. Males's work on the phenomenon, for example his book: "Kids & Guns: How Politicians, Experts, and the Press Fabricate Fear of Youth" (Common Courage Press, 2001).

Here's the blurb for the book:

"Imagine if national news agencies endlessly featured every child murdered at home by parents, every enraged midlife middle-class
gun massacre. Inconceivable. The media and authorities shrink from the true face of gun violence (2,500 fatal murders and suicides every
month, 90% by adults, the typical shooter white and grown up) in favor of frantically hyping rare, politically exploitable teen-caused
tragedies: the suburban gunboy who "could strike your (white) child's school next," the ghetto "superpredator" gunning to blaze
up your 'burb. Contrary to both National Rifle Association and gun-control lobbies, America's appalling firearms scourge is not teenage but grownup; not the product of dark inner-city gangstas and white social-reject gamesters, but mainstream values; not the disease of marginal outcasts, but winner-loser injustices from high school hallway to Washington suite. "Kids and guns" is not the problem, but a diversion by a complacent, established America that propagates demographic myths about age and race, culture-war trivialities, and sensational scapegoating to avoid facing its own violence."

As Lovemusicfood says at the top, war is just government-sponsored killing, and it infects our whole culture and our world.
And yes, the war goes forward because it's such a profitable business to be in.
If we can make sure no one profits, we can stop this insanity.

An excellent article - gives us some perspective about this horrible sitution. I read a piece by Juan Cole yesterday that was along the same lines - Iraq has multiple "virginia techs" every day.

Baghdad has been experiencing this same horror every single day for years now. The fear and horror of armed invaders roaming neighborhoods, schools and homes...and the deaths of thousands and thousands.

For more on this, I recommend reading "Blacksburg and Baghdad: Sister Cities for a Day"

http://www.populistamerica.com/blacksburg_and_baghdad_sister_cities_for_a_day

I sincerely hope that this tragedy has acted as a warning siren concerning returning Afghan and Iraq war veterans and prompted psychiatric professionals in the department of veteran's affairs to take preventative measures.

Blathering Pundits,craven journalists members of Congress,the Department of Defense and the rest of the executive branch and all reasonable human beings, too, should read this brilliantly structured article by Floyd Rudmin. People like him,and other human behaviorists like social workers and psychoanalysts should have much more of an opportunity to reach seats of power in our country. FAR TOO MANY of our representatives from either party are lawyers, former prosecuting attorneys,wealthy businessmen etc who are NOT reflecting the will of the citizenry.

I wonder what our brave law enforcement people were doing for 2 hours while a crazed drugged up lunatic was wandering around on a shooting rampage. It sure aint like the way it is on TV.
Consider this event and then consider your average murder toll in Iraq. A country of about 10 percent of our population. This would be a slow day in Iraq. Imagine the horor unleashed by the Bush administration.
Of course condolences to the grieving. A tragedy is a tragedy what ever country or scale it happens in.
From my brief view of the TV, the typical news whores were all over this like flies on crap. Using it to scare and run up thier ratings.

frank1569 April 18th, 2007 2:46 pm
"... but the truth is, this is a one-off by a kid who snapped. Period."

You seem to be ignoring one small item, Frank: Approximately 180,000 Americans have died by gunfire on American soil since 9/11. More than 3 times the US fatalities in Viet Nam.

Ralph Peters "Constant Conflict" dystopian vision thumbnailed:

"Someone has to die, someone has to be enslaved, for chrissakes, let's be the happy few who get to choose."

And that's the basis for the whole mishagosh.

Let's be fair...history validates the fundamental premise:
someone has always been killed or enslaved en masse.

It's also tough to argue with guys who eat steak, watch football, and go to church...when they're not strategizing humanity's annihilation.

The possibility exists that nature will resolve the whole argument with an army of angry dislocated polar bears; however, until then it probably is best to be a peace lover --
and congregate with such --

even if it happens to be at the local graveyard

Well as long as we're drawing random comparisons I would like to point out that that other industrial cultures where sex is good and guns are bad seem to have a lot less killing.

I suspect that if our troubled Korean student had the same amount of money and troubles in say...Amsterdam he might have found access to a sex "counselor" and some herbal therapy far more readily available than two pistols and a few hundred rounds of ammo. Can anyone quote me the rate of gun deaths in the Netherlands?

When you live in a culture that promotes violence and suppreses sex you have to take the chips where they fall.

I hope the tragedy at Virginia Tech will increase the amount of empathy in people. However, I am skeptical about something. If empathy arises in people who were not formerly empathetic, then how long will the empathetic feelings last? For those who were not directly connected to the tragedy, they will probably not remain affected in a month's time. I also wonder if the tragedy will only make people in the Western world more fearful for their own lives, and therefore (continue to) neglect to feel any concern about those in war- and poverty-ridden areas of the world. Once the feelings are gone, people are going to go back to their peaceful ways of life, which is very unfortunate is nobody's life is more valuable than another's, but so many people easily convince themselves of this. Many people are selectively empathetic, which is a big problem. If more people would open up to the way we are all human, then maybe... just maybe, the world would be in a much better state.

Murder is inhumane, but so is thinking one's life is more valuable than the other. And the media translates this ideology into the minds of the public. It's terrible.

The news media as usual is exploiting the unsuspecting eye witnesses and acquaintances of the alleged shootist by putting their eyewitness reports and reminiscences on air without paying for it. The people who talk to the media in their eagerness should be careful with such valuable property. What they need is a good agent who will negotiate a good book deal, association with docudrama production and arrange interviews with morning TV shows. That is the American way. Already the domain name Ismael Ax has been taken and will yield good money for the owners.

Dealing with the actual causes of the Virginia Tech attack and others like it such as Columbine is critical.

In both cases it would appear that universal health care that included universal *mental* health care through counseling could have helped. There were many warning signs in both cases.

In the case of fairly obvious emotional problems linked to likely violence, not only should counseling be available, some monitoring of the threat an individual poses needs to be mandatory through the interactions of mental health professionals and police professionals and the courts.

I suspect that this will come out in the lawsuits in the VT case. I hope so.

The context is critical. In the case of Columbine, that has been uncovered: much abuse by favored students against loner students. See this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/june99/columbine12.htm

Such knowledge of the context is critical for prevention.

I'm sorry, but this article has really angered me. The writer of the article may not be paying attention to all of us who have been trying to stop this war - who were deeply affected by what happened at Va Tech. 3 out of my 4 parents were on campus on Monday, and wasn't I lucky that the call I got was from my mom to tell me that she was okay, that my stepfather was lucky to be on the 3rd floor of Norris, not the 2nd, teaching a class. How lucky am I? Very. I am also a peace activist. I've been on the streets, I've written letters, I've done all that I can to try to stop what is going on in Iraq, including coming to a greater understanding of what it means to be a pacificst. Before pointing fingers at Americans in general, try thinking about who we are, try remembering that those of us who have cried over what happened at Va Tech have also spent countless hours crying about tragedies all over the world.

In 2001, at De Anza Community College here in CA, about 20 miles from where I live, a very similar scenario was averted when a student was discovered with a massive arsenal of guns and explosives and a detailed plan to use them. As I recall the whole thing was averted because a fast-photo employee spied pictures of the student and his paraphernalia and called the police.

I'm sure there are many other instances of close calls. As a country, if we want to live as we have, with gun prevalence, with a culture of violence, and the freedom to purchase, really, whatever we want, chemical or mineral, we'd better start taking steps. That means intervention and that means intrusion. That means when someone starts hinting at violence we'd better take them seriously and IMPOSE on them the help and the monitoring they need.
If we're not going to change the cause (and let's face it, we're not) then we'd better build the bulwarks of prevention.

The facts and data are available and irrefutable, America is a fearful-violent nation, within and without. Until Americans come to accept this reality (and hopefully opt to change it), school massacres, high crime violence rates, senseless wars etc... will just keep on being repeated and they will continue feeding America's fear. The first step in any change begins with the realization that there is a problem and in pinpointing its cause. An overwhelming culture of violence and paranoia are the main culprits here.

I think Moore's film "Bowling for Columbine" has enough rhetorical strength to convince any reasonable viewer that these type of massacres are not a direct result of lax gun ownership laws, but rather stem primarily from the "culture of fear and violence" that pervades are news media and entertainment industry. I don't know enough about this particular assasin (nor do I care to for my own spiritual hygiene), but I am fairly certain that his deranged state has everything to do with the state of our nation.

EveningLand:
How did you get usawc? They don't admit unathorised users.
You would do a great service to bring the whole dumn thing down for everybody to see.

Vitaly Purto:

I indicated the original source of Peters's article (it was published in Parameters: see my entry above for the full reference). I also gave the Web address where one can find a copy of the entire article.

I don't quite know what else you are asking for?

I don't know what 'usawc' is supposed to abbreviate; nor do I know who 'they' is supposed to refer to in your 'They don't admit unathorized [sic] users'. If you go to the Web site the address of which I gave, you will see that there is no need for any authorization to gain access to the article in question.

I just tried to access the Peters's article using the link provided and couldn't get it. The message said the link was no longer available. So I went to the home page and put constant coflict in the search site. It timed out, so I couldn't reach the article that way either.
I don't think this is an accident. I think the article link and/or the article itself has purposely has been removed. EveningLand can you still reach the article?

FYI
I was able to access the article by going to the Parameters site then looking at the archive list and going to the summer 1997 issue. The article was there and I was able to print it.