The Human Face of Death
What the green hills of Blacksburg, Va., and the dusty streets of Baghdad have in common is that in the last few days terrible acts of violence have been perpetrated there.
But the reactions to that violence could not have been more different.
Within a day of the Virginia Tech massacre, the 32 victims were memorialized in detailed biographies, news stories, photos and “interactive features” on a range of Web sites.
Here’s an excerpt from the Washington Post’s write-up on 19-year-old Emily Hilscher, the first student killed by the deranged Cho Seung-Hui. Apparently, Hilscher liked every kind of music except country and classical. “Give me something I can bang my head to or dance like crazy and I’m all over it,” she wrote in her My Space profile.
Of Ryan Clark, another early victim, the New York Times wrote, “Ryan Clark was known as Stack on campus, an amiable senior memorable for his ready smile and thoughtful ways … Tall and thin, Mr. Clark, a resident of August, Ga., was well liked and a member of the university’s marching band, the Marching Virginians.”
It is entirely appropriate that the violence at Blacksburg be personalized. Putting the human face on death will help focus the nation’s attention on an out-of-control culture of violence, which allows easy access to guns to the most demented among us.
If the violence in Iraq were humanized to the same extent, perhaps the war in Iraq would be over by now.
Yet, instead of putting a human face on the carnage there, the human toll in Iraq has been mostly reduced to body counts. The victims of the Iraq war have received little of the outpouring of grief and national attention focused on the Virginia victims.
Here’s a cold number: as of this week, 3,309 U.S. servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq. Typically, the victims get a story or two in their hometown newspaper or a report on local television. (I just read my colleague Steve Rubenstein’s wrenching obituary on Sgt. Mario De Leon from Rohnert Park, who died in Baghdad on Monday. “Sweet, polite kind,” his wife said of her 26-year-old husband, who loved to watch his collection of “Star Wars” movies. “I never met anyone like him.”)
But then everyone moves on (except, of course, the survivors).
Some might say soldiers are in a line of work where casualties are expected. Mass homicide on a college campus, they’d argue, is a different story that deserve special attention.
But the civilian casualties of the civil war in Iraq rarely emerge as human beings who have lives as rich and complex lives as the Virginia dead. News reports from Iraq invariably provide a daily casualty count in a sentence or two, the numbers usually prefaced by the words “at least.”
On the Saturday just before the Virginia Tech massacre, “at least” 37 people were killed, and another 150 wounded in a car bomb explosion in Karbala.
On Sunday, 34 people were killed in two suicide bombings in Baghdad. Of those who died half were women and children, according to a report.
On Wednesday, “at least” 158 people were killed in Baghdad in some of the deadliest attacks of the war.
So it goes, each day in Iraq. More deaths. More numbers.
I’ve been searching for a report profiling even one of yesterday’s victims in Iraq. What did they look like? What music were they interested in? What were their hobbies? Who is mourning them?
I’ll concede that it’s tough to identify victims of suicide and car bombings. Language and security barriers make it difficult for reporters to track down relatives and friends of the victims.
Of course, they aren’t Americans. It’s understandable we would care more about our own.
The daily statistical reports from Baghdad on the latest atrocity are numbing to the point where we hardly pay attention to them anymore. They read like a table from Dow Jones Industrial index — up today, down tomorrow.
Imagine what would happen if mass killings on the scale of the Virginia Tech massacre — or multiples thereof — occurred each day in the United States.
Yet that is exactly what is happening in Iraq, a country one-tenth our size.
The Virginia victims deserve to be remembered as vibrant human beings. The images of them that dominate the airwaves have the potential to spark action to make sure something like it does not happen again.
But the anonymous victims of a war begun by the United States should also be memorialized. By reducing them to ciphers, it’s too easy to avoid confronting the full impact of the catastrophe that has overtaken Iraq.
And so the war goes on.
Louis Freedberg is a Chronicle editorial writer. E-mail him at lfreedberg@sfchronicle.com.
© 2007 The San Francisco Chronicle
“The ultimate evil is making that which is concrete seem to be abstract”
Numbers like 34, 37, and 158 are abstractions.
I feel tired and old and ashamed when I remember that neither Viet Nam nor Iraq nor Hiroshima involved the mass murder of Western Europeans.
I just wish as many people as possible could read this wise and humane essay. It is so right on target! AS a matter of fact, I will give a copy of it to my Minister. Prof.of psychology Floyd Rudin yesterday offered a similiar essay right here on CommonDreams linking the Virginia Tech massacre to the greater mass killing in Iraq. Tuesday night Keith Olbermann, MSNBC suggested the same link although in a much more muted Patriotic manner saying more attention should be paid to the flag-draped coffins of soldiers slain in Iraq. The commercially-driven TV, movie, video games mass Media obsession with violence as entertainment and profit must be fought every day and in every way!
I find the media circus around the college deaths truly distatstful, especially in light of the fact that our local paper lauds our “miltary heroes” in the “war of terror. I submitted the following as an editorial letter this morning:
I too feel the horror of the loss and feel terribly for the parents whose children were needlessly killed at Virginia Tech. I too have been feeling this way for four years at the horror and loss inflicted daily in Iraq. Yes, the soldiers are volunteers but the loss is as terrible. The Iraqis, many of whom are women, children and the eldrely are not volunteers, only victims of brutal senseless killing. It haunts me. It seems the world has become a carnal house. It is sad enough that a mentally ill young man went on a delusion driven killing spree. It seems so much worse that a nation has done so on such an immense scale. Some madness can not be predicted or stopped before it is too late. Some can. Some perpetrators can never be brought to justice, some must.
How many funeral’s for our dead troop’s have Bushie and laura attended? The last count I heard was NONE What a coward Bush is, of course the difference is he ordered the thousand’s of iraqi deaths as well as the over THREE THOUSAND of our trooops.Impeach and remove this criminal from office.
I am in full agreement with Jaded Prole. I wrote a similar letter to my local paper. When I picked it up today, a huge photo of the Virginia Tech stared at me from the front page. The bombing in Iraq was on page four!
I Agree, it is our practice of thinking people who have been labeled our enemy as ‘other’ that creates our ability to accept their wholesale misery and death. The sociopaths who seem to continually rise to positions of power are well versed in the process and have been repeating it since the dawn of time. Even that book called the Bible, (Especially that Book) uses that practice to seperate the chosen ones from the expendable. Unless and until we as a people open our eyes to the evil our collective ‘leaders’, elected and otherwise, do in our names AND START DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT…the cycle will continue. I am encouraged that more and more critical thinkers are living in a way that models humane behaviours. If our culture survives long enough perhaps the people who follow us will not have to endure the shame that any American with a modicum of human compassion feels today.
I agree with all those who recognize that we should care about the dead Iraqis just as much as the dead in Virginia. National borders are arbitrary. Being a member of the human family is not. Actually, our tax dollars enabled the killing in Iraq more so than that in Virginia, so many of us feel more to blame for what is happening in Iraq.
“If the violence in Iraq were humanized to the same extent, perhaps the war in Iraq would be over by now.”
Agreed. It’s devastating the way deaths from war, because they are large in number, end up being a statistic to everyone who is not directly involved. The world keeps going, but so many people’s lives stop. The massacre at Virginia Tech was indeed a tragedy, but so is the thousands of people dying each day from poverty, from war, from genocide… from anything. If only people were seen as humans and not as numbers, then you’re right, the war in Iraq would (probably) be over by now. But no. The bodies are still numbers, and since when was it humane to quanitize someone’s life? It has never been humane, yet… the inhumanity is widespread, and persists with an astonishing ferocity.
Yes, of course, a somber moment for the senselessly murdered…
And now back to “CSI,” “Law and Order,” “Bones,” “Medium,” “The Sopranos,” “The Hills Have Eyes,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “American Psycho,” “Zodiac,” “Disturbia,” “Saw,” “Hostel,” “Touristas,” “24,” “Kill Bill,” “Any Tarantino pulp,” “Silence of the Lambs,”…….
Another somber moment - hurry, the commercial is almost over!
Much about this tragedy reminded me of the war: the killer’s militaristic posing in front of the camera, the ammo vest, the cold emotionless killing of innocent “civilians.”
For all the demented darkness of his words and his expressions, he still seemed like a boy dressed up for war games, playing at being Sly or Rock, or perhaps Osama, any of the other “heroes” who define power in terms of cold blooded violence in the name of a cause, and who conceptualize the world in terms of simple absolutes.
This young man was living in a fantasy world created out of the images of war. Whatever demons he already had within, the war helped to give shape to his fantasies.
“And now back to “CSI,” “Law and Order,” “Bones,” “Medium,” “The Sopranos,” “The Hills Have Eyes,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “American Psycho,” “Zodiac,” “Disturbia,” “Saw,” “Hostel,” “Touristas,” “24,” “Kill Bill,” “Any Tarantino pulp,” “Silence of the Lambs,”…….”
You have a point. One thing that I’ve been finding is that as I’m getting older, I’m not that interested in those types of movies and tv shows. In fact, of the tv shows listed, I’ve only seen one episode of The Sopranos, and was disgusted at its glorification of crime. I watched part of the first SAW and wasn’t even scared, just put off, as I am with most modern horror films (give me old Hammer or Universal movies anyday).
But then again, I watch “Dexter” on Showtime. As well as pro wrestling. So who am I to judge?
I’m sitting here in my orange Virginia Tech shirt nodding in agreement with Louis Freedberg and all who have posted. There are nine VT alumni in my family so I am emotionally connected to the events on Monday but also know we MUST begin to face a harsh reality before we can prevent another campus (or mall or sporting event or movie theater) massacre - as a nation we condone violence to solve problems. Cho used violence to “solve” his problems.
Let the dialogue begin!
Though Cho was a cowardly cold-blooded killer like Bush and Cheney, it is inappropriate to compare him with them. Bush and Cheney are affable and sociable delusional psychopaths, not lonely and isolated like Cho. And Cho obviously had much less of an opportunity for advancement in the fascist-militaristic state than either of them. However, if only he had a little courage to go along with his anger he probably could have done well if he worked for Blackwater or one of the other mercenary firms in Iraq.
And should remember also those who were brutally murdered by cancer, for example - I mean, of course, those who who didn’t have access to health care. They are nowhere in the papers.