(no subject)
This is a quote from Keith Olbermann, which I stole from AliSSa (I did that on purpose. I know it's spelled Allisa)
"It is an unspeakable and overwhelming tragedy, up to 30 young Americans killed violently, pointlessly, and the rest of us left with an urgent and almost helpless feeling that somebody could have done something to prevent it, and that everybody must do something to protect the next potential victims.
Yet, the same number of young Americans of approximately the same age have died in Iraq in the last 10 days. Clearly, while one might take issue with the comparison, one can not ignore the similarities. Moreover, in a practical sense, the deaths in Iraq could have been much more readily prevented, and the desire much more easily fulfilled, to protect the next potential victims there.
...No one questions the nation‘s grief about Virginia Tech. But have we suppressed our grief about Iraq? Today the president told the packed memorial service at Virginia Tech that this was a day of sadness for the entire nation, that, quote, people who never met you are praying for you. And, of course, he‘s right.
Flags fly at half staff across the nation. Memorial services are being held at other campuses. At the University of Texas in Austin, the site of America‘s first mass killing on a campus, the clock tower Charles Whitman used as a perch to killed 16 people, it will be darkened. After all, the deaths of 32 mostly young Americans in Blacksburg are extraordinary and extraordinarily sad.
Unfortunately, in Iraq, it is a very ordinary experience. According to the latest Iraq Coalition casualty count figures, in just the last ten days, 32 American troops, many the same age as those Virginia Tech students, have died. And about the same number of Iraqi civilians die in shootings and bombings in and around just Baghdad every day. So it seems fair to ask the question, if the violent deaths in Virginia send the nation into shock and expressions of concern and anxiety, why is not the continuous flow of American blood in Iraq generating a similar reaction?
Why isn‘t our flag permanently at half staff?"
"It is an unspeakable and overwhelming tragedy, up to 30 young Americans killed violently, pointlessly, and the rest of us left with an urgent and almost helpless feeling that somebody could have done something to prevent it, and that everybody must do something to protect the next potential victims.
Yet, the same number of young Americans of approximately the same age have died in Iraq in the last 10 days. Clearly, while one might take issue with the comparison, one can not ignore the similarities. Moreover, in a practical sense, the deaths in Iraq could have been much more readily prevented, and the desire much more easily fulfilled, to protect the next potential victims there.
...No one questions the nation‘s grief about Virginia Tech. But have we suppressed our grief about Iraq? Today the president told the packed memorial service at Virginia Tech that this was a day of sadness for the entire nation, that, quote, people who never met you are praying for you. And, of course, he‘s right.
Flags fly at half staff across the nation. Memorial services are being held at other campuses. At the University of Texas in Austin, the site of America‘s first mass killing on a campus, the clock tower Charles Whitman used as a perch to killed 16 people, it will be darkened. After all, the deaths of 32 mostly young Americans in Blacksburg are extraordinary and extraordinarily sad.
Unfortunately, in Iraq, it is a very ordinary experience. According to the latest Iraq Coalition casualty count figures, in just the last ten days, 32 American troops, many the same age as those Virginia Tech students, have died. And about the same number of Iraqi civilians die in shootings and bombings in and around just Baghdad every day. So it seems fair to ask the question, if the violent deaths in Virginia send the nation into shock and expressions of concern and anxiety, why is not the continuous flow of American blood in Iraq generating a similar reaction?
Why isn‘t our flag permanently at half staff?"