Virginia Tech Gunman & Iraq

The top headline across many Western outlets right now is that a madman has gone on a killing rampage on the campus of Virginia Tech university, killing at least 32 people in two attacks today, separated by at least 2 hours. British news outlet, Sky, is reporting that the gunman was of Asian origin, (meaning East Asian, as in Chinese for example) but nothing is yet confirmed. Sadly, the livelihoods and peace of an entire race or religious group hinges on who this crazy person was.

This type of horrifying, disturbing news is a daily occurrence in Iraq -- do the Americans, the British, the 'coalition forces' have at least some inkling of how painful this is, not just to those victims and families involved, but to absolutely anyone that hears this news or can in some way relate to the events because they are a graduate of Virginia Tech, or they visited it once, or anything?

Do the brainwashed young American soldiers in Iraq better understand massacres when it happens back home? Or, instead, are they so angered by this massacre that they will feel especially trigger happy in the next few days in Iraq?

Any fool that doesn't realize that Iraq (and all of the international aggression and violence that the United States government has supported and engaged in for decades) and this kind of domestic violence in the United States are closely related, is exactly the kind of idiot that can be brainwashed into an automated killing machine that does Bushler's bidding.

The United States has the highest rate -- beyond even its next competitor -- of gun-related violence in the world because ordinary Americans have very easy access to weaponry of a very high calibre, because Presidon't Bushler "believes that there is a right for people to bear arms" as his spokesperson said even today.

But today's story isn't just about the effects of violent, hateful foreign policy on the public at large; it's also about how so many innocents get caught in the web of violence, get hurled into the vacuum of hatred, get trapped in a lifetime of anger. The violence that ensues will be another cog in this turning wheel of antagonism in the machinations of the Bush administration, the Blair administration, and all the other administrations that tired of the anti-communism rhetoric and sought to replace it with the anti-terrorism one.

As these shameless world leaders perpetuate hate, the rest of us -- like these innocent victims at Virginia Tech, like the innocent victims in Iraq, like the innocent victims in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Guantanamo Bay, Palestine, Israel, and elsewhere -- must do any small thing we can -- like writing in a blog -- to make others aware of this propaganda so that somehow this violence and hate can stop.

(for updates and additional information on this story, see here)