Tuesday 16 April 2013

Empathy With Other Victims After Boston Bombing


Terrorism comes to Boston and when that particular horror comes to town, as we are finding out with sickening regularity around the World, anyone and everyone is a potential target.
The FBI have taken over the investigation and are calling it a terrorist attack but nobody seems to know which sick mind dreamed up this attack.
Although no-one had claimed responsibility, most people's first thoughts were Al-Queada and there are reports of a Saudi 'person of interest' being held by Federal authorities while the Pakistani Taliban have denied any role in the bombings but whoever it turns out to be, foreign or home grown, it is sickening to see yet another scene of carnage like this.
On Monday, before the Boston attacks took over the news agenda, talk was of the 18 bombings which killed 32 in Iraq, last week were pictures of the eight dead Afghani children killed in a drone attack and the results of violence in Syria has been running on our screens for the past twelve months.
Understandably in America there will be anger and rage at the cowardly attacks that killed three and injured over 150 of their citizens and it will be exactly the same anger and rage felt by the citizens of people across the world when their innocent civilians are killed.
How sick we feel watching the slow motion pictures of the bomb exploding behind the cheering crowd and how the news of the death of an eight year old child tugged on the heart is exactly the same level of sickness and heartache felt by the families of the innocent people whose lives are ended by Western and Israeli bombs in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Libya or wherever we decide to send our armies.
The American political reaction to the Boston bombing will probably be aggressive and the worry is that it turns out to be a Muslim group behind it because as we saw after the last terrorist attack in the US, the call will be for more foreign adventures, more patriot act legislation and an expanding of the inmates in Guantanamo Bay.  
What is unlikely amongst the thirst for revenge will be any empathy with the scores who die in similar circumstances around the Globe everyday.
Nobody will stop and think that the revulsion that they are feeling now is what every citizen must feel in Iraq, Afghanistan or any of those other countries we have attacked recently and identify with those war torn citizens who live in fear of bombs being set off in market places everyday.   
When the shock and horror has subsided and before the overreaction of the right wing commenters like this  idiot on Fox News tweeting how muslims are evil, let's kill them all stir the hatred up to another level, we can hope that the dreadful events in Boston stir some empathy for victims and outrage over the ending of innocent human life wherever it is.
When attacking Iran, increasing drone attacks in Afghanistan, backing Israeli aggression against Palestinians or arming Syrian rebels is mentioned, they remember how they feel now, how broken the family of that tragic 8-year-old must feel and decide if they want to inflict those dreadful feelings on other innocent human beings before joining in the cheerleading for even more killing.

5 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lucy said...

It's about innocent civilians dying whether they be in Boston or Baghdad and however angry Americans feel about it today, it is exactly how everyone feels when their citizens are killed.
The parents of the poor 8 year old boy killed will feel exactly the same as the parents of an Afghani 8 year old killed by a drone attack.
Neither will care about the politics behind it, they will just both have the heart-wrenching grief of the death of their child.

Will the response be 'we would hate to inflict this pain onto anyone else' or will it be 'we know how we felt but we still want to inflict it on other people'.

Anonymous said...

I got your point this time.

did you get mine? when a child is killed at school because a missile launcher is built in a playground maybe you should be mad at your government for putting the missile launcher in the playground...

q

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lucy said...

I took your comment as meaning that as the Boston Marathon was not connected in any way to the military, it should not have been a target whereas the Taliban etc hide amongst civilian populations so it is different.
Yes, i agree that the Taliban etc are wrong to do it but my point was the effects on the innocent families involved are the same whoever is to blame.