violence in the hood

fort hood. not the hood, but a violent place indeed. always so, but usually, violent in a way that we are comfortable with. we don't mind killers, as long as we get to train them. as long as they kill the right people. you know, the ones with "funny" names and small bank accounts.

but, once in a while, violence comes back to bite those seemingly expert at only giving and not receiving. sometimes, they are victimized by "one of their own," who, in a blaze of crazed heroism, decides it is better to use his skills against the home team.

and, it is at that point, where we all suddenly become non-violent. a plethora of pacifists is born. now, we care about each life that has been taken, for the ones killed were american, and had names that may have been our own. this compassion was not in evidence before, and will soon go back into its hiding place, waiting for the right victims to present themselves. iraqis, afghanis, surely they will not do, for they are being killed by us, so therefore, our compassion can only go toward the murderers.

13 killed at a military base. the biggest military base in the country. the shooter? an army man of 9 years. a muslim. deeply disturbed by u.s. foreign policy. worried that he would soon be deployed to afghanistan. a madman? perhaps, but if he was mad, what drove him to madness? could it be the destruction of iraq and afghanistan? surely, more than 13 people have been killed by our troops in these two nations. who among us is willing to speak of the madness of the u.s war machine, a madness that dwarfs any response to its horrors.

what are troops doing at a military base? surely, they are learning to be better killers, are they not? well, it seems that at least one of them learned his lessons fairly well.

now, i would like you to imagine a scenario. it's the early 1940's, and the place is a german military base. a soldier at the base is deeply disturbed by germany's invasions of russia and poland. he loses it, can't take it anymore. he has to act. he picks up the gun and kills 13 people at the base. today, how would this man be judged? my guess is that many would judge him to be a hero. and yet, we have no more right to be in iraq than germany had to be in russia.

madmen are the violent ones who act against the wishes of the powerful.

and, so it goes. if a chilean soldier at a chilean military base, during the terror of the early pinochet years, turned his gun on his fellow soldiers, how would he be judged today by those of us on the "left?"

speaking of which, where is the left? where is the modern emma goldman, where is that someone who will humanize him whom the society will portray as a craven madman? who is it that will acknowledge the profound ugliness which led this man to act. the ugliness which is war, occupation, and religious bigotry.

as always, the real crimes will go unmentioned. our compassion will be selective. we won't learn anything, for to learn would mean that we have to change, and change we won't. we can not acknowledge the extent of our evil.

and therefore, we can not understand.

and we never will.