Two Virginia Techs A Day

One thing that struck me in watching the endless coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings in the last couple of days was that almost none of the commentators made any parallels with the plight of civilians in Iraq, where this sort of thing seems to happen daily. This is not to downplay the tragic nature of the VT shootings. But one would think that someone would make the comparison.

Finally someone did, I think on the ABC nightly news (I was switching channels, it could have been NBC). I wish I had caught his name, but the gist of what he said was sure, this sort of thing happens all the time in Iraq, but you “sort of expect it” there. These were “innocent people” in Virginia, which makes it more shocking and therefore I suppose justifies the wall-to-wall coverage, complete with detailed histories of each of the victims.

There’s nothing wrong with covering the Virginia story. People should be shocked by this sort of violence and the stories of the victims should be told. But why doesn’t that apply to Iraqi civilians, who are dying by the thousands as a direct result of American actions? Is an Iraqi family who gets blown up while they shop at a market somehow less “innocent” than anyone else?

I know that the TV networks are in business to make money, and that the audience will want to see weepy coverage of dead American college kids rather than the gory results of our handiwork in the Middle East. It still feels kind of sick, though. I went looking for a daily average of Iraqi civilian casualties just for a comparison and came across this post from Juan Cole, which pretty much sums it up:

The profound sorrow and alarm produced in the American public by the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech should give us a baseline for what the Iraqis are actually living through. They have two Virginia Tech-style attacks every single day. Virginia Tech will be gone from the headlines and the air waves by next week this time in the US, though the families of the victims will grieve for a lifetime. But next Tuesday I will come out here and report to you that 64 Iraqis have been killed in political violence. And those will mainly be the ones killed by bombs and mortars. They are only 13% of the total; most Iraqis killed violently, perhaps 500 a day throughout the country if you count criminal and tribal violence, are just shot down. Shot down, like the college students and professors at Blacksburg. We Americans can so easily, with a shudder, imagine the college student trying to barricade himself behind a door against the armed madman without. But can we put ourselves in the place of Iraqi students?

Of course posting this kind of stuff with links to Juan Cole will probably get me on more secret watch lists.