Twenty children dying in the Newtown massacre has emotionally rocked the country, as well it should. I am glad that we have compassion and understanding. Yet what really surprises me is that we are emotionally blind to very similar circumstances where we as a country are deliberately killing innocent children. If we feel this way when our children are killed, then how do people in other countries feel when we kill their children?
Relying on data compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the study’s authors say that between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed in U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan since June 2004, and between 474 and 881 of them were civilians.
People speak of the shock of ordinary things and then suddenly having your children die. How can you condemn what happened at Newtown and not condemn what happens to other children?
“The children had just started eating when the missile struck…everyone inside was killed.”
So would it have been ok if the twenty Newtown children had been killed by drone from a foreign country? If no, then what is wrong with our compassion and anger that it does not extend to our own national actions?
Comment