"Arm friends, attack enemies and rely on violence rather than dialogue" - facing the truth about Blacksburg

buried on page A19 of today's wapo...

Officials, newspaper columnists and citizens around the world Tuesday described the Virginia Tech massacre as the tragic reflection of an America that fosters violence at home and abroad, even as it attempts to dictate behavior to the rest of the world.

From European countries with strict gun-control laws to war-ravaged Iraq, where dozens of people are killed in shootings and bombings each day, foreigners and their news media used the university attack to condemn what they depicted as U.S. policies to arm friends, attack enemies and rely on violence rather than dialogue to settle disputes.

when you read and listen to all the incredibly shallow spoutings that are taking place in the u.s. about monday's horror at virginia tech and then read what the rest of the world is thinking, it's more clear than ever just how terribly sick our country is... look at this from argentina, which, from first-hand experience i can assure you, is not a paragon of national peace and serenity...

"Massacre in the Paradise of Weapons," declared the headline in the Buenos Aires daily newspaper Pagina/12. In an accompanying article, Dario Kosovsky of the Argentine Network for Disarmament said he believes students who commit mass murder are following the example of the U.S. government, which advocates "the use of violence to achieve liberty."

Pagina/12, 17 April 2007, front page

The headline reads, "The American Nightmare." The cartoon has Bush saying, "In light of what's happened in Virginia, we recommend that people don't go to the University." The article listed under the photo says, "Living in an Armed Society."

now that we have at long last entered a serious national debate on iraq, look at what a wonderful opportunity the terrible carnage at blacksburg provides us to move that debate to a level of serious national self-relection...

"It is a little incident if we compare it with the disasters that have happened in Iraq," said Ranya Riyad, 19, a college student in Baghdad. "We are dying every day."

"They are always saying that the Arabs and Muslims are behind the terrorism and the killing," said Hussein Kadhum, 26, a traffic policeman in the heavily Shiite city of Najaf, south of Baghdad. "But America has terrorism and they are exporting it to us. We did not have this violence in the Saddam era because the law was so tough on guns."

will we take advantage of this opportunity...? i think the answer is readily apparent to anyone who has followed the ceaseless television and newspaper coverage of monday's rampage...

on a poster he did for earth day in 1970 the late walt kelly's cartoon character pogo said it best...

....

We have met the enemy and he is us.

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