Meanwhile, in Iraq ...

Wed, 04/18/2007 - 4:13pm

When a young man's shooting rampage left 33 people dead on the campus of Virginia Tech Monday, Americans were in shock. The massacre filled the entire half-hour of NBC's Nightly News. Entire hour-long episodes of Dateline NBC and CBS's 48 Hours were devoted solely to covering the tragedy. The Web sites of major U.S. media outlets, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN, have been dominated by coverage of the shooting. We see photos and biographical sketches of the victims, and the grief is palpable.

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP

Today, 166 people so far have died in attacks in Baghdad, with 119 killed in just one marketplace bombing alone. But Americans aren't stopped in their tracks. As with previous marketplace bombings, today's tragedy merits only a quick acknowledgment in the news, and then it's on to more important concerns like Sanjaya on American Idol.

When I think of the grief that we Americans feel at the death of 33 innocent people in Blacksburg, I wonder what it must be like to live in Iraq and deal with such anguish literally every day ... and to have it ignored. And then, I wonder why we Americans, who are supposed to care so much about Iraqis, aren't more stricken by the daily carnage there.

But I don't wonder long, for we all know the sad truth: As much as we would like to believe otherwise, in reality, all humans aren't equal. To us, every American life is priceless; more and more, it seems, Iraqi lives aren't even worth 60 seconds of air time.

Preeti Aroon | Permalink |
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